The Victorious Opposition

I am the Papi Chulo in my parts. Have no kids, but I am a father figure to many. All I can do is offer my advice to some of the moms around. One mom is an Armenian mom, whose son is now someone interested in art. Look, I’m not one to chide grammar and spelling. In point of fact, I know many here who could just simply copy and paste my errors. However, I am not a teacher. The person who penned this email is, though:

Hallow Mrs. *******ian,
L**n is in my Drawing and Painting 3 class. He needs a sketchbook, drawing book, drawing pencils (HB, 2B, and 4B). We are planning to work with watercolor and acrylic paints. Oil paint is optional. It’s only if the student is whiling to experiment that medium. There are no art supplies in our student store at GHS. Art stores, Office Depot, Staples, and Michaels are the places for you to purchase materials mentioned. I appreciate your E Mail. Contact me please if you have more questions. My extention is ****.

Yes, this is one hundred percent accurate, and from a bonafide government worker here in California. I’m willing to bet that this person makes a shit load of money, and I am even more willing to bet that he’s probably getting kick backs from the companies he’s telling my surrogate kid to run to. Go Gummint!!

Not content with being the contaminant in the water, these tapeworms actually filched people for flushing.

Bell - The Bell City Council is holding a special meeting this morning after revelations that Bell residents have been overcharged hundreds of thousands of dollars in sewer fees.

That’s the latest scandal to hit the Los Angeles suburb.

An audit by the state controller found that property owners overpaid nearly $622,000 after sewer fees were increased in 2007without voter approval. Some people were paying 2 1/2 times the allowable maximum rate.

The city says it’s reviewing the finding but there’s no word on whether anyone will get a refund.

The finding comes several weeks after auditors found that Bell residents were overcharged nearly $3 million in taxes to fund pensions for city workers.

The city’s finances are under investigation after revelations that City Council members and top officials earned massive salaries to govern a city of about 40,000 people.

I would say these “people”, but the slugs who ran Bell are not deserving of the title of humanity. They’re less than human. However, this chunder that comprised Bell seemed to get a kick out of serving the public blompkens for sewer charges. Unfortunately California has legalized government workers to get away with full blown felonies, something that the police stories I read about daily verify. The shit stains that line the City Halls of this state are pretty much the worst criminals that were ever aborted.

As California edges toward bankruptcy, I just want to let you all know something. If California defaults on its loans, all of the shit stain corn riddled turds that are the “government workers” will schlepp this obligation onto the feds, meaning that you all in another state will be obligated to all of these sewer rats. And they are making some serious dough. And they’re all democrats shit stains that raise taxes, fire teachers and cops to pay themselves raises, and act criminally to suit their needs.

Paying a cop 500,000 dollars a year will soon be a Federal concern. As with any business that has no way to control itself, California is quickly heading towards all players being CEOs, and really, with the salaries I’ve posted.. How many of you honestly think that anyone other than a CEO deserves to make 100K+ a year? Well, the state workers beg to differ, and they’re willing to bet the state on it.

I am still just shaking my head at this one.

LOS ANGELES—The man accused of being the notorious ” Grim Sleeper” serial killer has reportedly collected $300,000 in pension payments, and will continue to collect them until he dies.

City documents obtained by L.A. Weekly show that Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57, has been collecting monthly disability pension checks from the L.A. pension system for 19 years after being injured while working as a garbage collector.

The first checks, in 1991, were a little less than $900; they are now $1,658.54 per month, according to documents obtained by the Weekly, which reported that his running total so far is $300,000. If he lives to age 82, that amount would reach $1 million.

The Office of the City Attorney told the Weekly that Franklin cannot be cut off, even if he’s convicted and sent to death row. He or his family will be paid until he dies.

I feel no shame in calling him a paid felon, because he’s also been convicted for other felonies and served jail time. I’ve read in some articles that the disability he applied for and received is now being drawn into question, as the application time came shortly after one of the suspect’s murders.

