California Investigating Bell City Salaries

Here's a disturbing bit of municipal ethics news that was just brought to my attention by my colleague Frank Bucaro. The state of California is investigating the salaries of city officials in Bell, California where the median household makes $29,946 but the city manager was making $787,637, the police chief was making $457,000, and the assistant city manager was making $376,288. Apparently, all but one of their city council members have been making approximately $100,000 as part-time council members. (Insult to injury? The city also purportedly recently "cut its social services by $593,438 and public safety by $228,888, resulting in layoffs" as per the Los Angeles Times.) Yikes!

According to the AOL Online article,

"Five years ago, residents voted to become a charter city, meaning that Bell would be governed by its own rules without a salary cap for top officials. Only 400 people, or roughly 1 percent of the city's population, voted in the election."

If all of these allegations are accurate - and they certainly seem to be - this would easily earn the Bell officials and council members a spot in the municipal ethics Hall of Shame.

The state is trying to decide if this qualifies as theft. I suppose it may or may not be by legal standards. However, by ethical standards I can't imagine that there is even a question! What do you think?