Marysville district's legal bill double Yuba City's

Law firms representing Marysville Joint Unified School District were paid $516,649 last year — more than twice what the larger Yuba City Unified spent and a cost that Marysville school district Trustee Sandy Fonley says sickens her.

"This is a travesty," Fonley said. "There's no excuse for expenditures like this."

Fonley said she had asked three times at school board meetings for figures on what the school district paid law firms but was not provided the information.

"They knew what an embarrassment this is going to be," Fonley said of what she described as stall tactics by district officials in not supplying the cost.

"I knew it would be high," Fonley said of the figure. "I didn't think it would be that high."

Trustee Bernie Rechs said the legal costs reflect in part expenses associated with the extensive building program undertaken by the Marysville district. That work includes review of documents required by the state as well as legal issues that can arise with construction, he said.

Rechs cited Fonley's campaign for Yuba County supervisor in the June 8 election as a motive for her making an issue out of the school district's legal costs.

"In order to get elected she really needs to be more in the public eye," Rechs said. "No publicity is bad publicity."

Trustee Jim Flurry said Marysville Joint Unified has 10,000 students and 1,000 employees. Lawsuits are common in this era, Flurry said.

"We have to protect the taxpayer," he said of the necessary costs of legal representation.

Michael Schlussler, president of the Marysville Unified Teachers Association, also said legal expenses are a modern reality but added that the school district can do more to keep fees lower.

The Marysville school district payments include $238,172 for litigation against the district, $61,625 for teacher layoffs and $26,893 in fees in connection with matters involving the Yuba County grand jury.

Paul Nicholas Boylan, an attorney who represents school districts in Northern California and last year worked for the Wheatland School District, described the state education code as an incredible maze and said districts "really, really need lawyers."

"However, some use them more than they ought to, " Boylan added.

"If you see an attorney at every single board meeting," he added, "there's something wrong."

The Marysville school district is the last of eight in the region asked by the Appeal-Democrat to provide figures on what they paid last year to law firms. The seven other school districts spent $983,759, ranging from $52,435 by the Live Oak Unified School District to the $238,500 that Yuba City Unified spent.

Tom Scott, executive director of the Sacramento-based Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse — which in 2008 reported about school systems becoming targets for litigation — said Wednesday that budget cuts to education heighten the lawsuit problem.

"Taking money out of the classroom and putting it in the courtroom is never good for our education system," Scott said. He also emphasized the need for transparency in how tax dollars are spent to ensure that money for schools "is used to educate and not litigate."

"Most of this stuff," he said of school districts and legal fees, "is always dealt with in closed session and the taxpayer and public never hear about it."

CONTACT Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.