Will GCSD retain Girvin & Ferlazzo?

GUILDERLAND — The school board here will discuss on Tuesday whether or not to retain the legal services of Girvin & Ferlazzo.

The Albany firm was implicated last week in a probe started by the Attorney General’s Office into what Andrew Cuomo has called “a payroll padding scheme.”

James Girvin, Kathy Ann Wolverton, Kristine Lanchantin, and Jeffrey Honeywell had their membership in the state retirement system revoked by the state comptroller because, said Thomas DiNapoli on April 17, the lawyers were incorrectly reported as employees by the Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery BOCES. Employees can collect pensions, while independent contractors do not receive that benefit.

The Guilderland School District has a three-year contract with Girvin & Ferlazzo that ends June 30, according to school board President Richard Weisz. (The Enterprise filed a Freedom of Information Law request for a copy of the contract on April 18 and, as of yesterday, had not received a response from the district, which, by law, has five business days to reply.)

“Jeff is identified as a primary resource,” said Weisz of Honeywell. “Overall, the district has been pleased with his work.”

Honeywell told The Enterprise yesterday that he was “not at liberty” to answer questions in the press. He was willing to make two points. “The situation that is being reviewed has nothing to do with Guilderland,” he said. “Our relationship with them is purely as an independent contractor.”

Honeywell concluded, “Point number two, we are continuing to fully cooperate with the attorney general and his review of the situation.”

Guilderland’s contract with Girvin & Ferlazzo does have an option, Weisz said, that would allow the district to end it, and the school board will discuss the matter at its next meeting, on April 29.

AG’s probe

Cuomo began his investigation on Long Island in February after Newsday reported abuses where lawyers were claiming pensions in multiple school districts. Cuomo said at a press conference earlier this month that his office has found about 20 Long Island lawyers were involved. He then expanded the probe to 20 counties upstate and found about 70 more attorneys were involved. The damage to the state, Cuomo said, “could have been in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Cuomo said that the “scam” had been going on for “years and years and years” and that, while it had “been noticed in the past,” it hadn’t been aggressively pursued.

“School districts say, we were relying on the lawyer for the legal advice,” said Cuomo, indicating those same lawyers were the ones benefiting from the “great scam.”

He went on, “You can have a lawyer on staff who’s a legitimate employee ... If that lawyer is part of a firm providing services, that’s the red flag.”

Comptroller’s regs

The probe has been extended beyond schools to municipalities as well. In early April, DiNapoli announced strengthened regulations to guide local governments in determining who is an employee.

Letters sent to municipal and school leaders by the comptroller’s office stress the importance of correctly classifying “individuals who provide professional services.” Elected officials, public officers, and employees of participating public employers are eligible to be part of the retirement system and receive benefits; independent contractors are not.

A form must now be filled out for new hires to certify whether attorneys, physicians, architects, engineers, accountants, or auditors are employees or independent contractors.

The form poses a series of questions. Employees, for example, typically are supervised and evaluated by their employer, work set hours, have a permanent work space, earn wages through a payroll system, and have taxes and benefit deductions withheld while independent contractors do not.

Board’s choice

Guilderland Superintendent John McGuire said that any of the lawyers used by the school district are hired as consultants, and none of them, including Jeffrey Honeywell, collect pensions.

McGuire described the contract with Girvin & Ferlazzo as a “three-year retainer agreement” and said he believed it has a 30-day opt-out clause. He also said he thought the retainer fee was “in the realm of $35,000 a year.”

McGuire, who has been Guilderland’s superintendent since last fall, said he is “very positively impressed” with the work done by Honeywell and said that, when he was an administrator at neighboring Bethlehem, he was impressed with the work done by Girvin & Ferlazzo there.

“They’re very knowledgeable, specializing in education law,” said McGuire of the firm. “They‘ve been responsive to our needs.”

What happens next, he said, “will be the board’s determination.” McGuire said, “It’s really their call.”

Asked what his role will be at Tuesday’s meeting, McGuire said, “I’ll be reporting very objectively and very positively.”

He anticipates the board will put out a request for proposals and that Girvin & Ferlazzo will be able to apply.

Asked if he’ll make a recommendation to the board, McGuire said, “My recommendation would be to gather all the relevant information. It’s very early on in the process. You need to get both sides of the story.” Asked about Girvin & Ferlazzo’s side of the story, McGuire said he had spoken with lawyers at the firm. “Their feeling is this needs to play out,” he said. “They’re happy to speak with the board….They don’t want this to play out in the media.”

He concluded, “Our experience has been a positive one in terms of attorney-client relationship. I don’t have anything negative to say.”

Since Guilderland does not appear to be in violation, The Enterprise asked board President Weisz if he thought there were problems in continuing with Girvin & Ferlazzo. “I don’t know enough about what’s going on,” said Weisz. He said he has read that the state comptroller in 1997 “checked these kinds of agreements” and did not find they were illegal.

“Our retainer agreement is so different than BOCES,” Weisz said, reiterating, “I’m still finding out what’s going on ... The board will discuss it at our next meeting.” He also said that he could not speak for the board.

Board member Peter Golden said, “If indeed this is true, lawyers who have done this have taken money from the education of children and escalated our already difficult property tax situation and further undermined taxpayers’ faith in government.”