Commissioners question $1.3M "aggregate" outside counsel awards and ask for billing history

Hudson County Counsel Alberico DePierro told commissioners on Dec. 22 that the Law Department consolidated multiple outside-counsel categories into a single RFQ and intends to award professional-service contracts totaling $1.3 million "in the aggregate," a change he said will reduce the county's outside counsel spending compared with the previous year.

"We did in one RFQ... So all the categories were in the RFQ. So all the categories were in the RFQ. So it's 1.3 million in the aggregate, which means the total amount of contracts that would be award is 1.3, which is $680,000 less than last year," DePierro told the board. He said some categories previously paid through commissioners’ awards are now run through the Insurance Fund Commission and that the department expects to handle more work in-house.

Commissioners pressed for additional detail. Commissioner William O'Dea asked for billing history through November for all firms on the proposed list; Director Fuller said she would provide the numbers by the next meeting that afternoon. Commissioner Albert Cifelli probed how the county would respond if a firm approached or exceeded its allocation late in the year and how monthly billing is monitored. DePierro said monthly bills are received and reviewed and that administrative staff and law‑department attorneys monitor invoices closely.

Several commissioners also raised conflict-of-interest concerns about awarding the same firm across multiple categories — for example, assigning a firm to conduct workplace harassment investigations and also to perform general litigation work for the county — and asked how the county would avoid ethical conflicts if an investigator later became a fact witness in litigation. DePierro said the county runs conflict checks before awarding contracts and that, if a firm that conducted an internal investigation were later adverse to the investigator or a complainant, the county would not assign that firm to defend the county in related litigation.

DePierro said the proposed RFQ process and the aggregate budget would simplify procurement and reduce administrative burden. Commissioners requested documentation of the category-level awards and the firms' billing through November; county counsel and procurement staff said they would provide that information and reprint corrected fact sheets where clerical typos were identified.