Let’s Recap! 5/10/24 Carmen Trutanich, L.A. City Attorney
State of the City
Our program today was excellent. Club member, Eric Barter, Vice President Attorney Marketing and Bad Boys Bailbonds, introduced our speaker, Carmen Trutanich.
Eric did a short bio telling us that Carmen was born and raised in San Pedro and a son of a fisherman. He went through the local schools and then on to USC and was involved in football. He got his MBA in International Business. He then studied criminal law and eventually went into Law Practice.
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, came up to the podium and with great gusto announced he could speak on anything, but he said, “Let’s talk about the city of L.A. I want to talk about the budget.” You heard fake groans across the room.
Parking Lot Fraud
His first story was about a Los Angeles parking lot owner who would collect $5.00 to park your car in his lot. Then there would be an additional fee for valet services. The valet never received this amount supposedly paid for his service. The parking lot owner was pocketing this money.
Several years past and the City Attorney’s office went after him. After the investigation of his tax returns, it was found that he never reported this additional cash income. The end result is that L.A. Country received a judgment of a whopping 3.5 million in this case.
History of the L.A. City Attorney Budget
The L.A. City attorney prior to him had a budget of $113 million plus another $37 million for outside council. When he became L.A. City Attorney the budget was cut by 18% to $95 million.
His office staff alone ran $99 million and he was already overdrawn.
He said he lost lawyers and in doing so saved $12 million and ended up with a surplus of three hundred thousand.
“Porcupine Defense”
He received word that the message was “Reward the Guy”. He adopted the Porcupine Defense, which he learned in school. The saying goes “You may eat me, but I won’t taste good going down.”
You Must Be Tough
Attorney Trutanich was zealous when talking with us and he said, “You must be tough”. In one year he had 55 civil cases, (which is a lot) and he had Rich Hutton to vocally agree. With this tremendous number of caseloads, Carmen only lost three. What an amazing record.
His Reward
His budget was cut to 84 million. 100 people were laid off.
Then what happened next, was that 99 thousand people got raises.
Problem
Elected people lose their perspective and they need to be more attentive to their job.
You have to be bad all the time. That’s how government should be run. One should not be pointing their finger at other people to blame.
Do Your Job!
You have to govern successfully. You must spend money wisely and you defend the Treasury.
Core Mission
The areas that are most important:
1. Public safety which includes:
Policemen/Firemen/Ambulance
2. But the public gets upset when there is no trash pick-up. If
libraries are closed, trees need trimming, streets are
hazardous and of course public transportation.
Law Suits
L.A City in one year had 2800 Civil Law Suits, which represented over two billion dollars, and/or attorney fees for another six to seven billion dollars.
There is so much work to be done. There are 7500 workers to investigate Worker’s Comp claims. There is so much fraud against the city of L.A. They find that people that have made claims are out water skiing, and other activities when they have claimed a bad back, neck, etc.
Tom Sawyer Program
Many employees are leaving their jobs because of early retirement. A program called Tom Sawyer; a reserve city program was started. Attorney Trutanich related that currently if a kid graduated and didn’t go to Harvard or Yale he just isn’t going to get a job. This program allows a young man to train for six months free. Then he must try cases as a lawyer with a judge and a jury. This has been working quite well and Carmen swore in 20 young men yesterday.
He asked Rich Hutton how many cases does a trainee get to try? “Not the 20 or 30 these young men are able to do” was his reply.
Currently 140 have gone through this program and are now working. This program has emulated across the nation. Tom Sawyer program is now being used in San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento. It is a free work force. Ten jury trials and these young men become a valuable commodity.
At the end of his talk he had a question and answer period and there were many quality questions regarding current laws and cases that are now on the front page of the L.A. Times.
Everyone enjoyed hearing his opinions and reflections of his highly important and skilled profession. Being from San Pedro and making his way to success certainly made his talk inspiring. He would be a high quality program for young people to hear. This could certainly influence many young men and women in their future careers.
Phyllis Corliss