City lawyers - Glen J. Torcivia

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Glen J. Torcivia is getting around--
Lake Worth's City Attorney

Wellington just fired its attorney for the past 10 years, Jeff Kurtz...it was "not working out" three commissioners said---too slow in getting information, etc. Kurtz and his firm were under contract; he was not a paid employee. When you get hit with a lot of law suits, philosophies change and governments are pressured to settle cases. Changing out legal counsel and finding one with the same mindset is sometimes a solution. No fuss; No muss. Getting timely advice, however, is a requisite as issues come up all of the time.

The difference in Lake Worth and Wellington firing their attorney is that it had been presumed that Lake Worth's politicians already had it planned out to terminate our staff lawyer as soon as it got the majority. City Manager Bornstein did not have enough time to evaluate her knowledge, experience or worth. She had been with us for about the same number of years that Kurtz was with Wellington and familiar with all of our legal issues.

Wellington, on the other hand, is hiring an interim city attorney. It will also be hiring a consultant to advise and assess whether or not it is more cost efficient to contract out legal services or hire their own in-house counsel. Over a ten year period, they should be able to collect some meaningful data.

Jeff Kurtz, the guy they just fired, is a partner with the law firm of Glen J.Torcivia. In the meantime, guess who will be Wellington's interim attorney until they figure out what they want to do.  Glen J. Torcivia.  Maybe their commission meetings are on a different night than ours. If you recall, he and his firm replaced Elaine Humphreys as Lake Worth's counsel for an interim period of six months in order to allow the Commission to evaluate whether or not we hire our own city attorney who would be an employee or stay with an outside firm for our legal answers. His contract should be coming up in a few months. Maybe we'll hear about it.

At the moment, Torcivia's claim to fame for Lake Worth is the Greater Bay settlement. We know how that went. Hopefully, Lake Worth's analysis on "should we or shouldn't we" hire our own employee or stay with contractual legal advice has been on-going and it doesn't take us 10 years to figure it all out. Sometimes it's all a matter of the Commission majority and who is in charge.

Perhaps when Wellington finishes its study, we all can compare notes.