SECTION NEWS

Call for Nominations: Seventh Annual Jefferson Fordham Awards

The ABA Section of State and Local Government Law established the Jefferson B. Fordham Awards Program in 1998 to recognize and honor the accomplishment of practitioners and institutions active in the varied areas of practice associated with state and local government law. The award honors outstanding attorneys and law offices that have achieved professional excellence within this area of the profession. The award may be presented in the following categories on an annual basis: (1) Law Office Accomplishment, (2) Lifetime Achievement, (3) Advocacy, and (4) Up & Comers.

Submission of Nominations

Nominations must be received on or before March 1, 2004, by the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law. The Section’s Awards Committee will select recipients by July 1, 2004, and the awards will be presented at the ABA Annual Meeting at a special luncheon in Atlanta this August.

Detailed Criteria for Selection

Below are the four categories for which the Jefferson Fordham Award may be presented on an annual basis and a brief description of the criteria used to select recipients in each category.

Law Office Accomplishment Award—Recognizes sustained, outstanding performance or a specific extraordinary accomplishment by a state and local government law office. Eligible candidates include all state and local government public sector law offices, including departments or units within such offices.

Lifetime Achievement Award—Recognizes outstanding contributions to the practice of state and local government law by an individual over an entire career. This award is given for contributions over a number of years.

Advocacy Award—Recognizes outstanding advocacy or legal writing within the area of state and local government law. This award fosters and encourages excellence in advocacy, both written and otherwise, in state and local government law.

Up & Comers—Presented to a young practitioner as defined by the ABA (thirty-six or under) who, through his or her efforts and accomplishments, shows great promise to continue these contributions for future achievements.

Guidelines for Submission

Nominations of candidates in each of the four categories must be submitted in the following format with all the information requested:

1. Full name, addresses, and telephone numbers of the nominee.
2. Name of the law office’s director or manager for the Government Law Office Award, including size and mission of office.
3. Summary of nominee’s or office’s achievements (brief explanation of outstanding or extraordinary public and/or professional services rendered (50 to 100 words)).
4. An explanation of the nominee’s performance and service; information regarding the time frame for the services described; accomplishments or superior contributions over a number of years; outstanding advocacy or legal writing; qualifications as a young lawyer for the Up & Comer’s Award and past efforts and accomplishments that show great promise to continue contributions for future achievement; assessment of the impact of the service for which you are nominating the individual or office (no more than two typed pages).
5. Names, titles, and phone numbers of three other persons (including at least one lawyer or jurist), who are familiar with the nominee’s performance, achievements, etc.
6. A brief statement about the nominator’s background that would assist the Awards Committee in evaluating the nominations.

Submit All Materials to: Jackie Baker, ABA Section of State and Local Government Law, 321 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60611, 312/988-5652, fax 312/988-5121 or e-mail jlbaker@staff. abanet.org.

Ethics Committee

The Section’s Ethics Committee is gearing up for an active year. Issues regarding ethics and professionalism obviously affect all of our practices, regardless of our particular area of expertise. Consequently, we seek to become the committee that serves the entire Section, keeping Section members abreast of developments in ethics and professionalism and assisting in formulating and conveying the Section’s position on ethical issues that affect lawyers who practice in the public sector.

Toward that goal, we submitted an article for publication in The Urban Lawyer, dealing with revised Model Rule of Professional Responsibility 1.11, which relates to conflicts of interest arising from government representation and with recent decisions from around the country on the same subject. We helped facilitate two CLE programs at the Fall Meeting in Albany, New York—one on integrity in the public procurement process and the other on public sector ethics. Despite their Saturday morning slot, both programs were well attended, successfully engaged attendees in discussions of ethical issues, and garnered positive comments.

We have ambitious plans for the coming year. We plan to coordinate with the Public Finance and Land Use Committees to include an ethics component into the CLE programming for the Spring Meeting in New Orleans. We hope to establish a standard practice of including ethics and professionalism as subjects addressed at each CLE sponsored by the Section, sometimes as facets of programs focusing on substantive areas of practice and sometimes as “stand-alone” ethics programs.

In addition, we are developing topics for “Hot Topics” papers on ethics and professionalism (and we will be asking more Committee members to commit to author and present a paper). These papers will serve as a springboard for next year’s Urban Lawyer update on ethics.

In order to achieve the goals that the Committee has set for itself, we are launching a campaign to solidify the Committee’s membership by identifying those current members—and enlisting enthusiastic new members—who will actively participate and contribute to the Committee’s activities. I invite anyone who has an interest in professionalism and ethics to join us. Simply call Marti Chumbler at 850/513–3612, or e-mail mchumbler@carltonfields.com.

Public Education Committee

The Public Education Committee looks forward to the New Orleans Spring Meeting and to the publication of The School Litigator’s Desktop Handbook in the coming year following an interesting First Amendment program at the Fall Meeting in Albany, New York. At the Albany meeting, John M. T. Chavis II of Locke Reynolds in Indianapolis presented a program titled, “Can You Shout ‘Food Fight’ in a Crowded Cafeteria?” This program started with a discussion of the First Amendment itself and the leading cases of Tinker v. Des Moines Ind. School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969); Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986); and Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988). Mr. Chavis then went on to discuss the application of the Tinker/ Bethel/Kuhlmeier framework to a variety of interesting types of student speech, including students wearing the confederate flag on clothing, students wearing “redneck” t-shirts, students wearing shirts condemning President Bush for his Iraq policy, Internet usage by students, and student threats. Thank you, Mr. Chavis, for an interesting and informative program!

