“Corruption on steroids”, so says LA District Attorney, Steve Cooley, regarding Bell, CA city council and administration.
The charges allege the officials misappropriated more than $5.5 million, including being paid for phantom meetings, District Attorney Steve Cooley said at a news conference.
High salaries paid to officials of the city sparked local outrage and national attention when they came to light in July. Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo, Police Chief Randy Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia resigned after media reports that they were making several hundred thousand dollars a year each. Adams was not charged, Cooley said.
“The complaint alleges they used the tax dollars collected from the hard-working citizens of Bell as their own piggy bank, which they looted at will,” Cooley said at the news conference.
The article doesn’t explain how these people managed to rip off their citizens for so long but it raises the importance of paying attention and the role of watchdog once played by the media. Where, I wonder, were the media during these officials’ apparent seventeen year reign of terror?
[California AG]Brown said his suit is separate from a criminal probe, and he added that he plans to widen a statewide investigation of public salaries and benefits, and called for legislative reform. He said he was serving a subpoena on the city of Vernon, which is near Bell, “to obtain compensation records for city officials and employees.”
News articles have reported that one Vernon city official received an annual salary of $785,000, and another received a total of $1.6 million in compensation in a single year, according to Brown. Vernon has a population of less than 100 people.
Also last week, acting California Gov. Abel Maldonado signed legislation to return “illegal and excessive taxes” to Bell residents.
California State Controller John Chiang said last month that property owners in Bell paid and estimated $3 million in extra taxes over the past three years. Bell passed an “illegal resolution in 2007 that resulted in a 50 percent increase in the tax rate over the course of three years,” according to the governor’s office.
When you see stuff like this you start to wonder if Lakeside City Hall isn’t deliberately hiding something by not cooperating with the local Coast Lake News. When Coos County Commission claim to have met public meeting and records law but clearly violate the spirit of those laws, you wonder what are they hiding?
DA Cooley blames the electorate for not watching what their elected officials were doing and a fair degree of blame lies there for sure. Nevertheless, the public used to be able to depend upon the press to do the watching for them and reporting it to the public. That isn’t happening much anymore and it should be applauded when it is.
