Cahill campaign’s hiring of lawyer raises questions
State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill’s political committee has hired a Brookline lawyer to conduct opposition research for Cahill’s gubernatorial campaign, an unusual move that could throw up legal roadblocks if state campaign finance regulators decide to examine the details of the attorney’s work.
Last month, Cahill paid $20,000 to Robert L. Allen Jr., who is primarily a real estate and zoning lawyer, for “legal services and research services,’’ according to the treasurer’s most recent campaign finance filing with the state. His campaign says it was the first of what will probably be a number of such expenditures.
The hiring of Allen, because he is a lawyer, means the arrangement could be protected by the legal concept of attorney-client privilege, which would allow the campaign to keep details of the work confidential, even, possibly, from the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance and its subpoena powers.
Though many candidates do not rely on lawyers for such work, hiring researchers and investigators is common practice for candidates for office. They are used to both explore the candidate’s own backgrounds for potential problems and look for things to exploit politically in the backgrounds of opponents.
Cahill aides would not say exactly what legal services Allen would provide.
“You do things like this to make the work product privileged,’’ said Thomas R. Kiley, a Boston attorney who specializes in defending public figures facing ethics, campaign finance, and corruption investigations. “With that you gain control of the release of the information.’’
Kiley helped engineer a similar arrangement for gubernatorial candidate Francis X. Bellotti in 1990.
A Cahill campaign spokeswoman, Alison Mitchell, said one of Allen’s duties will be to hire other vendors to help with the campaign’s background investigations on opponents and on the treasurer himself.
“We expect him to engage other people as needed,’’ Mitchell said, declining to elaborate.
Allen, a former Brookline selectman, did not respond to calls made to his office.
Cahill, who is in his second term as treasurer, left the Democratic Party earlier this year and is challenging Governor Deval Patrick as an independent.
Cahill’s hiring of a lawyer to conduct opposition research is an unusual move for a state campaign, veteran campaign regulators say.
The hiring of Allen creates two competing interests: the state campaign finance office’s legal mandate to monitor how political funds are spent, versus the right of the Cahill committee to invoke lawyer-client privilege.
“If we decide we need to enforce public disclosure and they invoke the privilege, we would have to ask a judge to determine which of the competing interests should prevail,’’ said Brad Balzer, deputy director of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. “Nobody has ever invoked this privilege.’’
The move could also counter one of the major reforms that lawmakers made to campaign finance laws this year.
Beginning in January, state political committees will have to publicly list subvendors hired by primary vendors.
Current law has allowed political figures to hide expenditures by using a consultant to contract for various work, none of which is now required to be made public.
So until January, Cahill is only required to list payments to Allen, even if Allen uses the money to hire others.
Balzer said that if there were cause in the future to look into a candidate’s financial campaign dealings, his office needs to able to look at the work that was done. If Cahill were to invoke attorney-client privilege, he said, “we wouldn’t have any option but to refer the matter up to the attorney general’s office.’’
“We are pretty clear that our interest in the new subvendor disclosure provision would be paramount, and we would need to get some guidance on that,’’ Balzer said. “Otherwise the subvendor requirement would be subverted if all you have to do is hire an attorney.’’
The reform was prompted by an investigation last year by the campaign finance office into former House majority leader John Rogers’s political account. That inquiry followed a Globe story that reported Rogers had paid $196,000 to a consulting firm created by a former law associate.
Its only client was Rogers, and none of its expenditures were required to be itemized on public campaign finance reports.
The investigation, through subpoenas and sworn testimony, found that the consulting entity had paid a monthly fee to Rogers’s good friend and political supporter, Thomas Drummey, who was also paying the mortgage on a Cape Cod house that the Norwood lawmaker and his wife bought.
Rogers said Drummey and his wife were co-owners, but he never produced a signed document or ownership agreement to prove his case.
