As Milwaukee Public Schools asks its schools to do more with less, an I-Team investigation found the district shelled out more than $9 million in consulting fees last year alone.

Now we know a bookkeeping blunder kept consultants on the MPS payroll long after their contracts ran out, and you paid for it.

$218,306. That's how much MPS officials say the district paid high-powered Wisconsin lobbyist Bill Broydrick's firm recently after its contract with MPS ran out.

Board president Peter Blewett told the I-Team he had no idea until the district's finance office gave members a heads up last week.

"My interest is in making sure that, number one, this isn't happening in different departments," Blewett said. "I want to make sure that this is just an exceptional case."

It's not. MPS paid Prism Technical Services $150,000 last year to track the district's hiring practices -- also without a contract.

We asked Blewett how the payments weren't noticed sooner.

"The board is not going to be involved in the day to day operations of each department," Blewett said. "There's no way that we could."

What does the administration have to say about all of this? For days the I-Team tried get district finance officials to agree to an on camera interview. So far, no luck.

At a board finance committee meeting last week, transcripts show district chief financial officer, Michelle Nate admitted, "both of these contracts were not processed properly." And the system broke down, because her office was never notified that the old contracts had expired.

Blewett says the consultants didn't do anything wrong -- they simply billed and got paid for the work they've always done.

When asked about taxpayer concerns, Blewett responded, "I am a taxpayer. I'm elected by taxpayers, and that's why I asked the questions that I did."

Questions like, how did it happen and how to keep it from happening again?

Another question: did anyone else get paid without contracts?

To sort it all out, Blewett asked the district's finance office to answer all those questions in a report to the board, though he didn't set a deadline.

In the meantime, the board approved new contracts for the two consultants through 2009.

Got questions for the MPS finance office? Call the district's central office at (414) 475-8393.