PROVIDENCE — The City Council, which has cast a critical eye over Mayor David N. Cicilline’s spending choices in light of a deficit approaching $16 million this year, has more to consider in its opposition to pay raises for high-ranking police officers and the mayor’s hiring of a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm.

A law firm hired by the council says it could make a strong case if it decides to go to court over raises granted late last year to five officers totaling nearly $85,000.

Council President Peter S. Mancini said the council will meet with Thomas J. McAndrews and Associates law firm in the coming weeks to determine a course of action. “I would prefer that we resolve this without taking the legal option,” Mancini said Monday.

The council maintains that it never authorized Cicilline’s administration to give pay raises retroactive to two years to the officers, some of whom are now retired. Cicilline’s administration has said that the retroactive pay for the nonunion officers matches those awarded to police union members in arbitration in the last fiscal year.

“Our recollection is that we agreed to the pay adjustment, but that it go back to July” of 2008, said Mancini. “I don’t ever recall authorizing it to go back two years.” In its legal opinion to the council, McAndrews and Associates says that the City Charter “clearly and unambiguously grants authority to fix salaries and conditions of employment to the Providence City Council.”

Meanwhile, the council’s internal auditor, James Lombardi III, says the Board of Contract and Supply, which oversees all city purchases over $5,000, should not have authorized spending city reserve account funds to hire the lobbying firm Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart last week. The firm is being paid $135,000 to help the city with economic stimulus plan-related issues.

Lombardi, in a letter to the Law Department late last week, said only the council has power to spend surplus funds. Richard Kerbel, the mayor’s director of administration, said Monday that payment of the contract through surplus funds is “legal and is consistent with past practices.”

pmarcelo@projo.com