Should Lawyers Charge Taxpayers for an Airport Apple?

Ahh government work.

If you bill government entities for your time, inevitably someone wants to, you know, look at your expenses and see whether your billings are reasonable.

Why can't they just act like big corporations and let all this stuff slide?

Take St. Pete Beach, where taxpayers are apparently incensed that Miami lawyers from Bryant Miller Olive travel there and then expense ridiculous things -- like bottled water and an apple -- just to do the city's majestically boring and mind-numbingly dull legal work:

But Weiss says the city is allowing the law firm to bill tax payers for money it doesn't deserve. For example, the retainer agreement does not say attorneys should get their hourly rate for travel, but the firm charges $205 an hour in addition to the cost of air fare when attorney's travel from offices in Miami and Tallahassee.

Weiss says when lawyers travel from the Miami office to the area it is $615 dollars to get them here and then they charge three hours going back.

In addition, Weiss says the out of town attorneys charge for everything. He says some of the strange things include a lawyer charging $600 dollars to fly here, getting paid $205 an hour and then charging the city $2.10 for a bottle of water and $1.00 for an apple they buy at the airport. He says there is no concern for the taxpayer. 

Three dollars and ten cents just to sustain a Miami lawyer's insatiable need for water and a light snack?

What an outrage.

By that I mean, what an outrage that an attorney from our city has to go to St. Pete Beach for business!

Whatever happened to fancy dinners in Vegas, New York, LA -- this poor schmuck has to travel to some podunk backwater and suffer the indignity of having her one dollar airport apple purchase dissected by an irate citizen.

Like I said, government work.....