Karyl Krug, M.A., J.D.
12149 N 134th Way
Scottsdale, AZ 85259-3637
Ph: 480-275-7054
[email protected] Contrary to representations by everybody in power at the Arizona State Bar, the ASB is neither transparent nor Keller compliant.
This amended petition is a belated admission, after HB 2221 was defeated, that the Arizona State Bar is not Keller compliant, or at least that reasonable minds could differ, after every single person in power at the Bar repeatedly took the conclusory position most advantageous to themselves.
Unfortunately, the Arizona State Bar is like the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. One retiree keeps testifying that John Phelps threatened him with a bar complaint because the guy kept complaining about the amount of his retiree bar dues. Retiree bar dues? Is the Arizona State Bar so hard up for money that they need a chunk of that guy’s social security under threat of post-retirement bar discipline?
Why does policing lawyers in a state of 6 million people cost so much more than it does in a state of 22,000,000 people?
Arizona Texas
Regular Bar Dues 3 years or more:
$690 $235 *
Inactive
$435 $50
Retired
$415 $0
If you are currently practicing in Texas, you pay an additional $65 legal services fee. An additional licensing tax has been repealed.
Transparency means never having to ask what is going on.
When taking his victory lap after the defeat of HB 2221 by a handful of votes, Geoffrey Trachtenberg abused the English language by declaring that the ASB is fully transparent. Nonsense. In another on-line venue, Trachtenberg told one Arizona lawyer that she would need a “FOIA-type” (sic) request to get any financial information, that the Arizona State Bar is not a governmental entity (note: so a FOIA or similar request is totally inapplicable), that it would require an extra expenditure of our Bar dues to secure even a tiny bit of transparency, but that all she had to do was ask!
The burden is always put on the individual lawyers and not the ASB, whether it’s getting basic information about what the Bar is doing with our money, or getting adequate notice in a disciplinary proceeding.
Arizona lawyers already pay extra for everything. Do we have to pay extra for even alleged transparency? Why are lawyers who ask for transparency shamed for wasting bar monies for requesting that transparency? That is a problem.
This Bar’s position echoes the argument the California State Bar made in Keller, which the United States Supreme Court rejected: that detailed information of the costs of political activities would be too burdensome to produce or sort out, despite the fact that the California State Bar already produced a detailed state bar budget, as does the Texas State Bar.
As of this writing, I still do not know how the ASB spends our bar dues, and who, if anyone, does know. 2 to 12 pages of broad categories of expenditures does not cut it when other states are publishing hundreds of pages. Somebody must know how much money is spent for what. I hope.
Since the Arizona State Bar produces no such published, detailed budget, merely opting out of certain activities will not make this bar Keller compliant. Only an opt-in option will make this Bar Keller compliant.
Half measures avail us nothing: Opting out of political activities is not an option, as every US Supreme Court opinion on that topic regarding unions has said. The Arizona State Bar additionally ignores Keller’s “germaneness” analysis.
When I briefly mentioned to the Senate, in my whole 120 seconds of testimony, the 400 page grievance I had received since my House testimony, John Furlong, Bar Counsel, had a letter hand-couriered to me at my home in Scottsdale, mischaracterizing my statement to the legislature (it’s on videotape), and asking me to waive confidentiality in an ongoing bar complaint on which I was not yet represented, so he could present “select facts” of the Bar complaint to the Senate.
I doubt he meant to reveal the entire 400 page undifferentiated pile of papers, which includes allegations (including non-enumerated sub-allegations) that I am a “Republican hater,” that I ran on the same ticket as Hillary Clinton when I ran for a bench in Texas eight years ago, or that I had something to do with the recall of Senator Pearce from the Senate a whole year before I moved to Arizona.
I am guessing that no rational lawyer would be in favor of paying for that ridiculous, unethical, and politically motivated letter. How is a request to reveal “selected (and therefore misleading) facts” about that grievance germane to the regulation of lawyers or the protection of the public?
Obviously the Bar’s position is going to be that that level of transparency is impossible, because this Bar chooses not to be transparent, thanks to the Arizona Supreme Court deciding that court rules override the kind of accountability to which other governmental entities are subject. Separation of powers should not totally eliminate checks and balances. Remember those?
How do you account for the cost of one or two pages of Bar stationary, Mr. Furlong’s time reviewing the bar complaint the Bar is supposed to be conflicted out of, and typing that letter, and the bar courier’s time traveling almost all the way to Fountain Hills and back? That is, as Trachtenberg pointed out to the lawyer audacious to enough to ask for some information, kind of a pain.
