It's hard to say who looks worse coming out of this week's settlement of a 16-year-old labor dispute between the city of Boston and the police patrolmen. Is it the police union, raking in $16.5 million in taxpayer money in the midst of a recession, for work its members never did? Or is it the city, which dug in its heels long after its first, predictable defeat in the dispute, driving up its liability, with interest, for 16 years, ultimately sticking beleaguered taxpayers with a much bigger bill? Hmmm, this is a toughie. The union-management donnybrook is the other ultimate fighting spectacle in town, the kind for which Boston is justly and infuriatingly famous. Principle is rarely the first concern; pride is all. This one began in 1994, when the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association sued the city for stationing officers from the now-defunct Boston Municipal Police in public housing developments. The BPPA did not like this one bit. They were the city's police department. They argued the lower-cost munies took away work, including lucrative overtime, that was rightly theirs. In 1996, to no one's surprise, the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission sided with the union, ordering the city to discontinue use of the Municipal Police in the developments. Instead, Mayor Tom Menino kept the munies in place. The writing was on the wall - in mammoth, flashing letters - but the city appealed the decision, not once, but three times, dragging the whole thing out until 2003, when the Supreme Judicial Court declined to hear the case. Unbelievably, it took the parties seven more years to come up with an agreement on compensation, even though interest was accruing at the shocking rate of 12.5 percent annually. The union was running up the tab. It's harder to make out what the mayor and his people were thinking. 'The thing that bothers me is the lack of management on both sides,' said Matthew Cahill, executive director of the Boston Finance Commission, a fiscal watchdog. 'If businesses operated this way, they'd be folding in weeks.' The city's chief negotiator is convinced this is the best possible deal, given the circumstances. 'This had been an open-ended financial exposure for the city for a number of years, and we needed to bring it to closure,' said John Dunlap, who arrived long after the dispute began. Both sides say they compromised, that the settlement could have cost as much as $60 million. It also could have cost a whole lot less. And so now the taxpayers are paying dearly - and twice - for those public housing patrols police didn't do. BPPA chief Tommy Nee made no apologies for that unseemly situation Wednesday. 'The court decision is the court decision,' he said. Sure it is, but has he thought about how this looks? 'I don't know how to answer that question in a way that will satisfy you,' Nee said. 'But we wouldn't have been looking at $16.5 million if the city had dealt with it in a more appropriate time period.' He's right. But that money isn't coming out of Menino's pocket. It's coming from the taxpayers who have been very good to this Police Department. And Nee is just about to ask them for more, entering negotiations in which he is bound to demand the same ludicrously generous deal won by the firefighters a few months ago. So here's a thought for Nee and his union: Why not donate the unearned millions to a worthy cause? The Boys & Girls Club, perhaps, or the Police Athletic League. It would do your heart and image a world of good. And for the other Tommy, our fists-up mayor, why not pause to think about the taxpayers the next time you're in a fight you just can't win? 