Escambia shells out $50K in legal expenses defending elections supervisor from lawsuit

Escambia County is spending almost $50,000 for legal costs associated with defending Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender and his office against a lawsuit filed by attorney Bruce Childers who was disqualified from running against Bender for the position.

Law and lobbying firm GrayRobinson submitted an invoice for $49,132.27 to the county to cover about 90 hours worth of work in handling the case and for representing Bender during a three hour hearing.

According to the invoice, the original bill would have been even higher, $57,759, but the firm gave the county a “discount” of $8,626.73, which brought the cost down to just over $49,000. An itemized breakdown of the invoice shows most of the tab, $46,666.50, will go to pay attorney George Levesque, who spent nearly 59 hours on the case and charges a compensation rate of $795 an hour.

Levesque is one of seven people from the firm who worked on the case, according to the invoice. The compensation rates of the other staff range from $635 an hour to $225 an hour. In all, the firm says it spent a total of 92 hours researching, reviewing and litigating the election law case.

An invoice was also submitted by Anchor Court Reporting for $994.50 for expenses related to the case.

The specialized law firm GrayRobinson was hired at Bender’s request in June when Childers, who was running for the Escambia elections supervisor seat, filed a lawsuit against Bender and the Supervisor of Elections Office. Childers sued after he was informed – after the qualification deadline – that he had not properly filed a "full and complete" Form 6 financial disclosure document and therefore did not qualify to seek office.

Escambia County commissioners signed off on the pricey law firm after the hearing because Childers filed a motion for an emergency ruling and the case was heard quickly. At the time the board agreed to the representation, Commissioner Mike Kohler questioned Bender about the high-priced legal team when the county already has six attorneys to represent officials and staff.

Now that the bill is in, Kohler doesn’t believe the expense is justified.

“The citizens of Escambia County deserve better from their elected officials than for us to continue to waste money in this fashion with their tax dollars,” Kohler said. “This lawsuit went on for just a few days at a cost of $49,000. A family of four has to live on around the same amount for a year in Escambia County. I’m disappointed that this appears to be just another case of an elected official in Escambia County claiming to be fiscally conservative but treating the tax coffers with no respect or discipline.”

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Bender believes the expense is justified. He said time was of the essence because of the emergency motion for a hearing and while county legal staff helped with some of the work, they weren’t available to help with all of it. Bender said an experienced election law attorney was needed to defend "the laws of Florida and the constitution against an emergency hearing."

“From the time that we first talked to the candidate about not qualifying until the time of the hearing was 10 days,” Bender said. “The initial filing that we received said that we had like 30 days to respond, so I would just say that was a very condensed, quick timeline that we had to act upon.”

Bender said he requested GrayRobinson because the firm lobbies for the county and has experience with election law.

According to the firm’s website, GrayRobinson is one of the leading law firms when it comes to government cases and is self-described as a “multidimensional team of professionals providing integrated legal, lobbying, and regulatory services to leading and emerging businesses, state and local governments,” among other clients. The Florida-based law firm has 14 offices throughout the state and one in Washington D.C.

Childers’ case was heard June 28. He said the notification that he had not properly completed his financial disclosure documents came after two Supervisor of Elections Officers told him he had completed the necessary paperwork to qualify, posted that he had qualified on the Escambia County elections website and notified the news media he was among those who had done what it took by the noon, June 14 deadline to get on the ballot.

At the hearing, staff at the elections supervisor’s office said they had checked off the Form 6 document as one that had been received from the Childers, though it had not been. Each said they had done so based on the assumption that Childers would follow-through on a promise to email in additional required documents.

Previously: County footing bill for elections supervisor disqualification lawsuit

Circuit Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz ruled Childers should be left off the local election ballot because she could “not find any basis in law for taking such a bold step as to overrule the supervisor of elections.”

Retired attorney Bruce Childers said the legal expenses and entire "debacle" could have been avoided if Bender had notified him of the issue and allowed him to address it. He believes Bender's decision to disqualify him was "purely discretionary."

"There were several mistakes made by his staff, and he could easily have said, 'Hey, look, if you just bring this in today, we'll put you down as qualified,' but he chose not to do that. Instead, he chose to go get some high-priced lawyer to keep me off the ballot so he'd have no opposition," Childers said.

Bender, a former Escambia County Commissioner, was appointed to the position of elections supervisor earlier this year by the governor after the previous supervisor of elections stepped down to take another position. Bender is the only candidate on the ballot running for Escambia Supervisor of Elections.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia shells out $50K in legal expenses defending elections supervisor from lawsuit