Legal News

No Answer Yet if City Will Pay Arbitrators and Court-Appointed Counsel

By Brian Harris

Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

City officials are still not confirming whether the Defender Association of Philadelphia, lawyers who sit on arbitration panels and attorneys representing indigent defendants will be among the vendors who will get paid now that the city has secured a loan.

Luke Butler, a deputy press secretary for Mayor Michael  A.  Nutter, said today that the thousands of the city's vendors who are owed money will be paid on a first-come, first-saved  basis. The city owes $225 million to its vendors, and the city will be paying $200 million of its outstanding vendor bills.

The bills will be paid based upon "when payment vouchers were entered into the system," Butler said. "The remaining $25 million in payments, the most recent payments, will be still subject to cash conservation measures."

Butler said the administration wasn't going to comment specifically on which vendors will be paid because the administration's highest priority is getting cash out the door to vendors.

Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor Sayde Ladov and Samuel C. Stretton, a West Chester solo practitioner who has a case pending in federal court over the amount court-appointed counsel are paid, both said they don't know if lawyers will be included in the vendors whose outstanding bills will be paid by the city.

The city of Philadelphia can start paying thousands of vendors again after securing a $275 million loan from JPMorgan Chase. Earlier this summer, the city stopped almost all vendor payments except for employees, debt service and emergency matters to conserve cash flow. The city is facing $700 million in reductions in municipal governance unless a bill to raise the city sales tax and adjust pension payments is approved by the state.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).