So, as the article states, should he live long enough he will be another millionaire pensioner here in California. Not too shabby, huh? A garbage man, felon and suspected serial killer can’t be denied his city pension even on death row. This is exactly the reason why I believe we should stop government pensions altogether in favor of a 401K system (like everyone else in the “real” world). Throwing aside, for the moment, that he is now suspected of society’s most heinous crimes, he’s exactly what I was speaking of with this out of control pension system. He’s going to have receive a total of a million dollars (on top of the free room and board he might receive behind bars).

I blame the Unions and CalPers for a system which can’t even root out felons from receiving pensions. If there’s no penalty for bad behavior, why even have any measure of employment whatsoever? Just call it what it is, tax funded welfare, and be done with it. 

The more I read about this story, I have to say, the more pissed I get.

The city of Bell illegally raised its property taxes in 2007 and must immediately give up $2.9 million it has collected since then, state Controller John Chiang said Friday.

Chiang ordered Bell to immediately reduce the “retirement tax” rate, which its City Council increased in 2007 to cover rising pension costs for its employees. The reductions will apply to the next round of property taxes due in November, said Jacob Roper, a spokesman for Chiang.

“Taxpayers should not have had to pay that money,” Roper said.

The controller’s finding appears to confirm longstanding complaints from Bell property owners that they were being overtaxed. The Times reported last month that Bell officials collected huge paychecks, that the city had cut police and other services and that its property owners were paying higher tax rates than all but one city in Los Angeles County.

The owner of a home in Bell with an assessed value of $400,000 will save about $360 a year because of the cut, an official with the Los Angeles County auditor-controller’s office said Friday.

But Bell residents won’t be getting a tax refund. According to state law, the nearly $3-million overpayment cannot be refunded to taxpayers and must instead go to schools in the city, Roper said.

Villains. Scum. Vermin. Shitbags. Goons. I can’t quite find an adjective that exemplifies these people enough. I don’t really ask for much when I post these, it’s pretty much a personal doom that we all have to live in California to know that we private mongers work for the financial security and criminal abuses of the state. However, one thing I sympathize with the people in my sister city.

Any of you that read here, imagine you are one of the people that live in this city. You are paying taxes into a potentially criminal enterprise. One that has literally criminally robbed you, stolen education from your children, stolen your services and paid itself dividends while everyone starved. Bell is a working class town. These are the same people that were probably laid off from what little factories the government here hasn’t squeezed out. There’s probably so many sob stories of families devastated by this economy, losing mostly everything.

Now, they find out that the government they paid taxes to, were the ultimate criminals. Not a meth dealer, not a rapist, or murderer, the government. I don’t think I care if anyone will care to agree with me or not, but this is not only wrong, the perpetrators need punishments reserved for the most vile creatures of society.

What’s the worst part? The knowledge that they get away with it, unless there can be something proven. What astounds me is that if there were even a hint of this in the private sector. Even a whiff of wrongdoing, these people would be out. Because of the laws here in California, a government worker gets a free pass to literally rob the public, unless a lengthy and expensive trial can prove them otherwise.

If you’ve read the blog for the time that I’ve been writing my California’s Gold posts, this city is exhibit A-Z of what I’ve been talking about for the duration of I’ve written it. Some can’t really stand to be wrong, no matter how much it costs. For those people the chicken coop murders. Think it doesn’t happen?

I know how I’m voting this November. Some of the highlights are that pensions are a 500 billion dollar unfunded time bomb. It quite literally is robbing programs and services, and more than 9 thousand employees are in the 100K range, up 50 percent over last year.

It was mentioned that Arnold’s special election stances in 2005 were the same, but the difference now is that everyone is getting more and more aware of this situation. Bell’s fallout added to some of the fervor, but I think now the private sector is starting to whiff this rotten petunia, and they don’t like it. As for Rizzo, he could quite possibly get a million dollars a year for his pension.

