UPDATE: Monrovia Tied With Bell in Legal Fees Paid Per Capita, Study Finds

Monrovia ranked 31st among 88 cities in Los Angeles County for the amount of money spent per capita on attorney fees, according to a study by the Los Angeles Times.

The ranking was contained in a database resulting from a one-year project by the Times as it investigated the effect of legal costs on city budgets.

The Times found that Monrovia spent $24 per capita on city attorney’s fees annually, or a total of $886,546 (1.4 percent of the city’s budget). The cities of La Canada Flintridge, Bell and Rancho Palos Verdes spent the same amount per capita, according to the Times' data.

City Attorney Craig Steele said in an interview that measuring cities' legal bills on a per capita basis was "irrelevant" because the data doesn't take into account the wide range of services that different cities provide.

"Every city is just completely different in terms of their needs for services," Steele said. "I think it's very difficult, in a county like LA county, to say this is an apples-to-apples comparison."

Given Monrovia's status as a full-service city with its own police and fire departments, Steele said the city was doing a good job of managing its legal costs.

"Under a million dollars for an organization this size year after year is, I think, a pretty good record," Steele said.

Overall, at­tor­neys' fees con­sume less than 1 percent of the 2010 budgets in nearly half the county’s cit­ies, an av­er­age of about $25 per res­id­ent. But a hand­ful of cit­ies spend three to four times that much, the Times found.

Vernon, a city of just 114 people, outspent the rest of the county by far, doling out $98,234 in attorney's fees per capita.

Check out the Times’ full database here.

Patch is attempting to contact city officials about this study. Check back later to see their reaction.