L.A. Unified Selects Special Counsel

The Los Angeles Board of Education has chosen a Pasadena assistant city attorney as its new special counsel, a lawyer with the backing of union leaders and the school board president but far less experience than others seeking the job.

According to several sources familiar with the selection process, the school board voted 4-3 in a closed session to offer Maribel S. Medina the position, which could pay up to $240,000 a year. Medina specializes in land-use, environmental and real estate law.

The vote to hire Medina is the latest in a series of board decisions that have caused some observers to question the members’ independence from outside interests. A board majority is frequently criticized for backing issues based primarily on union support.

In her bid for the position, Medina was backed by Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO and the top union leader in Los Angeles, among others.

“We asked some of the board members if they could be helpful,” Contreras said. “It would be nice to appoint a minority and a woman. It would be nice to reflect the district. I give them a lot of credit for stepping up.... For them to do that, and give her a shot, speaks volumes to their commitment to real equality in the system.”

John Perez, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents about 45,000 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, said that he had spoken with “various school board members at various times in the process ... about various candidates.” But he said that no UTLA official had lobbied on Medina’s behalf.

School board members, Perez said, “told us that this woman was young, intelligent and had a good resume. That sounds like the kind of lawyer the district would want, right?”

Some board members, including President Jose Huizar, acknowledged that there was lobbying by political and community leaders on behalf of candidates. But they denied that those efforts affected the decision.

“This type of jockeying occurs when there is this type of high-profile decision,” Huizar said. “I got calls not only about her, but on a number of candidates.”

Several people who applied for the job said they believed the board’s process had been rigged from the start and that its ultimate decision was guided by politics.

But Huizar denied that charge. “In this process, I believe it was open and transparent,” he said. “I just think people were unhappy with the results.”

Medina, 36, was selected after a three-month process during which a committee of three board members chose four finalists from a pool of about 50 applicants, including a former judge, an authority on education law and a number of corporate counsels. The finalists were interviewed by the full, seven-member school board.

The position of special counsel was created in 1999 in the wake of a series of missteps and scandals surrounding school district construction projects, including the Belmont Learning Center. Distrustful of the information they were receiving from the district’s general counsel, board members chose to appoint their own lawyer to represent their interests in a variety of matters.

The current special counsel, Richard Sheehan, has advised the board on real estate transactions, education law and labor negotiations. Sheehan, who came to the school board after a long career in corporate law, is scheduled to retire at the end of this year, but he may stay on through a transition.

District general counsel Kevin Reed called Sheehan, 61, “a tremendous asset” to L.A. Unified.

“He’s been unaligned with any political side on issues,” Reed said. “He’s been absolutely singular in his advice to the board as his client, always giving the board the best advice he could give, regardless of whether it was the answer they wanted to hear.”

Huizar, a member of the selection committee, said that he knew Medina distantly from their days as undergraduates at UC Berkeley and that she stood out among the candidates.

“I was looking for someone who was energetic, aggressive, well-qualified, who knows public law, real estate and land-use and education law,” Huizar said. “Those are the areas we deal with. To me, Maribel had all of those packages.”

Medina’s biography states that she was raised at a farmworker camp in Watsonville, in Northern California. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she received a masters in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government and a law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall.

In nine years as an attorney, she said she has gained expertise in advising legislative bodies and negotiating complex real estate and environmental cases.

Medina said she applied for the job because she believed she could bring that experience to the district’s work, particularly with the spate of new construction that will add 160 schools in the next eight years.

“This board is embarking on something that is going to be historical,” Medina said. “I would love to be part of that process.”