But that is, or should be, the Bar’s problem. There is no way for bar members to “opt out” of political activities they will never even know about unless a target lawyer like me comes forward: an inappropriate political letter here, false information presented to the Arizona legislature there, a thousand little things we would never agree to or wish to fund, and which only benefits bar leaders.
A fine example of Bar and Court accountability in the disciplinary realm.
I saw the ASB’s many moving CLEs on the lessons of the Holocaust, about the evil that is unleashed when lawyers in the judiciary don’t speak up about crimes within the judiciary. I fell for it. I was mesmerized and thrilled that the Bar here aspired to that level of integrity, and I believed her. To make this all the more upsetting, my longtime friend and neighbor in Austin, Walter Meyer, who has since passed, was featured in one of these presentations.
As I said before, after I reported UPL and grant fraud within the judiciary, the former Chief Justice turned this matter over to Dave Byers.
The CPAF (Case Processing Assistance Fund), funded with money granted to the Arizona Supreme Court by statute, ARS 41-2041 D.8., was used to fund our jobs. Dave Byers changed the permissible uses of the CPAF grants funds, AFTER I reported the grant fraud, from the Capital Litigation Staff Attorneys assistance project to the “death penalty law clerk assistance project.” Apparently it is legal for him to do that any time he wants to, he would doubtless say in the interest of “transparency,” but covering up a crime is never okay. The taxpayers are the ultimate victims, but UPL counsel Ward Parker told me, if the Arizona Supreme Court (who he designated as the victim) doesn’t care, then why should I?
At the bottom of UPL counsel Ward Parker’s cryptic notes is a notation that John Furlong, Bar Counsel, told Parker not to put anything in writing but to contact Judge Rayes, who is now a federal judge after downplaying in writing how well he knew the lawyer committing UPL, and Dave Byers, who orchestrated the ex post facto cover-up with, I guess, the full approval of the Chief Justice to whom I had poured out my heart.
Dave Byers, according to the Court’s position paper on the administration of CPAF grant funds, has to account to Dave Byers for these expenditures and rule changes. There’s a paper on how this grant fund works available on the internet, which you should read yourself in case I have misunderstood any part of it.
Five years of UPL in death penalty cases was wiped out with the stroke of a pen. Coincidentally, Keller mentions that the prosecution of UPL is a legitimate bar function. But apparently neither the Arizona Bar nor the Arizona Supreme Court that oversees all these matters, or perhaps just a few bad apples therein, can be trusted to transparently or fairly handle necessary court functions or bar functions.
The legislature needs to know that telling the courts “do what you think necessary with these funds” within certain broad parameters is not adequate to protect the public, not to mention unsuspecting judges, defense lawyers at CLEs, or defendants looking at a sentence of death.
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
The Bar doesn’t care that I am out tens of thousands of dollars in lost wages and attorney’s fees, when I did nothing wrong and have a 23 year spotless ethics record. All I wanted to do is walk away and get another job in my area of expertise; even an entry level job would have been fine, because I’m 56 year old and too disabled by arthritis in my spine to start a new practice.
And I get to pay $690 for that privilege. And I can never get out from under the thumb of the Arizona State Bar, ever.
A smarter group of miscreants would have just let me walk away, get another job, and get on with my life. I didn’t want to spend my final productive years testifying in front of the Arizona legislature, or fighting off Bar attempts to discredit me in a pro bono case in which no party was harmed. I don’t want to spend time trying to make this bar more accountable or better than it is. I never wanted any of this. This is not fun.
At least $350,000 in lost wages and attorneys’ fees is the going price for an Arizona attorney’s exercise of her First Amendment rights, when it might potentially cause embarrassment or problems for the bench and bar. They don’t care that my husband is a Vietnam veteran who risked his life for his country flying C-141s, a large target, through the Fall of Saigon until Ho Chi Minh blew up the airport. My husband stands and is cheered at many a Diamondbacks game and other public events. The Bar does not care about him and his financial well being. My attorney’s fees are coming out of his retirement funds. I’m also infuriated that my old friend and Holocaust survivor, Walter Meyer, is being used even after death as cover for this farce.
Lip service to respect for at least individual war veterans, justice, transparency, accountability to tax payers, bar member services, appropriate lawyer discipline, and other matters are systemic problems that need much more addressing than this Rule 32 proposal offers. The Bar President has already said the Arizona Bar is fully transparent. The Board of Governors says, conclusorily, that the Arizona Bar is already fully Keller compliant. It’s not that reasonable minds can disagree; reasonable minds can only draw one conclusion: The opt-out option will never, ever, work with a Bar with so little regard for the rights of anyone, including its own captive members. It’s just Kafkaesque, and, in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, there’s no exit.