Eileen M. Teichert, Sacramento's New City Attorney

By David Graulich

Eileen M. Teichert was a few days into her new job as Sacramento City Attorney when she found herself meeting with co-workers at an emergency operations center. Heavy rains during January 2006 raised the risk of regional flooding, and Sacramento officials were monitoring weather conditions to prevent another New Orleans-type calamity.

Fortunately, the rains subsided without major flooding. Reflecting on the experience, Teichert recalls her initiation with a smile: "Talk about taking a job and getting thrown into the water."

The career path of Sacramento's new City Attorney has had its share of unexpected turns. Prior to last year, she had every intention of remaining in Southern California, where perennial water controversies involve not flooding but scarcity. As City Attorney for Riverside, a position she took in 1997, Teichert was responsible for a range of legal and environmental issues that had her fully absorbed in her work. She had just returned from a Hawaiian vacation in August 2005 when she received a phone message from a recruiter working for the City of Sacramento. The recruiter was seeking a successor to long-time City Attorney Samuel Jackson, who was retiring, and Teichert's name had emerged as a top candidate.

"I loved being in Riverside and I really wasn't interested at first," Teichert says. "That recruiter was persistent, though - he earned his money." She agreed to a meeting with the Sacramento City Council ("I had to update my 1997 resume") and that made the difference. "Their values were my values - we really clicked," she recalls.

Law is a second career for Teichert, who graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism. Her interest in environmental issues led her to several public sector marketing jobs in Southern California, involving public transit and economic development, when she made the decision to back to school for a law degree.

She remembers her experience at University of La Verne College of Law, where she received a J.D. in 1993, as "a good choice and a good fit," including top grades and law review. After graduation from law school, Teichert worked as an associate in private practice. She represented a major Riverside bank and was also a litigator in a variety of civil actions. She led the typical hectic life of a new associate: "I'd make a court appearance at the Palm Springs courthouse in the morning, and then drive 120 miles to Santa Barbara in the afternoon to take a deposition."

Her passion for environmental law stayed with her. "I always knew where I wanted to go," she says, and her drive to follow her interests led her to leave private practice and accept an appointment as Riverside's City Attorney. Riverside was grappling with land contamination problems at a city-owned sewage treatment plant that had been closed down in the 1960's - "back when all they did was turn off the valves and walk away," Teichert says. In addition, Riverside owns its municipal electric utility, and Teichert was immersed in California's electricity deregulation and power shortages that began in the late 1990's. "I was working with a range of complex, important environmental issues - doing what I always hoped I would be doing."

In her new job in Sacramento, Teichert is the chief legal advisor to the City Council. She is also the equivalent of managing partner of a city law firm, with a total staff of 54 persons that includes 27 attorneys. One of her first actions was to meet with all of the city's department heads to ask what they needed in terms of legal services. "Everyone said the same thing: 'we want our own attorney assigned to us.'" As a result, Teichert has assigned lawyers to work regularly with particular city departments in order to build functional expertise and depth.

"I go to work every day and I love what I do," Teichert says. "How many people can say that? My job as City Attorney is to get the people who work for me to that place, getting them into the right position so that they, too, love what they do." Her challenge, she says, is "to connect each attorney's passion with his or her legal skills."

Teichert says she will continue the City's policy of keeping all of its legal work in-house. As a former litigator, she meets with her staff to discuss and plan courtroom strategy on major cases, "but I'm careful not to micro-manage."

Regarding the Supreme Court's Kelo decision, which has sparked outcry against municipal use of eminent domain, Teichert expresses concern that "the pendulum will swing too far the other way - that people will lack understanding about what eminent domain really is and what it can accomplish for a city." When used judiciously, she says, eminent domain can boost quality of life by enabling the city to buy out and close nuisance businesses that help create neighborhood blight.

Teichert is back to full health after undergoing cancer surgery earlier this year. When she can get away from her City Hall office on I Street, she enjoys traveling and skiing with her husband, Rick Teichert, who is deputy director of the Sacramento Regional Library Authority. Most of their free time is devoted to her family of three grown daughters and three grandchildren.

Asked whether she has advice for law students and recent graduates, Teichert replies, "Remember, it's not about the money. It's about doing what you want to do, what you care most about." She cites her interest in environmental law as an example. "The attorneys I know who are the happiest are focused on the type of work they have always wanted to do." In terms of academic preparation for public service, she singles out constitutional law. "You wouldn't believe the variety of issues that come into this office every day, most of them incredibly complex, and constitutional issues are implicated in all of them."

David Graulich is entering his 4th and final year at McGeorge School of Law. Prior to law school, David was a newspaper reporter, a corporate public relations manager and author of 5 books.