Former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo, whose $787,637 salary prompted widespread outrage, received an unusually lucrative package of benefits that increased his annual compensation to more than $1.5 million, according to city records reviewed by The Times.

Rizzo’s benefits package for this year, which covers time off, retirement and medical and other types of insurance, shows he was entitled to vacation and sick leave that totaled more than 28 weeks a year.

Bell’s interim city attorney said Saturday that Rizzo’s compensation package raised serious questions and that the city planned to investigate who approved the perks and whether they are legal.

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“It appears Rizzo was getting an inordinate amount of hours of vacation and sick benefits and being paid for it,” said James Casso of the law firm Meyers Nave. “We’re looking to see when it was approved, whether it was approved at a City Council meeting and who approved it.”

Compensation experts said Rizzo’s benefits package is far above the norm.

“This is extraordinary, it is outlandish and in absolutely no way represents” normal compensation for city managers, said Dave Mora, West Coast regional director of the International City/County Management Assn. and a retired city manager. ” ‘Extreme’ is a kind word.”

The revelations come as the L.A. County district attorney’s office and California attorney general’s office are investigating high salaries received by Rizzo and other top city administrators as well as City Council members, four of whom earned nearly $100,000 a year before cutting their pay two weeks ago.

Details about Rizzo’s full compensation are contained in city records requested by The Times under the California Public Records Act. Rizzo did not return calls seeking comment.

The documents provided by the city set Rizzo’s total annual compensation at $1,540,299.96, which included some unspecified benefits.

Casso said city officials were still trying to understand the compensation agreement. The documents appear to show that Rizzo was to receive 107 vacation days and 36 sick days a year. The documents don’t specifically say he would be paid for each of these days, but they list his total compensation for vacation and sick time at $386,786 a year.

The documents show the city would pay $48,996 annually into Rizzo’s deferred compensation plan. Bell also paid $20,496 into Rizzo’s 457 plan, which is similar to a 401(k) for government employees. These retirement funds were in addition to his public employee pension. The city also paid his contribution to the public pension.

A Times analysis estimated that Rizzo would collect an annual pension of more than $600,000 upon retirement.

According to Rizzo’s contract, the city was supposed to pay the full amount of his 457 plan in the first 10 days of the year, meaning he could benefit from an entire year of interest or investment gains. The city paid both his health insurance and any medical bills not covered by insurance.

It’s normal for city administrators to receive vacation and sick days, solid medical coverage and contributions to retirement accounts.

But there is evidence Rizzo’s deal was exorbitant.

For example, the total compensation of Arcadia’s city manager went from $220,000 to $272,000 when benefits and deferred compensation were added, according to city records. In Redondo Beach, the city manager’s total compensation went from $211,000 to $254,000 when benefits were added, according to city records.

Mora said that although Rizzo was receiving the same types of benefits other city officials receive, he appeared in many cases to be getting much more generous benefits. Rizzo “seems to have every potential benefit, and it’s taken at the max,” he said.

Two council members expressed shock Saturday when told about Rizzo’s total compensation, insisting they had no idea how much he was earning.

Councilman Luis Artiga said he was “ashamed” after being told of the numbers. “I’m disgusted, I’m sick and I feel like crying,” he said.

Councilman Lorenzo Velez added: “I feel like I’ve been raped, my insides have been gutted out.”

On Friday, the city released documents showing that several department heads were earning more than $200,000, including two whose total compensation topped $400,000. Documents obtained by The Times also show that the city had made payments of more than $100,000 each to two officials in addition to their reported compensation.

Each and every taxpayer in all of the cities Rizzo worked will be footing the bill for his retirement, which when you factor in cost of living increases could total more than a million dollars a year. With that in mind, I think you’re probably going to see a pretty big turnout this November on this issue alone. The Governor said he won’t sign a bill that doesn’t address pension reform, but I think it’s the most major issue I will use when voting anyone into office.

