Hazleton slapped with $2.4 M bill (Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice)

BY WADE MALCOLM
STAFF WRITER

The potential cost of Hazleton's fight to expel illegal immigrants came into focus Friday, and the final bill could be steep.

In a 28-page document filed Friday, the attorneys who successfully challenged the illegal immigration ordinance in court asked a federal judge to force the city to pay their legal fees and costs totaling nearly $2.4 million, which would equal about a third of Hazleton's 2007 budget.

The city will challenge the amount of fees sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, other advocacy groups and private attorneys representing the plaintiffs, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said, calling the $2.4 million total "absurd."

"Their goal was to bankrupt the City of Hazleton," said Barletta, whose city operates on a tightly constrained $7.9 million budget. "I think it is very obvious that the ACLU exaggerated their bill. We don't believe that a judge will award that amount."

ACLU attorney Witold "Vic" Walczak, however, blamed Barletta and the city for driving up the fees.

Since adopting the first-of-its-kind ordinance in July 2006, Hazleton passed at least three additional versions of the ordinance in an attempt to improve its chances of winning the lawsuit. The often unexpected changes made the case more labor-intensive and expensive, the plaintiffs argue.

"Hazleton has used this Court as its laboratory," the fee petition reads. "Defendant's experimentation over the past year comes at a price."

U.S. District Judge James M. Munley declared the Illegal Immigration Relief Act unconstitutional in a 206-page opinion released July 26, ruling it violated due process rights and infringed on the federal government's sole authority to regulate immigration. In federal civil-rights cases, prevailing plaintiffs can ask the judge to force the defendant to pay their legal fees.

Munley has the discretion to award a higher or lower fee total if he wishes. The city has appealed Munley's ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The city won't have to pay any fees until the case is resolved, which could take years if the case is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court as both sides have vowed to do.

Walczak defended the fees as reasonable, arguing in the petition that they were reduced by $500,000 from what could have been requested.

"We didn't bill for all the lawyers in the courtroom," he said.

Barletta has solicited donations totaling about $400,000 to legal defense funds from across the country, the mayor said Friday. As of late July, the city has already spent more than $200,000 of that money defending the case, according to account records provided by the city.