City Panel OKs $50,000 to Audit Attorneys’ Bills

Still reeling from a whopping $1.3-million legal bill for Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden’s defense against sexual harassment cases, lawmakers moved Tuesday to hire auditors to help the city better monitor fees from outside lawyers in the future.

The $50,000 auditing contract was approved alongside $1.5 million in additional fees for private attorneys handling other cases for the city, prompting larger questions about the cost-effectiveness of contracting rather than hiring more city attorneys to handle the increased caseload. Both items still must be approved by the full council.

“The question is, on an hour by hour basis, are we getting the level of service we should be getting?” Councilman Mike Feuer asked at the meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee, which directed city staff to report back with an analysis of how much the city spends annually on outside lawyers, how many hours they work and their average hourly rates.

The city attorney’s office has a staff of 700--about 375 of them lawyers--and a budget of nearly $50 million. It hires private attorneys when it lacks specific expertise or has a conflict of interest. During three years ending in mid-1994, the city spent nearly $22 million on private lawyers from about 60 firms, records show.

Bills from private counsel have steadily mounted, Deputy City Atty. Pete Echeverria said Tuesday.

“I personally have a bias for trying to do the work in-house. I believe we can do it better, and we can do it cheaper,” he told the committee. “But there are areas where we genuinely need outside counsel, and that’s where we need to tighten up the guidelines and the billing procedures so we can do a better job with the taxpayers’ money.”

The $1.5 million in fees approved Tuesday would go to seven firms, most of them handling employee relations lawsuits for the city. Several of the suits involve Police Department personnel, and some date back to 1993. Together, the seven firms already have received more than $1 million for the same cases.

The city attorney’s office launched a search for outside auditors nearly a year ago and has already selected three firms, though Tuesday’s action was the first step in getting the money to pay them. Echeverria said about $20,000 would go to train city staff and the rest would pay for ad hoc auditing of bills.

The city also hired an auditor to go over the Holden bills. A Times-commissioned review of those fees by three independent experts raised dozens of questions, ranging from a $3,000 charge for after-hours air-conditioning to broad issues concerning the staffing of the cases and the format of the bills.