On March 7, ex-mayor Jim LiVecchi published a column asserting: “The city recently completed a thorough analysis of every invoice Mr. Kahn submitted. After cross-referencing 95-plus matters and more than 20,000 time entries, the city concluded there was never any double billing or overbilling.”
This column prompted the City Finance Department to issue an Executive Memo to Council effectively stating that no such analysis had been conducted by the City and that such overbilling could not be determined from examination of the invoices alone.
In his tenure as City Attorney, Ben Kahn opened 107 billing matters for the City, and sent the City 478 invoices on those matters totaling $543,700.82 (see chart). These invoices contained, probably, in excess of 4,000 time entries. An example of one of the invoices is invoice #2 for matter 272, where Kahn charged the City $9,767.23 to investigate and discourage public statements of two council members.