The City of Los Angeles has proposed using Google Apps for messaging and collaboration. Naturally, the bean-counters in the city office are all agog about the prospect of saving some money, which, during the recession, has taken front row at city council meetings all across the country. Not to put too fine a point on it, cities are going broke, and having to cut back wherever they can–and in some cases, where they shouldn’t.

Fortunately, there are a few dissenting voices in the crowd. Using Google for email may well have its place, but that place isn’t in organizations that are required to provide any degree of security and privacy. The World Privacy Forum expressed some legitimate concerns that transferring city records to a cloud-based provider could violate privacy rights, and possibly even state or federal laws.

The LAPD has also expressed some worry over the deal, and rightfully so, publicly stating that it is concerned about having police records stored on external computers. It’s still possible that even if the city does go ahead with the deal, the police department will opt out.

Granted, the deal will save the city a bundle. The contract would save $6.25 million over five years in licensing fees that would otherwise go to Microsoft and Novell, and that’s not chump change in a state that issues IOUs instead of paying its bills.

According to recent reports, security analysts have found some serious and legitimate reasons to question the move. For one, there will be no external standards for security; rather, security will be defined by Google itself, a practice which really provides for no accountability at all.

Google Apps does provide for some security, including single sign-on, but nothing is foolproof, and putting email in the cloud may just be asking for trouble.