ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. - Taxpayers are on the hook for a growing tab of legal fees piling up after a court battle over which politician pics the St. Louis County prosecutor.

The St. Louis County executive picked Cort VanOstran to replace outgoing Wesley Bell as top prosecutor. Missouri’s governor chose Melissa Price Smith.

The courts ultimately decided the governor had the authority, and Smith was sworn in as the St. Louis County Prosecutor on Jan. 3.

Now the private attorney fees are coming in the county’s failed fight. Invoices so far add up to $19,135.00—just for services through Nov. 30.

They’re expenses St. Louis County Councilman Dennis Hancock said were initiated without County Council input.

Hancock said, “Would it make more sense to do that again, or would it make more sense to pick up the phone and call the governor and say who’s your choice on this? Maybe we can work something out.”

Plus, he says the $19,000 billed so far is not the end of it.

“I think most of the work was done in December,” Hancock said. “So, I think it’s going to turn out to be a pretty significant amount of money.”

We also caught up with Councilman Mark Harder, who was riding with a snowplow driver to learn how to improve service.

Harder commented, “It’s a lot of money when we’re short and we need salt truck drivers, and we need equipment that works, and we’re wasting it on these lawsuits.”

County Executive Sam Page responded, saying the legal fight was important to try to protect county voters.

Page told us, “We have 750,000 registered voters in St. Louis County. They should be, whenever possible, electing our leaders, and if it’s ever necessary, they should be in charge of removing them.”

FOX 2's Chris Hayes asked, “Why not rely on internal counsel? Why hire big money attorneys?”

“Well, we have limited bandwidth. Our budget has been cut for our attorneys. Our attorneys are overwhelmed with their normal routine work, and I need to make sure the normal routine work in St. Louis County continues to get done that we continue to be able to buy things under contract that we have salt and snowplows and police cars," Page answered.

FOX 2 will make another request for the final tab when the remaining invoices arrive.