Colorado: Los Angeles

From Channel 7 News:
In the middle of the current economic crisis, Gov. Bill Ritter and nine other state employees spent more than $78,000 to conduct a trade mission to Asia that included taxpayers paying for business-class flights and five-star hotels, a CALL7 investigation found.

Ritter defended the trip and the expenses, saying it is important to market the state overseas so that foreign businesses will bring investment and jobs into the Colorado.

"It's important for us to continue to economically develop this state," Ritter told CALL7 Investigator Tony Kovaleski. "And to have a strategy for doing that."

But before and after the trip, Ritter and his staff knew the state was facing a large budget shortfall.

From the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp (EDC) comes a Valentine’s lesson for lawmakers: Let your state fall into repeated budget deficit crises and extended political gridlock and you can expect unwanted suitors to circle your taxpaying, job-making businesses like pitiless gigolos.

This weekend, as a first step in a $100,000 marketing campaign, the Metro Denver EDC sent valentines to 500 California executives at expanding companies. The valentines asked the executives to take their business to Colorado. The campaign included a Web site and video, a weekend ad blitz in newspaper and trade magazines across California, and an airplane trailing an 80-foot-long banner over commuters on highways throughout Los Angeles.

With a majority of the Denver City Council saying it wants to require new bidders on city contracts to keep the employees of previous contract holders, the city of Denver is wading into a growing area of law known as "worker retention."

About a dozen cities — including Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington — already have enacted such union-backed ordinances, which began cropping up in the 1990s.

Assistant City Attorney David Broadwell on Tuesday was reviewing past litigation on the issue in preparation for advising the council.

He said there have been about 10 legal cases on the subject, which he still was reviewing, and he was not prepared to give a legal opinion.

I guess there must be a bright side for somebody in any economic downturn, and top bankruptcy lawyers seem to have found it. As hard times hit more businesses, they are charging upwards $1,000 per hour or more for company restructurings, Bloomberg reports.

Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, home to former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, are asking as much as $1,110 an hour for bankruptcy work while creditors are recovering less of their loans through company restructurings.

Kirkland requested a top rate equal to $18.50 a minute for advising Tronox Inc. in its bankruptcy, according to court papers filed Jan. 26. Chicago-based Sidley Austin LLP and New York’s Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP also requested hourly rates exceeding $1,000 in the past two months in separate bankruptcy cases, as lenders’ recoveries are forecast by ratings company Moody’s Corp.