Horne’s lawyer buddies make hay off the Ethnic Studies cases

by David Safier

Stephen Lemons, aka Feathered Bastard, at Phoenix New Times breaks down the costs of the Dept. of Ed. hiring outside lawyers to fight the Ethnic Studies cases. So far, it's $187,526. The lawyers at the firm of choice, Burch & Cracchiolo, contributed more than $10,000 to Tom Horne's AG campaign.

You can read the whole piece to get the details, but this jumped out at me. The B&C representation was both for the administrative and the federal Ethnic Studies lawsuits.

"The federal lawsuit logically went with the administrative case," [AG spokeswoman Amy] Rezzonico explained. "We obtained outside counsel on the administrative case for reasons we cannot disclose due to lawyer-client confidentiality. The federal case went with it."

The explanation of the need for outside counsel on the administrative case comes later in the article. It was because of a conflict of interest created when Horne announced his decision to wipe out MAS on his last day in office, then moved over to the AG's office. Without those political theatrics, the AG lawyers might have handled the lawsuits, saving the DOE $187,526.

This isn't the first time Horne has used B&C, by the way. The firm was paid more than $400,000 to work on Arizona's ELL cases when Horne was Ed Supe. It's great to have the DOE put itself in legal jeopardy if you're a bunch of lawyers who let Horne know they love and $upport him.