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ST. LOUIS • The cost of the region’s fight against the now-Los Angeles Rams keeps going up.

In 2013, the public shelled out about $4 million, the full cost of legal expenses during failed negotiations with the Rams over stadium renovations. It spent $16 million over a few years to plan a new riverfront stadium. Last week, it lost a suit to prevent the Rams from buying — for $1 — the team’s old practice facility, worth at least $12.7 million.

And now St. Louis’ public stadium authority is on the hook for more than $295,000 in legal fees to attorneys at Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch, who represented the authority in the fight over the practice fields.

“They’re continuing with a taxpayer rip-off that doesn’t ever seem to end,� said University City resident and local government watchdog Tom Sullivan. “It started 30 years ago, and it just keeps going on and on.�

It’s not the last expense. An arbitration panel has ordered the stadium authority — officially called the St. Louis Regional Convention and ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Complex Authority — to pay the Rams’ legal fees regarding the $1 option, as well.

Authority and civic leaders defended the work.

“The Rams and their ownership broke trust with and inflicted serious damage to our community when they left,� stadium authority Chairman Jim Shrewsbury said in a statement. “Their efforts to control the facility in Earth City are but another attempt to take something that should belong to this community. So we used every means available to prevent them from doing so.�

There are costs to litigation, said Jeff Rainford, who served as chief of staff to then- St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay when the Rams left for Los Angeles. But if suits such as these can expose the National Football League and get to the bottom of the actions that led the Rams from St. Louis, he’s for it.

“The NFL embodies everything the majority of Americans think is wrong with America now,� Rainford said on Friday. “It’s all about money and power for them. They think they can get away with just about anything.�

At the same time, Rainford argued that the Rams got a sweet deal when they arrived in 1995 — and that current leaders shouldn’t be blamed for those decisions.

In order to lure the team, the region gave away luxury suites, parking spaces, and hefty slices of parking, advertising, stadium naming rights and concession revenues. It infamously agreed to keep the Trans World Dome, as it was first called, among the “first tier� of NFL stadiums across the country. And it gave the Rams an option to buy Rams Park for $1 in the 29th year of the lease.

The dome’s final price tag came to more than $300 million. The city and county still annually shell out $6 million each (not including the state’s $12 million) to pay off the total bond debt, once estimated to crest at $720 million.

In 2013, the two sides went into arbitration over the top tier clause. The region lost, and the arbitrators ordered the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, which runs the Dome, to pay the $2 million in legal expenses incurred by the Rams. The commission estimated it had another $2 million of its own.

In 2014, then-Gov. Jay Nixon announced that former Anheuser-Busch President David Peacock and Blitz, Bardgett attorney Bob Blitz would comprise a two-man task force in the hopes of keeping the Rams in St. Louis. Over about a year, the two spent at least $16.2 million, paid for by the dome authority, to build a north riverfront stadium plan.

In 2016, after the Rams left, the stadium authority filed suit to block the Rams from buying the 27-acre Earth City practice facility, which was owned by the authority. In November of 2017, the Missouri Supreme Court sent the suit to arbitration. Last week, a three-member arbitration panel ruled on the case.

It awarded the stadium authority $80,000 in maintenance costs for mold remediation, turf upkeep and other repairs, and it told the Rams to pay for the authority’s legal expenses on the matter.

But the panel awarded the Rams the training camp, which the team can buy in 2024. And it ordered the stadium authority to pay for the Rams legal costs on that issue.

The dome authority spent $295,812 on legal fees in the case, reaching back to the start of 2016. Blitz’s firm billed for 1,158 hours.