At first, I thought it was probably just a SoCal thing, since Bell is in our backyard, but I talked to a friend of mine up in the Bay and it apparently is a pretty contentious topic there too. It seems that people aren’t all too happy to be losing all of our services because of unmitigated pension obligation.

Bad.

Rialto police officers had group sex with employees of the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club at the police narcotics office and the police union headquarters, according to a claim filed against the Inland Empire city.

Nancy Holtgreve, a server at the club, says that more than two officers engaged in sexual conduct with strip club employees, and that one officer used the department’s narcotics office for sexual liaisons during the last two years. Her relationship with one officer soured when she got pregnant, she alleges, and the officer began threatening her.

The claim filed Monday alleges that the behavior “fostered and perpetuated a culture of unwanted sexual harassment of females by male police officers.”

“This sexual behavior happened on duty and off duty,” Danuta Tuszynska, Holtgreve’s attorney, said Friday. “I have a picture of an officer exposing himself in his uniform … I don’t know how the chief and bosses couldn’t know about it in such a small department.”

Wowzers. Well, I guess this is just another individual action, like an animator stealing pencils from the office, that could be pointed out. These allegations are fascinating in their amount and in depth of detail.

It’s not shocking to me, but there seems to be this small cheer leader squad that can defend all this behavior. How could anyone wearing a badge, or sworn to uphold the public good defend this, if true? I hope they get to the bottom of this quickly, because a loss of trust with the public has already happened with Bell. All of this stuff is just making it worse,

Los Angeles, scampering under the light in the kitchen, has produced an Excel document of what the public employees make.It’s everything I said it was. I guess that there’s really no more debate. Almost everyone here makes at least 70,000 or more, most make over 100,000 and in the shitty Excel document there’s not even any accounting for names or overtime.

Here’s a couple more little tibits that I know can’t really be defended either: More high salary scumbags in Bell. and Bell’s bond debt more than35 million dollars. It seems voters didn’t approve that, either.

This is another interesting thing that started out harmlessly enough but has now grown to encompass a statewide witch burning. The truth will come out, and pension reform will happen this year. God willing, it can be retroactive if there can be any proof of shenanigans. I’ve come a long way from that very first thread I posted about a bunch of shitbags hugging a bus route for revenue. Two years later we’re about to really clean some fucking house here.

Update:
So my original arguments about “assistants”  seem to be ringing true. There are some very amazing revelations here, and I don’t want any of you that read here to be deceived by silver tongue. You can read all through those salaries and decide for yourself if I’m out to lunch. I know I’m not, it was only a matter of time ,like a Zoo Manager that makes 200K. No wonder we’re going broke.

The silence seems to be deafening as we really, really find out who the true criminals are here in teh Golden State. Every day edges us closer to taking our rights back. And getting these criminals out of office. Goons.

So, we’re screwed, in essence. Another four years and 30 percent of our general fund will be paying full salary to our precious government workers. The people providing us these services will also be the downfall of us not being able to receive them due to outlandish and un-paralleled obligation after retirement. The chart in the news clip is particularly interesting, it compares one salary in the public sector to one in private. The public one gets to retire 10 years faster than the private, shave a meager 10 percent of salary (compared to a fractional 401K investment) and live happily ever after. Who cares, it’s tax money, it’ll be there forever!

One interesting thing of note here in California after the Bell meltdown is the amount of attention there is on CALPERS, corruption in governance and scrutiny about how our money is being spent. Our discourse thread had an interesting debate about wealth accumulation being an infinite pie chart. Here in California as I’m watching these debates, it seems that some of these public unions truly believe that the tax trough is not only infinite, but will continue to grow over the next decade. And hey, they want their fair share of it.

The problems are starting to percolate with this public employee utopia that’s been legislated over the last decade. The pool of labor is drying up (I would say it’s directly tied to incompetence in governance and regulation). I read a story about Boeing leaving California. A company that large will undoubtedly have a polished PR statement to deliver to the news. Something along the lines of “We’ll miss you baby, but I gotta go!”

