Robert Rizzo Robert Rizzo, the city administrator of Bell,
California, made a staggering $787,000 dollars a year. For reference, the US President only makes
$400,000 dollars a year. The leader of the free world has slightly more
responsibility than the administrator of Bell, California, so clearly, something is up here.
And that was just the first year of his scam. He gave himself a yearly 12% raise, so the last year
he was in office, he made 1.5 million. Before the entire scam came tumbling down, Rizzo's exorbitant
salary became public knowledge. And he actually had the nerve to defend it. He said if that's a
number people choke on, maybe he's in the wrong business. He could go into a private business
and make that kind of money. He believed the council compensated him for the job he'd done.
Basically, he argued he could be making even more money,
so everyone should just shut up about it. It's also worth noting that Rizzo
never made anywhere close to that much money working in the private sector.
Not only did Rizzo get a suspiciously high salary, but he got some interesting benefits as well.
Rizzo got 28 weeks off per year by combining his paid vacation,
sick time, and personal time. That's 7 months a year. He was out of the office more than he
was in the office. And if he had gotten away with everything, the money would have kept on
rolling even after he quit because he had set up an 880,000 dollar per year pension for himself.
Where did all this money come from? Well, like most government salaries and programs,
it came from taxes. But to afford all of this, the city of Bell almost
doubled taxes for sewer, trash, and other public services without any voter approval.
Bell, California A scandal of this
proportion was possible because of Bell's unique demographics. Bell is a small suburb
of LA that only covers 2.5 square miles. 38 thousand people live there, and it's one of
the poorer cities in LA county. About one in six residents live below the poverty line. In 2009,
Bell's per capita income was only 25 thousand dollars a year. 90 percent of
residents are Hispanic or Latino, most of whom don't have a high school degree.
But perhaps the biggest factor that allowed this level of corruption was that Bell is a charter
city. In 2005, Bell City became a charter city without anyone really noticing. The ballot measure
didn't get much attention. But by becoming a charter city, Bell became exempt from salary
regulations set by the state. After that, they were free to pay themselves whatever they wanted.
Fish in a Barrel Bell was, unfortunately,
the perfect target for something like this. There isn't much to Bell,
to begin with. There are only two commercial strips. One has small mom-and-pop stores,
and the other has some chains. The mayor owned a liquor store that was across the
street from an elementary school, which says something about the state of the city.
The highlight was perhaps the park, which has elliptical machines that anyone can use. Public
officials pointed at the park to defend their nonexistent accomplishments, anyway. How many
elliptical machines does someone need to justify a salary that's double what the President makes?
The people of Bell were either unaware of the problem or too scared to speak up. An NPR article
covering the scandal said that one woman they found at the park wouldn't talk to them because
she lived in public housing and was scared of getting kicked out if she criticized
the government. Many people in Bell also either work for the city, receive some kind of welfare,
or aren't US citizens. These are the kinds of people who could potentially be punished
the hardest by corrupt government officials. Bell was a shady politician's dream come true.
Before Rizzo and the other officials started this whole scam, Bell was not a city that got much
attention from the LA Times, or any other news outlet. There are 88 cities in LA county with
endless water boards, school districts, and thousands of other places to focus on.
Bell just flew under the radar, lost in one of the densest places in America.
Even a paper the size of the LA Times has to pick and choose what they look into. They don't have
unlimited finances to look everywhere. Especially now that advertisers are shifting so much of their
spending away from print news media. At the time, the paper's corporate parent, the Tribune Co, was
in bankruptcy court, and the Times staff was cut in half. They weren't exactly in tip-top shape to
go around doing hardcore investigative journalism and exposing corruption. This could be another
reason why the Bell officials got away with it for as long as they did. Nobody ever came snooping.
Ruben Vives The ridiculous
salaries and other corruption were eventually discovered largely thanks to reporter Ruben Vives,
who started his career as a copy boy. Vives discovered the story almost by accident. The
neighboring city of Maywood needed money, so they wanted Bell to take over their city services like
policing. A colleague of Vive's learned of an investigation into the pay of Bell's city
council members. Their attention landed on Bell, and they asked for public documents on salary.
They had to call the city clerk in Bell every day to ask for the documents, and they only got
them after threatening to sue the city. The day that they finally got the documents was
unusual. Vives had to go and meet Rizzo in person at a conference room near the park.