At the Spring Meeting in New Orleans, the Public Education Committee plans to team up with the Government Operations Committee to present a program on affirmative action. The program will kick off with a discussion of the recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, 123 S. Ct. 2325 (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 123 S. Ct. 2411 (2003). The presentation will discuss the effect of these decisions on efforts to achieve diversity at undergraduate and graduate schools around the country. Then, additional panelists will discuss whether any spillover effect from Grutter and Bollinger should be anticipated in the employment context and the state of affirmative action generally. We hope to see many of you in New Orleans for what promises to be an exciting program. Anyone interested in presenting a “Hot Topics” paper at the New Orleans Meeting should contact Philip Erickson at 517/324–5608, pereickson@plunkettcooney.com or Mary Kay Klimesh at 312/269–8985, mklimesh@seyfarth.com.

In addition, the Public Education Law Committee announces that it is planning a publication titled The School Litigator’s Desktop Handbook. This will be a nuts-and-bolts treatment of the most common claims filed against school districts nationwide. This publication will provide a summary of all of the elements and defenses for a variety of causes of action organized under the following tentative chapter headings: Employment Liability, Tort Claims and Governmental Immunity, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Student Discipline, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Breach of Contract, FOIA and OMA, Special Education, and Environmental Liability. Each chapter will also include practice pointers and references to more in depth treatment of the subject matter. Look for this publication in late 2004 or early 2005!

SEER Special Committee

Over the past several years, environmental lawyers have increasingly recognized that environmental regulatory programs affect the growth and revitalization of communities in sometimes profound ways, and that land use and urban policies affect the environment significantly. In early 2003, the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources (SEER) organized a “Task Force on the Interaction Between Environmental and Urban Policy,” which is now the Special Committee on Smart Growth and Urban Policy.

We hope to bring cutting-edge information to our members through a webpage (www.abanet.org/environ/committees/smartgrowth/home.html), a newsletter, educational programs, and liaison with other groups. For example, at the SEER Fall Meeting, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Secretary Evan Van Hook discussed urban redevelopment strategies with us at our roundtable. On February 26 in Philadelphia, we are co-sponsoring the Temple Environmental Law and Technology Journal Symposium on “Saving Spaces: Smart Growth and Beyond.”

The work of this special committee centers on an attempt to catalogue the ways in which environmental regulation and decisions about what goes where interact. For this purpose, we are not trying to identify “good” results and “bad” results, but rather simply to identify and to the extent we can, to quantify the ways in which environmental regulatory programs, land use, and economic development decisions interact. Many members have thought about this interaction in the context of “voluntary cleanup” or “brownfields” programs. But a large number of other environmental regulatory programs affect where new development or redevelopment goes. That is our task.

Those interested in the special committee should contact the chair, David Mandelbaum (mandelbaum@ballardspahr. com, 215/864-8102) or the membership vice-chair, Audrey Baker (abaker@swlaw.com, 602/382-6515).

Section CLE Programs Available Online at West LegalEdcenter

West LegalEdcenter, the industry’s leading provider of online continuing legal education (CLE), is pleased to count the State and Local Government Law Section of the American Bar Association (ABA) as a full and exclusive content provider. Online CLE from West LegalEdcenter pairs the convenience of the Internet with high-quality educational opportunities from organizations like the ABA. The result is anytime, anywhere access to the industry’s best speakers addressing today’s hot topics and the issues attorneys grapple with every day.

Section programs currently available from West LegalEdcenter include:

• The Freilich Report 2003: Annual Review of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions Affecting State and Local Government,
• The Nuts and Bolts of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement: Legal Issues and Policy Considerations for the Municipal Attorney,
• Homeland Security, Emergency Management, and the New Federalism,
• Farms, Forests and Open Spaces, and
• The Supreme Court’s Decision in Tahoe-Sierra: A Permanent Answer to Temporary Takings?

To get started with West LegalEdcenter, visit www. westlegaledcenter.com. The site offers a comprehensive catalog of CLE programs, which are searchable by practice area, jurisdiction, specialty credit, or CLE provider. Online programs are available for six months from the date of purchase. For more information about West LegalEdcenter, please call 800/495–9378 or send an e-mail message to westlegaledcenter-info@thomson.com. Subscription information is available by calling 800/241–0214.

Opportunities for Community Economic Development

Using New and Traditional Tools

Co-sponsored Section Program with the Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law and the Section of Business Law

February 27-28, 2004
Roney Place Beach Resort
Miami Beach, Florida

The conference will be a comprehensive continuing legal education program covering a broad range of current topics in community and economic development law. Experts from private practice, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, lenders, equity investors, and the development community will provide insight regarding the legal tools available on the local, state, and national levels in plenary sessions and workshops. The workshops will focus on cutting-edge law, practical advice, and the development of creative solutions in overcoming obstacles.

For more information or to register online, visit www.abanet.org/forums/affordable/ahprogs.htm or contact Laura Gutt at 312/988-5666.