Unconstitutional lawsuits

Your article “Torres turns down offer to be attorney general” (May 13, 2009) once more brought to our attention the difficulty in hiring a top-notch attorney to be attorney general for the Commonwealth. The only way for the government to recruit the best attorney general available is to pay the attorney general a salary of at least $150,000 a year. If elected to the House of Representatives in the upcoming election, I will sponsor legislation to do just that. The attorney general is the single most important government official in the Commonwealth government, maybe even more so than the governor, and I feel that he should be the highest paid employee. We should pay him or her a salary commensurate with the responsibilities and duties of the office.

I would also pay the deputy attorney general at least $100,000 a year. These two officials can make or break the Commonwealth. Many people don’t realize that the AG can save the government a lot of money by ably defending the Commonwealth in litigations, and vice-versa, can cost the government huge sums of money by losing in litigations. What I don’t like about the constitutional provisions is the requirement that the AG should be a resident of the Commonwealth for three years. I would like for us to be able to recruit from among many very competent attorneys in the mainland.

A case in point: It is my opinion that the ongoing lawsuit against the Fitial administration by the Retirement Fund is unconstitutional, and the AG should have blocked it, resulting in a lot of savings, pursuant to constitutional provisions. The Constitution says, “The Attorney General shall be responsible for… representing the Commonwealth in all legal matters….” (emphasis added.) The AG should have challenged the authority of the Retirement Fund board to sue the governor. Despite language to the contrary in the Retirement Fund statute that the board can sue and be sued, the fact is this provision is superseded by the constitution provision. We should all know that even in a situation where the Legislature or the Judicial Branch is being sued, the attorney general is the only official authorized to defend either branch of government because they are both part of the Commonwealth.

I am also curious to know how the judge in this case interprets the Constitution. There was a similar case during the Babauta administration where the judge allowed a lawsuit involving CUC suing the administration to go forward. Notwithstanding the Constitution, there is something awfully wrong with a government that allows lawsuits among itself.

Finally, the Retirement Fund board, and especially the chairman, have one option. If you don’t like what the governor is doing about this matter, resign. After all, you people have done enough damage already by denying qualified government workers from retiring. If I were one of you, I’d start talking to a lawyer because you people are in a lot of trouble. The board had no authority to deny anybody from retiring, whether the government is contributing or not.

In the meantime, the governor should just issue a reorganization executive order and wipe out the Retirement Fund board for good; the Retirement Fund has lost a lot of money in the last few years from its investments.