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July 23, 2010

When People Don’t Pay Attention…

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: — Bill @ 1:58 pm

The scandal that has erupted in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, California, (population 38,000) is an example of how predatory, self-serving city officials will loot a city treasury if the townspeople trust them too much and don’t pay attention to what the folks at city hall are doing.

On Thursday night, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer (salary $800K), Police Chief (salary $457K), and Assistant City Manager (salary $376K) resigned after a contentious public meeting in front of irate townspeople.  Not surprisingly, the Mayor and City Council initially defended approving the outrageously high salaries, to which the townspeople responded, “Recall them, too!” 

Here is a link to several stories listed in Google News.  One of the best news stories, though, is running in The Washington Times online of Saturday, July 24 under the headline Calif. city council accepts resignations of high-paid managers.   It isn’t really until near the story’s end the reader in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, can begin to see both connections and disconnections with this story.  For example:

1.  It wasn’t until the Los Angeles Times newspaper did its job and wrote a series of stories (note the word “series”) exposing the probably legal but highly predatory conduct of elected and appointed city officials that the citizens of Bell learned just how badly they were being victimized.   Contrast that with the utter failure of either the Coeur d’Alene Press or The Spokesman-Review to cover major local stories about failures of our own local government officials.  Perhaps the abrogation of responsibility by our alleged newspapers is because their owners, publishers, and editors do understand that the people here would respond to our own government’s misdeeds the same as the people in Bell did.  Local newspapers here exist to regulate the public’s access to essential information, not provide it uniformly and consistently.  Control the information people get and you control their conduct.

2.  The article also reported, “The [Los Angeles] county district attorney’s office is investigating to determine if the high salaries for the council members violate any state laws.”  Imagine that.  An investigation by a county prosecuting attorney’s office into the official conduct and administration of local officials.  Don’t look for that any time soon in Kootenai County.

3.  In defending the high salaries of not only the three officials who resigned but also the high salaries and benefits paid to part-time Bell city council members, Bell Mayor Oscar Hernandez invoked what I call the “But look at all the bright shiny objects” defense:  “Though many residents are poor, Mr. Hernandez said they live in a city they can be proud of, one with a $22.7 million budget surplus, clean streets, refurbished parks and numerous programs for people of all ages. He pointed proudly down a street to a park filled with new exercise equipment.”  Apparently when small-town mayors like our own Mayor Sandi “Bling-Bling” Bloem get their “How-to-be-a-mayor” handbook, they are encouraged to use superficialities to try to divert attention from misdeeds, malconduct, and nonfeasance.

The blow-up in Bell, California, made national news because the people in the community became informed through a series of stories in their local newspaper, The Los Angeles Times.  Then the people came together and took action.    That could set a dangerous precedent if other communities followed suit.

5 Comments

  1. This story would be almost unbelievable, if it weren’t true! The audacity of those officials to first vote themselves that kind of outrageous income and then, when it’s discovered by the news & public, to try to defend it?

    My question, Bill, is what in the heck could they have used as a defense for such high salaries?

    Comment by mary — July 24, 2010 @ 8:43 am

  2. Mary, No doubt they thought that they deserved those salaries. Were the salaries decided behind closed doors?

    Comment by Susie Snedaker — July 24, 2010 @ 10:05 am

  3. Mary,

    I think that’s the point. Their city attorney told them they could legally do it, they knew the public whose pockets they were picking wasn’t paying attention, so they just did it. They didn’t have to justify it to anyone. The fix was in and the casino was rigged. It wasn’t until the Los Angeles Times shined the light of public scrutiny on the practice that it started to unravel.

    Comment by Bill — July 24, 2010 @ 11:25 am

  4. Ah…the power of a free and responsible press. Wish we had more of that these days!

    Comment by mary — July 24, 2010 @ 2:19 pm

  5. Mary, we do have OurIdaho.com, a project of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. If one wants to see all the over the top salaries for public employees, this is the place to go. Cruise through the links to the City of Coeur d’Alene. When our city fathers and mothers told us a few days ago there must be and will be a tax increase in order to not cut any services, we know that the services must be so highly demanded and delivered because they are the product of very smart people who probably are worth more than the hundreds of thousands of dollar salaries the city pays them.

    Comment by Gary Ingram — July 25, 2010 @ 10:19 am

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