Bell Corruption: How Bell Hit Bottom

[Raksha]

I began reading this story in the print edition of the L.A. Times today and it caught my attention immediately. I was especially taken by the picture captioned "Joy and Relief" showing irate residents holding signs saying "Justice" and similar things. I see the situation in Bell as a microcosm for America under the boot of the kleptocracy. It wasn't hard for me to imagine those irate residents with torches and pitchforks, so I guess you could call this a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

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I assume this story of the rise and fall of the petty crook Robert Rizzo is old news to many of the regulars in the California forum. But I haven't been following it until today, and this article is a good overview or summary.


How Bell hit bottom

In 1993, 39-year-old Robert Rizzo arrived in town trailing the vague whiff of scandal. For a time he seemed like the man the working-class city needed — until he became an 'unelected and unaccountable czar.'

The new boss kept his office spartan and impersonal, the walls stripped of photos, the desk conveying no hint of his life beyond the red-brick walls of City Hall.

It was 1993, a bleak, recession-bit year, and Robert Rizzo arrived in Bell trailing the vague whiff of scandal. His last city administrator job, in the high desert city of Hesperia, had ended badly, with accusations that he'd steered city improvement funds toward salaries.

But the Bell officials who hired him did not dig deeply into his past. They needed someone fast, and Rizzo, then 39, came cheap. His starting salary was $78,000, which was $7,000 less than his predecessor had made.

"He was willing to work for the least amount of money," said then-Councilman Rolf Janssen. "That was what attracted me and several other council members."

Now Rizzo and seven other Bell leaders past and present are charged with looting more than $5.5 million from one of the county's poorest municipalities. It is a hydra-headed scandal that has spawned seven federal, state and county investigations and transformed a forgotten suburb into a synonym for rogue governance. It has resonated as a morality tale in which Rizzo is cast as a greed-crazed, cigar-chomping puppet master who cheated his way to an $800,000 salary and a 10-acre horse ranch.

How Rizzo evolved from an obscure civil servant into what a prosecutor called an "unelected and unaccountable czar" may never emerge in granular focus. But the broad contours are clear. Ambition and opportunity aligned in a place that allowed him to be both ever-present and invisible.

The normal checks and balances, from a robust local press to engaged civic groups, had largely vanished before or during Rizzo's long reign as city administrator. And the grim climate in which he arrived made him seem, for a time, like the man Bell needed.

Had he retired six or seven years ago, he might have been remembered as a reclusive technocrat who saved the city from financial ruin and made it purr. People talked about how pretty the parks were, how efficiently trash was removed, how swiftly gang graffiti was painted over.

Just last year, a police captain named Anthony Miranda ordered T-shirts for Neighborhood Watch participants imprinted with a prideful description of the 21/2 -square-mile city: La perla del sureste.

The pearl of the southeast.

"We believed it," he said. "Compared to our neighbors, Bell was the place to be."

<snip>

Source: L.A. Times

[DesertDiamond]

1. I would soooo love to see them in stocks in the village square with the townspeople...

throwing garbage at their heads. Funny, that image just popped into my mind and looked so darn great! LOL!