In an unusual move widely viewed as a swipe at City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles City Council is getting a lawyer to provide it with independent legal advice, officials confirmed Thursday.
The attorney was hired by and will work for the chief legislative analyst, an office that answers directly to the council.
The move, according to several sources, is largely motivated by some council members' frustration over Delgadillo's mixed record in defending council legislation in court, the quality of his office's advice and, to a lesser degree, the settlements his office negotiates in lawsuits against the city.
"Frequently we weren't getting ordinances out fast enough, and sometimes we were getting inconsistent legal advice," said Councilman Greig Smith, who spearheaded the efforts to hire another attorney.
Officials with the analyst's office downplayed the addition as just another "legislative analyst" for an office that already provides some legal analysis to the council. Officials declined to identify the new hire.
Delgadillo, through spokesman Jonathan Diamond, declined to comment.
Diamond said that his understanding is that the person who was hired will not serve as the legal counsel to the council.
"The city attorney is the legal counsel for the municipal corporation," Diamond said. "Our role is clearly defined."
The relationship between the council and the city attorney is by its nature sometimes adversarial in the same way that a client and an attorney may not always agree.
But the move by the council suggests that the officials who control the branch of city government that creates laws have lost some faith in the branch charged with vetting and enforcing them.
Some say the hiring could undermine the city attorney's role as legal advisor to the council.
"What happens when the city attorney gives legal advice and the attorney in the CLA's office gives counter legal advice?" said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at Duke University and chairman of a charter reform commission in Los Angeles in the late 1990s.
In his five years in office, Delgadillo has emerged as one of City Hall's more ambitious officials. Delgadillo's political advisors are known as "Team 1600" -- a reference to the White House's address -- and last year he filed to run for state attorney general eight days after winning reelection to his city job.
