INTO THE SPOTLIGHT / RICK VANDENBERG : THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : County Numbers Cruncher Can Put a Price on Justice--to the Penny

You think there are no standards left in the Simpson trial? You think nobody is calculating the value of what is happening here? Meet Rick Vandenberg, Los Angeles County number cruncher. He can tell you the cost of almost any aspect of the case. Down to the last dime.

Any questions?

OK, how much has it cost to transport Simpson by van to and from the courthouse since mid-June?

$30,979, Vandenberg says with a grin.

What does it cost the county for all those staffers who are needed to deal with the crush of news media?

$122,662, he says.

All right, how much money did lead prosecutor Marcia Clark earn for those 10 extra minutes of opening statements that Judge Lance A. Ito awarded her this week?

Vandenberg has it in seconds: $8.64. That includes the cost of Clark’s county benefits, he notes.

With 16 years experience in the county auditor-controller’s office, Vandenberg, 41, has earned the plum assignment of figuring out the cost of Los Angeles’ most notorious trials. He crunched the numbers on the Nightstalker serial murder trial, as well as the McMartin preschool molestation case. And now this: He is head pencil-pusher on Simpson, a case he figures has cost the public $1.8 million so far, at a rate of $300,000 per month.

Vandenberg, a quiet man who expected to make his living answering mundane questions such as how much does it cost for the county to license a fertilizer processing plant ($301), has drawn a flurry of media inquiries from Rome to Toronto for his well-publicized Simpson calculations.

In response to the County Board of Supervisors’ request to keep tabs on how much the Simpson trial is costing, Vandenberg releases the latest numbers around the 20th of each month. From the start, television stations have been lining up outside his door, waiting for interviews.

“People in the office started asking if they could be my agent,” he said.

It was nerve-racking at first but Vandenberg says he is enjoying the fervor now and likes to boast: “Any time you see a number on the Simpson case, those are my numbers.” Still, he retains an accountant’s devotion to accuracy. “I don’t try to make it sound any more glamorous than it is.”

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He stumbled into the spotlight as part of his job as a principal accountant for the auditor’s cost department, an office that breaks down how various county agencies spend their money. When he is not working on Simpson, he is figuring out prisoner maintenance rates for the Sheriff’s Department.

Overall, the largest chunk of the Simpson expenses--about $1.1 million--has been accrued by the district attorney’s office, Vandenberg said. Clark has accounted for about $119,885 of the cost, based on 1,072 hours of work and 312 hours of overtime from mid-June through December.

As for Simpson, it is costing $46.25 per day to house him at the County Jail, Vandenberg said.

How about those jurors? How much is their sequestration costing us? Stay tuned. Vandenberg is just now working on that one.

Although the trial may be expensive, it is costing far less then McMartin, which lasted 6 1/2 years, at a tab of $13.2 million, Vandenberg said.

And unlike McMartin, where he had to work by hand, Vandenberg calculates the cost of the Simpson trial on his computer, processing reports provided to him by the various county agencies working on the case. It takes only a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.

“There’s not much to it,” he said. “Really . . . I never thought I would be this interesting.”

His opinion of the trial itself? “This is probably as logical as this case is going to get--calculating the cost of it.”