Nine city officials and lawyers accompanied him for what should have been a routine interview.
Vives and other reporters eventually figured out what was going on.
Only 400 people voted in the 2005 decision to make Bell a charter city.
New city commissions gave council members swanky new jobs that paid way more than they did before.
Vives and the LA times also got some help from locals. One of these locals, an anonymous writer
who goes by the pen name Pedro Parramo, had actually been blogging about corruption in
Bell for years. But his audience was so small that he got nowhere. His true identity is unknown, and
whenever he appeared in public, he wore a luchador mask. Not all heroes wear capes, we guess.
These are the eccentric, dedicated people who tend to get involved in local-level politics. And in
this case, it's a good thing he did. People at the LA Times said Parramo gave them lots of tips.
Other citizens attempted to get involved in the past unsuccessfully. People went to city hall to
ask their own questions, trying to understand why taxes were suddenly through the roof.
But this never got anywhere. City officials gave them the runaround and continuously told angry
citizens that they would get back to them. Of course, they never actually got back to them.
Deep Roots How deep did this local government conspiracy go?
It involved a lot more people than just Rizzo. The Bell city police chief, Randy Adams, became
heavily involved. When Rizzo hired him, he claimed to suffer from back, knee, and neck injuries.
The day he was hired, he declared himself to be disabled. The disability status would
have given him millions of tax-free pension dollars. Under the agreement, he would have
received lifetime disability whenever he wanted to retire. The pension was 400 thousand dollars a
year. It would have been the third biggest in the California state pension system.
The disability was, of course, totally fake. Adams took spin classes and ran in
the Glendale Downtown Dash, a 5K race. When he applied for the job of Orange County sheriff,
he wrote on his application that he liked to ski and had been in the 120 mile Baker
to Las Vegas Relay run. These are all things that would be very difficult to
do if you were so disabled that you couldn't perform any police duties.
Adams' salary was 457 thousand dollars, almost double that of the LAPD Chief. For reference,
the LAPD Chief oversees almost 13,000 employees. Bell's police department had 48.
In some of Adams' leaked emails, the conspiracy became even more painfully clear. He had emailed
back and forth with the assistant city manager and discussed how they would arrange his
wild salary so that the taxpaying citizens wouldn't find out about it. Adam wrote in one
email, "I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell's money."
The mayor of Bell, Oscar Hernandez, defended all of these absurd salaries. He told
the people of Bell that the salaries were in line with similar positions over the period.
Completely untrue, of course, but that was his excuse. He also accused the LA
Times of skewing the facts. Hernandez was recalled, then arrested, and then
indicted on fraud and a few other charges. The corrupt officials of Bell had other means
of getting money besides just inflated salaries. They came up with other roundabout ways to send
themselves money. The city dealt a lot with businesses owned by Dennis Tarango, who just so
happened to be one of Rizzo's business partners. The city paid his companies more than 10 million
dollars, and they continued to pay them even after their contracts had technically expired.
One audit revealed that one time Tarango sent a blank invoice to the city for 20 thousand dollars,
and they paid it. Misappropriation
Corruption this blatant can only last for so long. In September 2010,
Rizzo and most of the city council were arrested and charged with misappropriation of public funds.
Mayor Hernandez refused to answer the door when the police came for him,
and the sheriff's department had to use a battering ram and bring him out in handcuffs.
Rizzo had to turn in his passport and wear an electronic monitoring device. Since his
resignation, Rizzo has continued to request that the city of Bell pay his legal bills. Yes,
he was trying to take even more money from the city. He has also claimed,
incredibly, that the city owes him back pay. A non-corrupt councilman
said Rizzo resigned without severance pay. He wouldn't even get a penny cut in half.
Rizzo's drama continued during his preliminary hearing. He claimed to feel lightheaded and was
experiencing chest pain. Paramedics carried him out on a stretcher. He was released from
the hospital the next day and ended up sleeping through a good portion of his actual hearing.
Aftermath The reporter who broke the story, Vives, became a
local celebrity in Bell. People recognize him and take pictures with him when he visits. He can't
even get a drink without someone stepping in and buying it for him. A group of heartless people may
have run the city for way too long, but thanks to people like Vivies and the Luchador Hero of Bell,
those corrupt politicians will rot in prison for years to come. Rizzo was sentenced to twelve years
in prison and will be paying back the people of Bell for the rest of his miserable life.
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