Thomas Breen photo
Pat King in her past role as chair of the BZA.
Mayor-Elect Justin Elicker has appointed ethics attorney and former zoning board chair Patricia King to serve as the city’s next top lawyer.
Elicker made that announcement in an email press release Thursday midday.
“I am truly honored to have been asked to serve the City of New Haven in this position,” King is quoted as saying in the release. “I look forward to working with Justin and his team to make life better for all of us in New Haven.”
“With Attorney King’s background serving the community, teaching and practicing law across the globe and dedication to upholding the law, I am confident that she will be an asset for the City to lead the office of Corporation Counsel,” Elicker is quoted as saying.
According to the press release, King has spent the past 15 years practicing law “in the area of professional ethics.”
She worked in the state Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel between 2004 and 2011. She spent nearly a decade on the City Plan Commission and six years on the BZA, where she also served as chair.
The press release states that King has also worked as a juvenile court advocate, assistant state’s attorney in Waterbury, and assistant corporation counsel for the City of New Haven. She is an adjunct professor at the Quinnipiac School of Law, where she teaches as a co-faculty advisor to the law school’s International Human Rights Law Society.
King is slated to replace current Corporation Counsel John Rose, and will be tasked with picking up on some of the more contentious legal and policy questions that the city’s legal office has found itself at the center of in recent years. (The corporation counsel’s position is co-terminus with the mayor’s term of office. The office’s attorneys work on one-year contracts, beginning in February; a mayor choosing not to renew those contracts must give the attorneys 60-day notice; since Elicker does not take office until Jan. 1, that means he cannot do that with any of the attorneys for his first year.)
King’s inherited challenges include figuring out whether to settle or keep fighting a class action lead poisoning case. Ditto for the ongoing legal battle surrounding the firing of former Commission on Equal Opportunities Executive Director Nichole Jefferson.
Rose also played a key, controversial role in firing former Labor Relations Director Marcus Paca and former Office of Development and Policy Director Mendi Blue during the first term of Mayor Toni Harp’s three terms in office.
King’s appointment comes one week after Elicker made his first cabinet appointment, former Hamden Mayor and state commissioner Scott Jackson as city chief administrative officer.