Hire Subodh Chandra as the People's Lawyer
For Ohio Attorney General

The Attorney General's job is to run the "People's Law Firm" and to be the "People's Lawyer" by holding other officeholders, businesses, and individuals accountable to the rule of law. Recent attorneys general have failed in this mission. Few people in this state can name any major accomplishment of the attorney general. Yet many can name Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York and some of his accomplishments.

The reason is that recent Ohio attorneys general have not tapped the full potential of the A.G.'s office to represent the public interest. Here are just a few examples of what I would do with the awesome untapped authority of this great public law firm:

End the culture of corruption and cronyism by fostering an alternative culture. When I was a federal prosecutor and as Cleveland law director we created a strong alternative culture (accept no gifts; always act in the public interest), and promoted that culture across government. People in other departments soon came to our department (and not just to the media) to whistleblow about wrongdoing. We investigated those allegations and pursued them vigorously.

Pursue predatory lenders instead of support them as Attorney General Petro has done. When Cleveland passed its ordinance to restrict extreme predatory loans, the lenders had the General Assembly pass a law that the lenders themselves wrote. The lenders then sued Cleveland and Dayton to stop us from protecting our citizens. But Attorney General Jim Petro, who did not have a dog in the fight, intervened in this case on behalf of the predators and against those who are preyed upon. Under my leadership, we beat Petro. He was on the wrong side and I would not be.

Hold officeholders accountable to the Ohio Constitution and the Supreme Court cases on educational funding. Petro and Montgomery did nothing to try to bring the state into compliance. I would. This would include, if necessary, presenting constitutional funding plans for consideration. And I would turn up the heat increasingly on the legislature and governor, regardless of party, until they comply-going back to court if necessary with the appropriate facts to show willful noncompliance. The A.G.'s oath is to the U.S. and Ohio constitutions first and to enforce state law second.

Join the other active American attorneys general in national projects like Connecticut A.G. Dick Blumenthal's suit against the federal government against the No Child Left Behind Act as an unfunded mandate, seeking a federal anti-price gouging statute, pursuing major predatory lenders, fighting prescription drug prices, etc. Montgomery was one of the last attorneys general in America to join the tobacco litigation, yet we are the seventh largest state in the country. It cost us billions of dollars in potential recoveries and sent the wrong message about Ohioans' views about the marketing of tobacco to children.

Reform the state's crime lab. Right now, the state's crime lab is taking far too long to process DNA results and other testing. That's not tough on crime. I have experience with lab reform from my time as Cleveland law director.

Enforce environmental, consumer-protection, wage, and safety laws.

Slash spending on outside "special" counsel. Although the Attorney General will sometimes need to engage outside attorneys who can provide special expertise, I have examined his spending and much of it is suspect. Routine public work-documenting basic real-estate transactions, and defending civil-rights, employment, and public-hospital medical-malpractice cases-could be conducted in-house at much lower cost. Petro should never have sent much of this work out in the first place. Some cases he farmed out are the bread and butter of what Assistant A.G.s do (including employment-defense work). There are also potentially huge cost savings in the university patent work (which could be done with lower negotiated fixed fees) and the collections work. When I was law director, I negotiated much better rates on collection cases, so that the firms who collect on debts owed to the city received about 23% of what they collected. Petro pays an outrageous 33%--and he has more negotiating leverage than I ever did.

Before I became Cleveland's Law Director, Cleveland had spent $7.4 million in the year 2000 on outside lawyers-more than Los Angeles, a city seven times Cleveland's size. We fixed this problem by making Cleveland's Law Department the public's law firm. We hired talented people and brought the work in-house. For every new dollar we spent in house, we saved Cleveland taxpayers $16.

And we insisted that lawyers hired for their expertise could not delegate work to inexperienced associates at their firm-our attorneys would help, instead. This kept fees down and ensured that we received just the expert advice for which we were paying. Unless we had a conflict of interest, we never "turnkeyed" a matter like Petro did with the BWC. We actively managed even the outsourced cases.

By the time I left Cleveland's Law Department, we had reduced outside-counsel spending by 88% to $850,000.

Raising hiring and performance standards. As law director, I never hired someone because of politics. We attracted graduates of top schools and top graduates of local schools, partners and associates from firms like Baker & Hostetler, Jones Day, Squire Sanders & Dempsey, Thompson Hine, Calfee Halter, etc. How did we do it? Part of it was bringing the work in-house so the work was better. Part of it, if I may say so immodestly, was having a "lawyer's lawyer" at the top of the organization who could attract other top lawyers.

The job of Ohio Attorney General must not go to a politician with a law degree. Given the kinds of problems Ohio is facing and will face over the next four years, this job must go to an accomplished lawyer, prosecutor, and executive who can lead the law firm to protect Ohioans from further harm and loss.