Bloom Sluggett Morgan adds attorney, celebrates two years

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LEGAL NEWS PHOTOS THIS ARTICLE BY CYNTHIA PRICE

Photo 1: Bloom Sluggett Morgan attorneys: Dick Butler, Crystal Morgan, Jeff Sluggett, and the latest addition, Jack Van Coevering. Cliff Bloom is not pictured.

Photo 2: BSM’s beautiful space on Ionia includes the same respect for the original building details that many downtown office complexes exhibit.

by Cynthia Price
Legal News

A four-attorney team has expanded to five at Bloom Sluggett Morgan (BSM), a two-year-old firm specializing almost exclusively in aspects of public sector law.

The three attorneys who formed BSM after years of experience with a larger firm have rounded out their practice with a municipal tax attorney, Jack Van Coevering, who spent much of his career working for the state of Michigan.

Clifford Bloom, Jeff Sluggett, and Crystal Morgan presently can name as clients over 45 cities, villages and townships, ranging from the Cities of Walker Coopersville to the townships of Alpine Big Prairie in Newaygo County to their latest client Village of Suttons Bay. They provide general counsel services to these local governments, and more specialized legal services to yet others, including on matters of planning and zoning, special assessments, riparian and water law, eminent domain, and economic development projects.

The firm already included Dick Butler, whose specialty includes representing public libraries. Now the new year has brought Van Coevering to the practice, an attorney with vast expertise in municipal tax law, including property tax appeals.

Jeff Sluggett said that the main reason for forming the smaller firm was to help make legal work affordable for small governments whose revenues have been in decline. He commented, “Some of them had significant difficulty with the overhead of a larger firm. But we didn’t want to stop serving those clients; we genuinely like doing this type of work. So we thought, let’s start a smaller firm that focuses in on the public sector, and can do it for less.”

That requires a balance between wanting to add attorneys to increase the services BSM can offer, while retaining small-firm advantages. Crystal Morgan says, “I think we’ll continue to grow, but strategically, in response to our clients’ needs.”

And Sluggett adds, “We all work with each other’s clients where that’s needed, and it’s truly a firm in that sense. So we feel really honored to have Jack join us, it’s a plum for us to get someone of Jack’s stature.” 

Van Coevering’s background, which he calls “a consistent line with an odd selection of points,” is varied and rich. He attended Calvin College for his B.A. degree, followed by receiving his J.D. from the Universityof Michigan Law School and a Master of Law in Corporate and Finance Law from Wayne State University Law School. He also attended the State and Local Tax School at the University of California.

Following that he was an assisant defender in the State Appellate Defender Office and then worked in the Attorney General’s office as an assistant AG in the Revenue Divison. This led to a number of positions with the Michigan Department of the Treasury.

“I left there heading up their legal division; they had a hearings division as part of that. Then I moved to the Michigan Tax Tribunal and was the  chief judge there for four years,” Van Coevering says. “The tax tribunal is Michigan’s only tax court and hears all the state cases on any state tax matter.

“Largely those are non-property cases,” he adds, noting that many are sales and use tax disputes.

In 2007, Van Coevering moved into private practice, specializing in property tax appeals, which has earned him recognition in Best Lawyers in America, Tax Law Litigation and Controversy.

He feels that the in-depth expertise he gained working for state government will be invaluable at BSM. “I have an understanding of different aspecs of government that you get from being involved at the state level and working with other local units of government. So much changes in tax law itself, that it’s more the value in terms of understanding the thought process on the other side of the table.”

For any business, he says, the bulk of taxes are state and local, and he adds, “State and local tax is a very, very unique area of law. The concepts are different than an income-based tax. Most of the matters you get in state tax and local tax have a constitutional statutory background.”

He adds, “If you look at the Michigan Constitution, Article 9 on taxes is one of the largest. We think about taxes a lot in Michigan; we’ve been one of the more innovative states.”

It is clear Van Coevering has a passion about tax policy. He has recently been involved in the promotion of Senate Bill 337, which has passed both the state house and senate on a bipartisan basis. Van Coevering explains that Michigan has provisions that “if the business fails to pay a tax, the state can personally assess the individuals that may have been responsible for paying it. They’ve extended this to include not only corporate officers but also members of limited liability corporations, partners, and others.” SB 337 redefines who can be called a “responsible person” and mandates that penalties apply if that person “willfully failed to file a return or pay the tax due.”

Van Coevering participated in hearings and worked with the State Chamber of Commerce on passage of the bill. “It took a long time,” he says. “But I feel it’s every attorney’s

obligation is to make their area of law better.”

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