City of Bell lent employees, elected officials nearly $900,000
Posted in News, what on August 18th, 2010 by admin – Comments Off
The city of Bell gave nearly $900,000 in loans to former City Administrator Robert Rizzo, city employees and at least two council members in the last several years, according to records reviewed by The Times.
The documents show that Bell’s former assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, received two loans of at least $100,000 each and that council members Oscar Hernandez and Luis Artiga received $20,000 loans. Rizzo, whose huge salary sparked a scandal that forced him and other city officials to step down, received two loans for $80,000 each, city officials said.
Neither Hernandez nor Artiga reported the loans on their state financial disclosure forms for 2009, which is required under state law.
Ethics probe may hurt other Democrats, but not Maxine Waters
Posted in News, Politics, Science, Tech on August 9th, 2010 by admin – Comments OffWhen the congresswoman entered, the crowd rose up like a congregation on Sunday morning for one, two, then three standing ovations.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D- Los Angeles) stood facing her cheering supporters. She wore a pencil skirt, pearls and a smile that looked curiously triumphant, considering the month she has had.
Waters, 71, has been at the center of a political battle since the House Ethics Committee revealed that it was investigating whether she had used her influence to gain advantage for OneUnited, a Massachusetts-based bank in which her husband has a financial interest.
Bell’s neighbors no strangers to public corruption
Posted in Crime, News, what on July 22nd, 2010 by admin – Comments Off
They flooded Bell City Hall with requests for public records and packed a council meeting with an overflow crowd.
They collected signatures demanding an audit of city officials’ salaries and vowed to boot their handsomely paid politicians out of office. They even created a website and posted documents that the city refused to put on its official site.
In the week since residents in this working-class suburb discovered that their city manager makes nearly $800,000 a year, Bell has experienced a sudden jolt of civic engagement. It’s an anger-fueled form of participatory democracy that’s relatively new for an immigrant-heavy town of about 40,000 not known for high voter turnout.
Steve Lopez: The bleeding Bell blues
Posted in Education, News, what on July 21st, 2010 by admin – Comments OffIn the newspaper business, when editors are asked what kinds of stories they want to go after, there’s a popular two-word answer. The first word is “holy” and the second word is unprintable.
Well, friends, my Times colleagues Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb dug up a genuine “holy [cow]” story in the town of Bell last week, exposing the staggering, colossal, unconscionable salaries that city officials have awarded themselves under the radar of the struggling town’s residents.
On Monday, I drove to Bell to see if I could make sense of how it all happened. I parked at City Hall, walked up to the counter and asked to speak to the nearly $800,000-a-year city manager, because I was dying to see what such a specimen looks like.
DWP defends withholding $73.5 million from L.A.
Posted in Health, News, Politics, what on July 21st, 2010 by admin – Comments OffExecutives with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Tuesday issued a sharply worded defense of their decision to withhold $73.5 million from city coffers in the middle of a recent fight over electricity rates, saying they did so to protect the utility’s credit rating and its customers.
During a lively exchange with City Council members, several of whom made no effort to disguise their disdain for the DWP, current and former managers of the nation’s largest municipally owned utility responded to a report that accused them of misleading both the council and the public about the agency’s financial health.
After a lengthy standoff between the council and DWP over proposed rate increases, City Controller Wendy Greuel reviewed the utility’s records and concluded that, contrary to its claim, the utility could have made the promised transfer to the cash-strapped city budget without first being granted the increase.
But DWP Interim Chief Financial Officer Mario C. Ignacio said Greuel’s report contained “material misstatements of fact” and wrongly concluded that the utility could have dipped into an $800-million cash balance to make the transfer.
L.A. council unanimously confirms new Animal Services head
Posted in News, what on July 14th, 2010 by admin – Comments OffThe Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously confirmed Brenda Barnette as general manager of the Department of Animal Services, the city’s municipal shelter system that Councilman Greig Smith described as “under siege for a long time.”
Barnette follows in the troubled path of two previous general managers. Her predecessor resigned under fire a year ago and the manager before him was fired by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Well aware of the devoted but fractious community of rescuers, volunteers and shelter staffers that she must work with, Barnette told council members: “What I would ask the entire community is to agree on only three things — that we need to save more animals’ lives in the shelter, that we need to spay and neuter more animals in our community and that we need to work to end the cruelty because that will make this a safer community for both the animals and the people.”
Villaraigosa’s acceptance of tickets raises political issues
Posted in Entertainment, News, Science on June 29th, 2010 by admin – Comments OffLos Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has argued for weeks that his acceptance of free tickets to concerts, awards shows and athletic events is not subject to state gift disclosure law because his attendance is part of his official duties.
Yet beyond the thorny legal issues, Villaraigosa faces a political question: Can he drive a hard bargain with entities that do millions of dollars in business with the city if they are also giving him access to pricey entertainment?
Villaraigosa has been spotted in a box behind home plate singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with Frank McCourt, owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, at one of 15 games he says he attended free of charge since 2005. Yet he and his appointees are also charged with addressing issues involving the stadium and the McCourt-owned Los Angeles Marathon.
Anschutz Entertainment Group confirmed recently that it welcomed the mayor into its own luxury suites at Staples Center and Nokia Theatre — two venues that it owns — during an unknown number of games and concerts. Villaraigosa supported AEG in a recent dustup over billboards and backed its 2005 request for at least $246 million in tax breaks for a hotel at L.A. Live.
Red light camera pact would need exemption from Arizona boycott
Posted in News, what on June 21st, 2010 by admin – Comments OffTwo much-debated City Hall issues are expected to converge this week when the Los Angeles Police Department’s red light camera program moves to the front of the line for an exemption from the city’s contracting boycott of Arizona over that state’s new immigration enforcement law.
On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider — and appears likely to approve — an exception to the boycott allowing a 10-month extension of a multimillion-dollar agreement with Scottsdale-based American Traffic Solutions.
The firm operates cameras at 32 city intersections that catch tens of thousands of red light violators each year. The council’s Public Safety Committee says the exception is justified because red light cameras provide a “significant benefit to public safety.”
