Whipped Cream Difficulties

The LAT apparently would like for you to feel sorry for someone in the city of Bell.

The question is, who?

Not Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and his cronies. They’re under arrest and facing a recall election. If that doesn’t work, Jerry Brown’s going to try to get them kicked out of office anyway.

Should we feel sorry for the citizens of Bell? According to the LAT, they were literally dancing in the streets when the arrests went down.

(Edited to add: Here’s a second article from the LAT about the street celebrations in Bell. Unlike the first, it does not mention dancing, but the guy playing “Another One Bites The Dust” is a nice touch. Of course, the LAT had to find the one moron in the crowd…

“They were making a lot of money, but I don’t have an issue with it because they were taking care of us,” she said. “We have a clean city, good parks, no graffiti. It’s very safe…. I’m not saying the salaries and other things that were going on were fair, because they weren’t, but it’s not like they were getting paid a lot and not doing a good job.”

See also Mussolini and the trains running on time. Of course they were doing a good job. Except for those illegal taxes. And the towing scandal. And the illegal sewer fees. And the fake meetings.)

Even better for the citizens of Bell,

The state controller’s office has found that Bell collected about $5.6 million in illegally imposed tax increases and business-license fees — and now must refund an amount equal to more than one-third of its $13.5-million general fund.

Of course, having to cough up that much money means there isn’t enough left to spend on essential city services, like Rizzo’s million-dollar salary. Perhaps the city could sell bonds to fill the gap? Except that Bell’s bond status, according to Standard and Poor’s, is “junk”.

So what next? Cut city services? Place the city into receivership? The LAT article seems to view these as last-resort options. We would suggest that these should be first resort options. Does the city really need 47 police officers? Couldn’t they contract out services to LA County?

Here’s the City of Bell website. Perhaps our loyal readers could explore that and propose some cuts in order to meet the budget.

The three top administrators of the city of Bell, California, agreed to resign yesterday.

These are:

• the city manager, Robert Rizzo, who was pulling down $787,637 a year (leaving at the end of August).
• the chief of police, Randy Adams, who was making $457,000 a year. (Adams also apparently will stay through August, “after completing an evaluation of the Police Department”.)
• assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, $376,288, leaving at the end of September. Spaccia was also serving as the acting city manager for the city of Maywood. Remember Maywood?

Yesterday’s LAT also had a survey of recent municipal corruption in the area around Bell. Some high points:

• the Lynwood City Council, which was indicted in 2007 for using city money for personal ends, including hiring strippers.
• South Gate, “a reign of governance so flamboyant in its nasty badness that ‘South Gate’ became shorthand for corruption and politicians gone wild.”
• Vernon, where the city administrator was pulling in $600,000 a year, got hit with a corruption indictment, and retired “with a record-high state pension of $500,000”.

Edited to add: Oh, look! Robert Rizzo also faces drunk driving charges! (Hattip: Reason “Hit and Run”.)