Some would scoff at Boeing leaving, a drop in the bucket. There’s plenty of pools in California to look for, and Google Earth’s reach extends far beyond California. However, there’s also been Toyota, and others who have started packing bags for a less hostile environment. These developments are starting to stack up, creating an awfully precarious situation here of revenue loss.

Again, no biggie, right? As Bell has shown in their blueprint, undocumented illegals are a wealth of income and in no short supply here in California. They gotta drive right? I mean, who are they going to complain to? There’s gotta be enough scofflaws out there to cover this budget salary somewhere (see you can actually say that when an upwards of 30 percent of your city’s general fund will be exactly that-salary).

Let no stone go un-turned, though. We’ve had one hell of a dust up about whether these isolated instances that I point out of abuse are orchestrated and condoned, or if they’re just a few people gaming the system. I mean, who’s to say Rizzo wasn’t worth his weight in gold? If he and other could turn government into a wealth making enterprise, so be it, right? And it’s just him, not anyone else, so just put a cork in it.

Wrong-o. It seems that wasn’t as lucid as once thought.

I read this interesting Op-ED in the LA Times today, an it makes a lot of sense.

Marcia Fritz remembers it distinctly: She had a chilled glass of Handley chardonnay in her hand and was chatting with friends on the shores of Lake Tahoe in August of 2002. She was totally relaxed until one of her pals brought up an official in her mid-size city who was retiring. His pension was to be based on a 3-50 formula.

Fritz, a certified public accountant, nearly choked.

The 3-50 formula meant that the official could retire at age 50 with a pension based on 3% of his final salary, multiplied by his years of public service. If he made, say, $200,000 a year and had 25 years on the books, he’d get $150,000 a year until the day he died, plus benefits and cost-of-living increases.

Like I’ve been saying here for years, these benefits are unprecedented and really unsustainable given the number of working years required. I don’t know what the system in France is exactly, but seeing as how even they’ve had to reform their system to reality, so too should the State of California.

It was like winning the lottery.

“I was stunned,” says the Citrus Heights resident, who would go on to lead a statewide pension reform movement.

Fritz, who calls herself a fiscally conservative Democrat, could not believe that such a generous pension was available to a public employee only 50 years old and potentially in line to collect a retirement check for more years than he had worked. How could taxpayers afford that?

“I just instinctively knew when I heard 3-50 that we were in trouble.”

And so we are, with the fiasco in the city of Bell hammering home that point after a Times expose on a city administrator making nearly $800,000. Robert “Ratso” Rizzo’s pension could hit $700,000 a year, while residents of low-income Bell pay the second highest property tax rate in L.A. County to foot the excesses of city leaders.

But we’ve got public pension trouble across the deficit-ridden state, even where retirement payouts aren’t nearly as obscene. The crashed economy, along with corruption scandals and boneheaded investments by the state’s public pension system, CalPERS, means taxpayers have had to fork over an extra $600 million for pensions this year. According to Fritz, thousands of retired public employees in California collect $100,000 a year or more, often with medical benefits too.

I don’t have a problem with safety nets in retirement. But do they have to be spun from gold?

My sentiments exactly, and the minute I heard about the Rizzo scandal, my immediate thought was “and how much of a pension do we owe him?” Apparently, three quarters of a million dollars every year until he dies, quite possibly with cost of living increases. I don’t think people around the state quite caught on to the brevity of the situation until that happened. I’m completely okay with a reasonable and fair system, one that doesn’t leave anyone hanging but this is out of control.

Pensions? They went “poof” in the private sector years ago. And the argument that public servants deserve better retirement benefits because they work at lower pay than the rest of us doesn’t hold up in this economy.

