Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz — shown in a new Quinnipiac University poll as the front-running candidate for attorney general — obtained a 50-percent exemption from a state lawyers’ fee in 2006 on the basis that she didn’t “engage in the practice of law as an occupation,” records show.
“I do not engage in the practice of law as an occupation,” says the official state form that Bysiewicz signed. The form also says: “I hereby certify that the information provided herein is true and correct.”
That exemption form, dated May 22, 2006, meant Bysiewicz paid only half of the normal $110 fee that lawyers and judges must pay each year into the state judicial department’s “Client Security Fund,” which compensates people for losses due to lawyers’ misconduct or mistakes.
But that small savings of $55 may have political significance. Although this was the only year out of 11 that she claimed the partial exemption — and her campaign spokeswoman said Friday that Bysiewicz will correct what she described as a mistake in filling out the wrong form in 2006 — it may undercut Bysiewicz’s argument that her 11 years in office should count as the “active practice” of law.
It is a key argument for Bysiewicz. State statutes require that Connecticut’s attorney general have “at least 10 years’ active practice at the bar of this state,” but a few critics have said that she does not meet that “active practice” requirement even though she has been registered as an attorney here for 23 years.
Before she became secretary of the state in 1999, she had worked for eight years for two law firms and a corporation’s legal department – six of those years in Connecticut. She says all her years in office should count as “active practice” because although she doesn’t need to be a lawyer in the job, she and her staff dispense legal advice on laws affecting elections and corporations.
She requested a legal opinion Wednesday from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, but he has not yet responded.
Taking the 50-percent exemption for 2006 didn’t save Bysiewicz any money personally, by the way – because she has state taxpayers foot the bill for her annual Client Security Fund fees, as well as those of more than a half-dozen staff lawyers in her office.
That contrasts with the policy of Blumenthal, whom she hopes to replace as attorney general. He is not seeking re-election as he runs for the U.S. Senate.
“We do not pay for our attorneys’ client security fund fees,” Blumenthal said Friday. His office employs about 200 lawyers. “We feel that taxpayers should not have that burden” for the lawyers’ individual fees, Blumenthal said.
The question of who pays Bysiewicz’s fees had been raised Thursday in Kevin Rennie’s Daily Ructions blog, in this entry, and Byswiecz’s office spokesman Av Harris told The Courant Friday that taxpayers’ money has been used to pay the fees for years.
Bysiewicz would not talk to a Courant reporter about any of this Friday. Instead, her campaign spokeswoman, Tanya Meck, said that Bysiewicz had made an error and would be sending $55 to the judicial department to pay the full fee. Bysiewicz has had her office paid the full fee for her in all years except 2006, Meck said.
Meck could not explain how Bysiewicz could have errantly signed the wrong form. At first, Meck said Bysiewicz had “checked the wrong box” on the form. But that wasn’t true: The form that Bysiewicz filled out serves no other purpose than to claim an exemption; it doesn’t have one box to check for full payment and another box for the exemption. Lawyers submit a different document – a coupon – with full payment.
When Meck was informed of this, she said her comment about checking the “wrong box” had been her words, not Bysiewicz’s. Asked if Bysiewicz would call to explain the situation for herself, Meck said, “I don’t know that that would be helpful” because Bysiewicz doesn’t have a specific recollection of what happened. “Susan filled out the wrong form and sent it in. She made a mistake one year out of 10,” Meck said, “and her office subsequently sent in $55.”
The annual lawyers’ fee for the Client Security Fund was instituted in 1999 at $75, and increased to the present $110 in 2005. Bysiewicz paid $75 a year from 1999 to 2005, then $55 in 2006, and $110 each subsequent year through 2009, a judicial department spokeswoman said the fund’s records show.
The other candidates to formally announce runs for the Democratic attorney general nomination — former state Senate majority leader George Jepsen and current state Rep. Cameron Staples — both have paid the full fee every year since 1999, the spokeswoman said.
The judicial department’s written rules say that the partial exemption is granted to lawyers who certify that they “do not engage in the practice of law as an occupation” and “do not expect to earn more than $450 in legal fees or other compensation for services involving the practice of law during the calendar year.”
Jepsen Friday called Bysiewicz’s 2006 exemption “a big oops.” He said “a lawyer is supposed to read the document before they check the box and sign it.”