Port Authority was pressed by Christie administration to hire governors former law firm, sources say - See more at: northjersey/news/port-authority-was-pressed-by-christie-administration-to-hire-governor-s-former-law-firm-sources-say-1.1047687#sthash.gzFqKHiB.dpuf Governor Christie in Keansburg on Monday. Related: Memo by Darrell Buchbinder recommending Dughi & Hewit (PDF) The Port Authority fast-tracked the hiring of a law firm with strong ties to Governor Christie and gave it millions of dollars in legal work after the Christie administration pressed officials to hire the firm in 2010, according to internal agency documents and two sources familiar with the firm’s selection. The firm, Dughi, Hewit & Domalewski, where Christie began his legal career and was a partner before becoming New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor in 2002, has earned at least $6.3 million from the Port Authority since 2010, records show. That is a significant sum for a law firm that has about two dozen attorneys and had never done work for the Port Authority until Christie became governor. Two former agency officials with knowledge of the hiring said Christie administration officials in Trenton instructed the Port Authority to find work for the Cranford-based firm in 2010, the same year Christie came into office. The opportunity arose later the same year when the Port Authority was sued over a controversial land deal in Bayonne and looked for outside legal representation. But the Port Authority skipped the competitive selection process typically used to choose outside law firms, according to internal memos obtained by The Record. Under the standard process, multiple firms are asked to submit proposals for a specific task, describing their qualifications in the relevant area of law and their general legal strategy. Then they are ranked by an internal evaluation panel. In this case, the Port Authority’s top staff attorney, Darrell Buchbinder, wrote in a September 2010 memo that the competitive process was not necessary: He was familiar enough with Dughi & Hewit’s qualifications to choose it, even though the firm had never done work for the agency before. He based his decision, he wrote in the memo, on an unsuccessful proposal the firm had submitted earlier in 2010 for unrelated legal work involving insurance coverage and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Hiring Dughi & Hewit without a new competitive process, he wrote, “would be in the best interests of the Port Authority.” Handing out lucrative legal work to politically favored professionals is a long tradition in New Jersey, where the fortunes of law firms often change with election cycles. But the Port Authority’s hiring of Dughi & Hewit without a competitive selection process appears to be an extension of that practice to the independent bi-state agency and comes to light at a time when the Christie administration’s influence over the agency is receiving increasing scrutiny. The agency, which controls the region’s Hudson River crossings and airports, has come under criticism for helping the Christie administration politically in other cases, as well. The Christie administration recommended dozens of politically connected people for jobs at the Port Authority and tapped the agency to fund $1.8 billion in state road projects. Christie’s former top appointees at the agency also ordered lane closures at the George Washington Bridge that appear to have been politically motivated. Dughi, Hewit & Domalewski has employed some of Christie’s closest political advisers over the years, including Jeffrey Chiesa, who served as state attorney general before Christie appointed him to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, and one of Christie’s closest political advisers, William Palatucci. One of the firm’s current partners, Craig Domalewski, was senior counsel to the governor at the time the Port Authority hired the firm. During the same month, September 2010, the Port Authority hired Domalewski’s father to a $98,000-a-year job as a “senior project manager.” Stanley Domalewski, who had donated to Christie’s gubernatorial campaign, was one of dozens of patronage hires recommended for Port Authority jobs by the Christie administration. In December 2011, the younger Domalewski left the Christie administration to join Dughi & Hewit as a partner and is now handling some of the Port Authority litigation. Russell Hewit, a founding partner of the firm, said in a statement that Domalewski played no role in the Port Authority’s selection of the firm when he worked in Christie’s office. “Dughi, Hewit & Domalewski, P.C. lawyers are highly qualified professionals with decades of experience handling complex and sophisticated civil litigation of the kind for which they were retained by the Port Authority,” Hewit said. Christie’s office referred questions to the Port Authority. A spokesman for the agency said Dughi & Hewit was “rated highly” in the July 2010 competition for work related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That litigation involved insurance coverage, while the Bayonne litigation revolved around a land deal. “Given the close timing, agency officials determined that conducting an additional procurement process for similar legal work was unlikely to produce a more qualified firm, while also delaying the agency’s need to address this matter promptly,” spokesman Chris Valens said. He confirmed that Dughi & Hewit, a firm that has been in business nearly 35 years, had never before done work for the Port Authority. Buchbinder’s Sept. 28 memo to the Port Authority’s executive director recommending Dughi & Hewit largely mirrored a memo sent to him the previous day by the agency’s first deputy general counsel at the time, Christopher M. Hartwyk. In both memos, the attorneys cite potential conflicts of interest by other firms under consideration for the Bayonne litigation to justify short-cutting the competitive selection process. Those specific firms and the potential conflicts are not identified in the memos. Neither Hartwyk, who has since left the agency, nor Buchbinder would comment. The litigation Dughi & Hewit was hired to handle arose out of the Port Authority’s purchase of waterfront property in Bayonne that had been targeted for redevelopment by the city for more than a decade. Two developers who had plans to build on nearby property contended they had been promised the Bayonne peninsula would not become a shipping terminal, as the Port Authority intended. The developers sued Bayonne, the city’s redevelopment authority and the Port Authority. The land deal was the subject of an investigative story in The New York Times last month that found the Port Authority paid Bayonne significantly more for the 131-acre parcel than its appraised value. The $235 million purchase helped Bayonne plug a nagging budget deficit at a time when the city was in danger of needing a state bailout that the Christie administration could ill afford, as it battled its own fiscal woes. The Christie administration has vehemently denied that the land purchase was a political windfall, saying the conclusion is illogical. Still, the resulting litigation has dragged on for years. Legal bills requested by The Record, and posted on the Port Authority’s website last month, show that Dughi & Hewit is among nearly 20 outside law firms the agency has hired since Christie came to office. In 2010 alone, the Port Authority spent $29 million on outside law firms, agency records show. - See more at: northjersey/news/port-authority-was-pressed-by-christie-administration-to-hire-governor-s-former-law-firm-sources-say-1.1047687#sthash.gzFqKHiB.dpuf
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 11:02:51 +0000
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