So how did we get into this mess, with Fritz and others predicting calamity if we don’t get more of the kinds of reforms Gov. Schwarzenegger has worked out with half a dozen state employee labor unions? When Fritz got home from that trip to Tahoe and did some research, she discovered that the seeds of the current disaster were sewn in 1999.

That year, with the economy fat and public officials happy, the state banked on an endless run of milk and honey. Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature — with nearly unanimous bipartisan support — raised pensions for state workers to nation-leading levels under SB 400. Many cities, counties and other public entities joined the party, and smiling union leaders could tell their members they had gotten a spectacular return on years of faithful campaign donations.

Fritz, of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, tried unsuccessfully to get a pension reform plan on the ballot last year. A former consultant to CalPERS and a task force member for the national Government Accounting Standards Board, she said her continued mission is to educate the public on the potential pension tsunami and lobby for reform.

Both candidates for governor, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, have made pension reform proposals for state employees. Fritz likes some of their ideas, but she thinks we need even bigger changes, and they need to extend to all public employees.

If she were in charge, new employees wouldn’t be able to boost their pensions with what she calls a Sears catalog of extras, such as adding the value of vacation time to their final pay. Pensions would be based on an average of the final three years of an employee’s salary instead of the final year, so late-career spikes like Rizzo’s don’t break the bank.

Fritz said cops and firefighters now retire, on average, at 54, while other government employees retire at 59. If each group worked five years longer, she said, the public cost would be cut in half. She’d also require all employees to contribute to their own pensions and drastically lower the formulas for figuring retirement pay.

In Bell, where the staggering salaries of top executives are under investigation and they were forced to resign, the pension formula is one of the more generous in the state. In the case of Rizzo, it’s 2.7% of his $787,637 salary multiplied by three decades in three public jobs, with the gravy train starting at his current age of 55. That puts him between $600,000 and $700,000 a year in pension pay.

Maybe we should thank the dirty rat. His greed and arrogance were so monumental, he’s shocked the entire state, and that just might send the whole gravy train right off the tracks.

I agree, but I will say it again. Rizzo’s damage might be done, and the special election he held to make Bell a “charter city” might be all that she wrote for him and the salaries of his cronies. What can still be accomplished is reform, and major reform. Now that the eyes are finally on this upside down system, maybe people would be willing to change it.

Another thing that caught my eye in follow up stories was just how Rizzo and team raised revenue so that he and friends could usurp 10 percent of Bell’s annual budget to pay themselves. In addition to Bell paying the second highest taxes in Los Angeles County, still having to suffer losses to service, there was also a lot of ticketing it appears.

The City Council was apparently enthralled with Rizzo, its city manager. He started in the early 1990s at $72,000 per year, reaching $300,000 in 2004, one of the highest-paid public employees in California. His contract called for raises of 12 percent per year. This, to run a city with, according to Governing magazine, just 80 employees.

Perhaps to ensure their loyalty, Rizzo pushed the council members to change Bell from a “general-law” city — governed by state laws that restrict City Council pay — to a “charter” city, which has wide latitude to, among other things, pay the council members far more, in this case nearly $100,000 per year.

(As a charter city, the Los Angeles City Council used these same wide-ranging salary rules to push through a complex, voter-approved pay-raise formula that has steadily hiked the council’s salary to $178,789, making it the highest in the U.S. They now earn more than members of Congress or federal judges.)

In Bell, the changeover to a charter city passed easily, though fewer than 500 Bell residents voted.

Jose Gomez, who co-owns Taqueria Jalisco near City Hall, says he is embarrassed that he voted for it.

But Gomez’s yea vote was hardly unreasonable, says Bob Stern, president of the think tank Center for Governmental Studies. “We want to control our destiny. We all like local control. They didn’t say, ‘By the way, we’re going to pay our City Council $100,000 per year.’ ”

To help pay the exorbitant salaries, in addition to cutting services and laying off workers, the city devised a cunning scheme to raise revenue. In its working-class neighborhoods, the parking rules in front of apartments and homes make Santa Monica’s seem inviting. Bell City Hall reaps big ticket revenues by restricting its residents from enjoying overnight visitors, and ticketing and towing when they do.

