FAIRHOPE, Ala. - With a month and half before the end of the fiscal year, the city has spent twice as much money for legal fees than was budgeted, Councilman Rick Kingrea said this week.

Substantially different financial figures were provided by the city’s financial reporting manager, a discrepancy that could not be reconciled by press time.

“We’re more than $300,000 over budget,” Councilman Rick Kingrea said Wednesday. “We’ve got over $600,000 in fees.”

The general fund budget for legal fees for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 is $300,000, according to city records.

Kingrea said Thursday that the actual amount of legal fees paid from the general fund as of July 19 were $591,009.92.

Legal fees for the city’s electric, gas, water and sewer utilities are also included in the budget, but those fees are included in separate utility fund accounts and not in the general fund.

According to city records, the budgeted amounts for legal fees in the current fiscal year in those public utility funds are as follows: electric, $49,992; water, $3,600; sewer, $14,400; and gas, $3,152. Kingrea said the actual legal fee expenditures for the utility funds as of July 19 were $72,254.64.

The total legal fees for all city funds paid from Oct. 1 through July 19 are more than $663,000 Kingrea said, according to information he had reviewed. Those fees did not include an additional $29,757 paid from the general fund to the Hand Arendall firm on July 29, he said.

Those general fund fees paid differ substantially from the fees paid for year-to-date at the end of July, according to Rose Fogarty, the city’s financial reporting manager. She stated Thursday that preliminary figures for July show that $311,713.36 has been paid for legal fees in the general fund this fiscal year. If those numbers are correct, the city is barely over budget for general fund legal fees for the fiscal year.

After being contacted regarding Fogarty’s figures, Kingrea said he stood by his numbers.

“We have looked at the bills, and we’re very concerned," Kingrea said. “We’re concerned, not about the quality of the work, but about the amount.”

On June 8 last year, the City Council unanimously appointed Kingrea as the council’s legal liaison.

“He shall be briefed on all pending cases in which the City of Fairhope is involved, provided with contracts and/or agreements that have been made with all legal firms with which the City does business, and will review all attorney bills that are presented to the City of Fairhope,” a resolution signed June 8 by Mayor Tim Kant stated.

A council-appointed budget committee held two days of hearings last month with department heads, and the city is currently in the process of developing its budget for the next fiscal year based on information developed at those July meetings.

There was little discussion of the amount of attorney’s fees during those budget hearings. The city attorney did not appear at those meetings, and no separate report was given regarding pending legal cases or legal fees.

The current status of the fiscal 2011 budget is expected to be addressed in a Financial Advisory Committee on Aug. 23.

“We have been working to get the attorney rates down to the those (recommended by the city's insurance carrier),” Kingrea said. “That rate is $165. The fees we’ve been paying in some cases are significantly more than that.”