EDITORIAL HEAVY LIABILITY.

BY any measure, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office has one of the largest law firms around, with a staff of 969, including 500 lawyers.

But that's apparently not enough to handle all the legal scrapes the city gets involved in, because Los Angeles spent almost $30 million last year to hire outside attorneys, many of whom are political fund-raisers and contributors.

What's going on?

City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo insists he gets value for what he spends and points his finger at the city's proprietary departments - airports, harbor and water and power - for going a little hog-wild on the outside counsel. No doubt this has something to do with the pay-to-play allegations that have wracked all three agencies.

Delgadillo defended the trend by saying the city's liability has decreased significantly since 2001, which is when the city started relying more on outside counsel. In 2001, the city shelled out about $96 million in liability payouts compared with $46 million last year. As dramatic as that is, it doesn't take into account that much of the city's settlements in the 2000-01 budget year came from the Rampart corruption scandal.

Whichever department is to blame for the over-reliance on outside counsel, it's Delgadillo's job to make sure the city is adequately represented. Instead of defending and denying, he should commit himself to fixing the problem.

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