Sky High

A lawyer who is a campaign contributor and close adviser to Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Kay Barnes is doing highly lucrative legal work for the city, charging $370 an hour for his services.

Herb Kohn is a senior partner at Bryan Cave, the law firm the city has chosen to represent it in its efforts to build a new arena and entertainment district downtown. Bryan Cave has charged the city nearly $2 million in fees since January 2004, according to figures the firm supplied to the Pitch.

City officials say Kohn and his partners have earned the money, bringing expertise and firepower to negotiations that will help transform downtown's south loop from ghost town to boomtown. Lawyers at Bryan Cave contend that their work began when the projects were just ideas, with no solid promise of payment.

But critics say the city's legal bills -- one local lawyer describes the $370 hourly charge as "East Coast rates" -- are payback for Kohn's loyalty to the mayor as much as for the sophistication of his firm's work.

Kohn is one of the mayor's most trusted advisers. After Barnes was elected in 1999, he led her transition team. More recently, he chaired the task force the mayor convened to look at the idea of building a downtown ballpark for the Royals. In January, when Barnes announced that she would not run for Congress in 2006, effectively signaling the end of her political career, Kohn stood in her office, among only a handful of nonmedia witnesses to the event.

Kohn has supported the mayor financially as well. In 2001, the Barnes campaign returned $950 to Kohn because his contribution had exceeded the $1,125 limit.

Paul Danaher, a lawyer and former city councilman who considered running against Barnes in 2003, says Kohn and other lawyers at Bryan Cave made a great investment when they supported Barnes. "It's incredible financial dividends paid for political support," he says.

But regarding the city's spending on outside lawyers, he says, "It's out of hand. It's out of control."

Steve Glorioso, an aide to Barnes, denies that Bryan Cave's agreements have anything to do with patronage. "Patronage, as I have always understood it, is where people get something they didn't earn or deserve because of their connection," he says. "Herb and that law firm, as have others, have earned it. The results are coming up out of the ground."

Called for comment, Kohn referred the Pitch to Bryan Cave attorney Stephen Sparks, who asked for written questions. In a written response, the firm described its "long history of service" to the city. An example: Barnes' predecessor, Emanuel Cleaver, asked Kohn to assist the city in wresting control of Union Station from the hands of a Canadian developer.

After Barnes was elected, Bryan Cave's service took a more formal arrangement. The firm provides legal counsel to the Tax Increment Financing Commission, the city's main redevelopment agency. Since 2000, Bryan Cave has earned nearly $2.1 million in fees from the TIF Commission.

As the TIF Commission's law firm, Bryan Cave takes credit for helping the city move forward with an entertainment district by bringing an end to litigation that clouded a previous redevelopment effort. The firm also drafted legislation that will allow state tax dollars to be used for the project's completion.

The entertainment district and the arena are huge endeavors. The city has had to issue bonds, file condemnation suits and reach agreements with heavy corporate hitters such as the Anschutz Entertainment Group (the city's arena partner) and H&R Block (which is moving its headquarters to the heart of the entertainment district). In addition to the $2.09 million it has billed the TIF Commission over the past four and a half years, Bryan Cave has charged the city $1.98 million for work on the arena and the entertainment district.

Glorioso says the city has gotten what it's paid for. "Obviously, they didn't do it single-handedly, but what they've helped us produce is a brand-new day -- when done, a new downtown."

But judging by what's happened in other cities, Kansas City is paying a premium for Bryan Cave's help. The Unified Government of Wyandotte County paid the lawyers at Stinson Morrison Hecker, who assisted with the completion of the Kansas Speedway, a maximum rate of $230 an hour.

Oklahoma City opened a new downtown arena in 2002. The money for the arena came from a sales tax, which also built a new library, a river walk and a minor-league ballpark. As in Kansas City, Oklahoma City needed to acquire land for the projects; it also had to come to terms with a private company that would lease and operate the arena. But the process involved "minimal litigation," says Mark Carleton, the assistant director of the development program. For land acquisition, Oklahoma City used the property division in its own Public Works Department. "Most of that -- probably 95 percent of that -- did not involve attorneys," Carleton tells the Pitch. Any legal issues that arose were handled by the city's staff attorneys, he says.

Subodh Chandra, a former law director for the city of Cleveland, proved that controlling a large Midwestern city's outside legal costs was largely a matter of will. Chandra took over a department that in one year had spent $7.4 million on outside counsel -- more than the city of Los Angeles. But as a result of Chandra's efforts, in 2004 the city cut its outside counsel bill to a mere $850,000.