We recently had  inquiries by our readers concerning the current status of a proposal announced on October  16, 2013 by 6th Ward City Councilman Al Lindsey to appoint a  “Blue Ribbon”exploratory study committee to look at ways to reduce  legal costs paid to the Mayors legal counsel.  We hope that Evansville City Council members will support Mr. Linsey’s request to appoint this tax saving study committee because it has the potential to save the taxpayers of Evansville hundred of thousands of tax of dollars.   

If our memory serves us correctly, last year City Council approved about a $600,000 for the Mayor’s legal counsel operating budget.  This figure doesn’t include any general liability claims work, workman comp issues, bond council work or ERC contracts.

Attached is the article that Mr. Lindsey submitted to us in October of  last year for your review and discussion.

Citizens of Evansville,

As your fellow citizen and the City Councilman from the 6th Ward I have finally had it with the exorbitant legal fees that the department of  the legal counsel for the Mayor of  City of Evansville is spending. Last week it came out that the legal tab for the Mayors legal department counsel spent in 2012 for the City of Evansville and the Water and Sewer Utility amounted to $2.9 Million. That is over an 80% increase in just the last 5 years. How many of you have seen your pay increased by 80% during the recession? I know I sure as heck haven’t as a member of the Evansville Fire Department or as a City Councilman. Quite frankly it would be inappropriate for a lifetime public servant to see such an increase in hard times.

So why have the legal bills of the City of Evansville Mayors legal department exploded faster than the City of Evansville healthcare premiums and what the heck can we do about it? The bulk of our legal work is contracted out by the hour so the only answers are that we are either being hit with higher rates or being billed for more hours.

It may be time for the City of Evansville to have its own legal department. Now I am not a math whiz but I am pretty good at arithmetic and I divided that $2.9 Million by the $150 per hour that is customary for attorneys to bill the city and came up with a little over 19,000 hours of lawyers time that the city must be getting billed for. If there are 2,000 working hours in a year one more division problem leads me to a need for 10 staff lawyers to handle all of the city’s needs.

I have also been told by reliable sources that the City of Evansville legal fees charged by the Mayors legal counsel and his firm in 2013 could be over $3 million dollars.

I am pretty sure the Mayor of the City of Evansville can hire lawyers around here for less than $280,000 per year so my proposal is to put together a blue ribbon exploratory committee to see what it would take for the city of Evansville to have its own legal team. If we can pull this off and can hire 10 lawyers and someone to boss them for about $100,000 each we can save the city nearly $2 Million bucks a year.

I for one can think of lots of basic services that could benefit from having an extra $2 Million for the city to appropriate for critical services or infrastructure.

Thank You,

Al Lindsey, City Councilman
Evansville, IN 6th Ward

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON OCTOBER 16, 2013 BY CCO WITHOUT OPINION, BIAS OR EDITING.

In “The Man of La Mancha,” Don Quixote, the idealistic patriarch of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, inspires as he extols the benefits of dreaming the impossible. Life does imitate art, and big dreams often rouse great feats that reap benefits enjoyed far beyond the circle of visionaries and dreamers. Risk-takers embark on a quest to realize their dreams, but the ones who do not implement well often see their dreams face the same fate as Don Quixote, who died early at the hands of the authority figures of his time.

In the world of innovation, implementation reveals the efficacy of impossible dreams. Without the perseverance to think critically, experiment and execute to realize a dream, a vision — as they say in Silicon Valley — is mere “vaporware.” Innovation hubs, as President Obama celebrated in a recent speech in North Carolina, are emerging as places where visionaries gather to dream, prove concepts, birth products, and launch manufacturing enterprises.

The California Innovative Hub initiative was crafted in Palm Springs several years ago, and today the Coachella Valley iHub is incubating 20 start-up companies creating high-tech products from branded social messaging to storage solutions for renewable energy.

It is one of 16 innovation hubs in California and first to add an Accelerator Campus to its iHub network.

The CViHub first nurtures and assesses the entrepreneurs’ dreams to the threshold of reality, and then mitigates the risks of entrepreneurship through the implementation stage of operating a business at the Accelerator Campus.

The question of the next decade may be this: Can innovation hubs lead the United States out of the Great Recession and toward a sustainable future where the American dream can again become reality for most of our citizens? Early results of the CViHub indicate the answer is yes.

The kind of creativity that drives innovation and entrepreneurship may be widely praised and desired, but, in reality, creative solutions often meet with resistance and open hostility. Apple’s Steve Jobs and other highly successful entrepreneurs are known for anti-social behavior, acting as though rules did not apply to them. Whether we like it or not, creativity correlates directly to nonconformity, and the success of innovation hubs will depend on recognizing, attracting and nurturing nonconformity.

A 2010 Kauffman Foundation study by Tim Kane concluded that “all net job growth in America comes from start-up companies.”

The CViHub surrounds its start-up companies with professional mentors and a workforce development program aligned with needs of the jobs being created. It is also Spartan in its surroundings to keep the entrepreneurs hungry and humble — a way to encourage the start-ups to work hard to graduate to the real world, creating wealth and much-needed jobs for the local economy.

President Obama is on the right track to embrace innovation hubs as a path to a sustainable future. When implemented in an exemplary manner, innovation hubs can be the birthplace of the jobs of the future where the American spirit of entrepreneurship is revived.

It is this spirit that can resurrect a time when each generation can once again expect to be better than the previous generation making the old American dream the new reality.

Innovation hubs — whether deliberate creations of the public, public-private partnerships, for-profit entities or even random gatherings of creative people with ambition — have the greatest potential to return the U.S. economy to one that continuously expands the middle class on the sustainable basis of desirable products built by people with valuable skills. To do that, innovation hubs must be more than places where people think outside of the proverbial box. To really elevate this country’s relevance on the world stage, innovation hubs will have to be places where people are inspired to live outside the box, to dream, invent and to build the impossible dream.

IL STAFF for www.theindianalawyer.com

In 2013, Indiana Lawyer kicked off its series “Legal Lions” as a way to highlight attorneys who have had long and distinguished careers spanning half a century, or in Alexis “Alex” Thomas Cholis’ case, more than 70 years. Cholis was admitted to the bar in July 1942 and decided in 2013 that it was finally time to retire at the age of 96.

For more than 60 years, he came to the office his older brother Nicholas founded in South Bend in 1936. Before joining that firm, he served in the Army during World War II. He likely would have continued practicing beyond 2013 if it wasn’t for his eyesight becoming worse.

Cholis practiced in tax and estate matters. Those who knew and worked with Cholis described him as a gentleman and unique character, in addition to being a lot of fun.

Until his retirement, Cholis was the longest-practicing attorney in Indiana by six years, according to the Roll of Attorneys. The No. 2 spot is held by Philip “Skip” Kappes, who is going on 66 years of practice in 2014. Upon graduating from law school in 1948, Kappes worked for Indianapolis Legal Aid Society before going into private practice, eventually forming the firm Dutton Kappes and Overman. After its dissolution, Kappes founded Lewis & Kappes P.C., where he continues to practice a few days a week.

Don’t think it’s just men who dedicated their lives to the practice of law. Phyllis Gratz Poff, a solo practitioner in Auburn, has been a lawyer for 60 years. She’s the longest-practicing female attorney in the state based on Roll of Attorney records. Poff was admitted to the bar in December 1953 and opened her office in February 1954. Those who know her and work with her say she is compassionate, generous and a very skilled lawyer. She concentrates her practice on family law and some estate work and says she has no plans of retiring.