Four current City Councilmembers have racked up nearly $2 million and counting in legal fees paid to private attorneys, according to the latest tally by the mayor’s office. That doesn’t include outstanding invoices from the previous three months, putting the estimated total at well over the $2 million mark.

Grumblings can be heard citywide as fewer dollars are available for services, including public safety services such as police and fire. As Gay & Lesbian Times columnist and California Western School of Law professor Robert DeKoven outlines in his column this week, taxpayers are forced to do double duty, not only paying for illegal pension benefits for city employees but also footing the bill for the councilmembers’ legal expenses, many of whom are hiring private attorneys at a rate of $500 an hour. “It’s simply an outrage,” he says.

The four councilmembers we are referring to are, of course, Toni Atkins, Scott Peters, Jim Madaffer and Brian Maienschein. Donna Frye, not surprisingly, has spent zilch in taxpayer-funded legal fees and instead is paying out of pocket for her own attorney. According to the Union-Tribune back in June, Frye spent a little more than $5,000. That’s roughly $5,000 (of Frye’s own money) compared to top-spender Atkins’ $554,787.51 (of our money). It’s easy to see who’s worried and who’s not.

And that brings up a good question: Why are these councilmembers shelling out millions of our money when the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to bring a case against them? According to Atkins’ office, “An SEC investigation is a complex legal matter that involves depositions and interviews and documents and a great deal of other work before the SEC ever makes a decision.”

Pam Hardy, communications director for Peters, echoed Atkins’ sentiments, saying his legal fees were accrued “primarily for the provision of documents and information to investigators.”

Tell that to Frye, who has managed to get by just fine without spending hundreds of thousands of our dollars.

City Attorney Mike Aguirre warned those councilmembers under investigation that if they are indeed found to have committed wrongdoing, he will recommend that the city sue them to recover the money spent on their legal defense. That is unless they cop a plea by the end of January and settle with the SEC.

This argument is touched on in DeKoven’s column. “[T]he four councilmembers, all of whom are termed out in less than two years, should seriously consider any proposal that allows them to resign in return for something, perhaps pleading to an infraction,” he says.

Should they resign, or should we continue doling out what has already added up to millions in legal expenses for lame-duck councilmembers desperately trying to clear their names before terming out in 2008?

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