Thomas' office up to its old tricks

There seems to be a recurring theme from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office Every time the incompetence and questionable ethics of Andrew Thomas is exposed, someone - usually special assistant and campaign volunteer Barnett Lotstein - is sent out to create a diversion.

Look what happened after Thomas retained (at taxpayer expense) his former boss Dennis Wilenchik to issue invasive subpoenas and arrest journalists such as executive editor Mike Lacy in the Phoenix New Times case. The Thomas camp did all they could to focus the public on an unrelated racist word that Lacy uttered well after the event - as if the subsequent statement somehow justified the Soviet-style arrests, or subpoenas that tried to require the paper's owners to identify every person who had read the paper online, including what Web sites the reader had visited before going to the paper's site.

When the Arizona State Bar received or initiated 13 ethics complaints against Thomas and Wilenchik, Thomas' response was not to come clean with all relevant facts in an attempt to disprove them, but instead to launch a campaign (again at taxpayer expense) against the bar itself. The diversion included filing a special action, before the Supreme Court no less, to seek special treatment by having the cases dismissed before they were investigated.

So, it should come as no surprise that when confronted with my criticisms regarding his $11 million increase in spending on outside counsel - with 80 percent going to lawyers who contributed to his last campaign - Thomas and Lotstein would throw up another smoke screen.

This time it comes in the form of unfounded attacks about Sam Coppersmith and his law firm, of which my wife is a partner. Lotstein asserts that the Coppersmith firm received a combined total of $300,000 in business from various state agencies while I served as general counsel to Gov. Janet Napolitano ("Thomas' record will win out over smears," Opinion 2, July 19).

And I'm sure that's true. But it has nothing to do with political patronage as Lotstein tries hard to suggest.

First, to address Lotstein's so-called elephant in the room (aptly named only because of the overtly partisan nature of the attack), I had absolutely no role in steering business to the Coppersmith firm. I never once either directly or indirectly sought to promote, or encourage any state agency to contract with that firm. I did, however, fully disclose my wife's partnership interest in that firm when I first joined the governor's office in 2003.

The fact that the governor or any other state agency may have chosen the Coppersmith firm independently, however, is also no surprise. That firm is one of the top health care law firms in the nation and certainly the preeminent such firm in Arizona. It is a boutique specialty practice with knowledge and expertise other firms and public lawyers just don't have.

Seven of the firm's 13 lawyers (including my wife) are listed in America's Best lawyers. I don't know of a single health care executive in the state who has not retained that firm at one time or another to help them out of a jam. When the State Veterans Home had troubles, there was no better firm to be retained than Coppersmith Gordon. Ironically, even Maricopa County's health care system recently hired the firm.

Unfortunately, the firms that Thomas has hired as outside counsel are not so uniquely qualified. Despite having a 900-person office - the second largest law firm in the state - Thomas has retained buddies like Wilenchik to handle even simple cases like public records disputes.

When the West Valley View newspaper was forced to sue the county to get access to, of all things, press releases from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office that had been provided to other newspapers, Thomas hired Wilenchik at public expense to contest the suit. Not only did the county lose, it was ordered to pay the newspaper's attorneys' fees as well for taking such an untenable position. So Maricopa County taxpayers paid the lawyers on both sides.

But Thomas wouldn't want you to focus on that.

Tim Nelson is a Democratic candidate for Maricopa County attorney.