The outside lawyers in the state's case against the Tennessee Valley Authority are putting in the hours. But exactly what they've been doing for the last three months, we don't know.
Lawyers in the state Attorney General's office heavily redacted invoices submitted by the Ayres Law Group and the Resolution Law Group. The invoices were for $647,884.45 and included work the firms did on the state's lawsuit against the TVA.
Attorney General Roy Cooper sued the authority in 2006 to try to force it to reduce the amount of pollutants its coal-fired power plants release into the air.
The Council of State approved paying for the latest round of bills Tuesday. The litigation could eventually cost as much as $5 million, a price tag that Cooper said would be worth it if state residents can breathe cleaner air.
More after the jump.
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The invoices approved by the Council of State include travel and other expenses as well as billable hours. But lawyers redacted the description of what was done for the itemized list of hours. So we know that on June 1, Resolution Law Group billed $1,620 for 7.2 hours. But we don’t know why.
A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office said the invoices were redacted to conceal the state’s legal strategy in the lawsuit. Some of the work by the lawyers has been made public through the case file.
Until the case is over and the billing records are open, tracking the lawyer's work will have to wait.
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