After all, we’re paying for it either way here in California. I also caught this article that explains away some of the arguments that are tossed around regarding this sweetpot deal.

Well, it was all fun and games until now.

The scandal over high salaries paid to Bell officials has city leaders throughout the state scrambling to limit the political damage.

City halls have seen an uptick in residents calling to find out what their local officials make ever since the story broke two weeks ago and prompted widespread public outrage.

On Thursday, city managers from across the state will gather in Sacramento to discuss damage control. Among the ideas on the table: launching an independent examination of city officials’ salaries and compiling a database of salaries for municipal executives.

The Legislature also is mulling several Bell-inspired proposals, including a requirement that cities make salaries easily accessible on websites. Another suggestion would cap pensions of highly paid city officials, an issue that arose after The Times reported that former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo, who earned nearly $800,000 a year, would receive roughly $600,000 a year in pension benefits once he retired.

Many of the ideas are designed to put political distance between Bell and the rest of California’s 480 cities and towns. “It would be really unfortunate if anyone took the outrageous action of one city and generalized it to all cities,” said Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities, which is hosting the meeting.

The stories of soaring salaries come at a difficult time for cities, which are making cutbacks amid a recession that has made many taxpayers ever more interested in what services they get for their tax dollars.

In Sacramento, the Bell salary controversy threatens to undermine the arguments made by city managers against state budget proposals that would take money away from municipalities. For months, city officials have lobbied the Legislature, arguing that they are suffering financially because of the economic slump and cannot afford deeper cuts.

Well, well. This is what I’ve been saying would happen for years now. The minute that people in the private sector found out that, at a time of 12 percent unemployment and losing all of our services while still raising taxes to support these astronomical salaries, there would be no relenting from government workers on salaries. Hell, even Rizzo’s rat nest laid off meager school employees, school services, and police without ever even batting an eye bashfully at his coffers.

One’s mind reels wondering why there would be so much cause for concern as to hold a “damage control” meeting. Methinks exactly as I thought before, that this is something very prevalent among city councils around the state. The door has been opened wide for this to be an election issue, and the inquiries alone are reason enough to believe that this will be hot on the minds of the people of California as they head to the voting booth this November.

At a time of low public confidence in government, the Bell revelations pose another threat to the credibility of local officials.

“It just makes for a toxic environment,” said Max Neiman, senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

City clerks, human resource directors and finance officers said they have been processing an influx of public records requests for public officials’ salary figures since the revelations of the salary paid to Rizzo as well as Bell’s police chief, who made $457,000, and the assistant city manager, who made $376,000.

Officials have found themselves repeating the mantra, “We’re not Bell,” to concerned residents.

Figuring out exactly how much top city leaders make can be difficult, however. The base salary of city officials is usually the most easily accessible number, but it rarely captures the total compensation. City leaders also can be paid through car and phone allowances, housing agreements or deferred compensation plans. In some cases, city managers can receive a separate salary by holding a different position or serving on a board or commission.

This is also true. The LA Times made a quick little article to explain how diffucult it is to track how these people get paid, starting with Bell.

Collecting the information was difficult, in part because each city offered data in a unique format, the students said.

In the case of Laguna Hills, the students said Channing received a base salary of $233,430 but calculated his total earnings at $460,809 after including $227,379 in additional payments.

Channing strongly disputed the report, calling it “factually inaccurate and misleading” because it included what he said were reimbursements for phone bills, travel costs and other expenses.

“What it costs an organization to equip an individual to perform their duties is not the same as the salary that the individual is paid,” Channing said.

The Internal Revenue Service has rules designed to distinguish between legitimate reimbursements for business expenses and disguised forms of compensation, but applying those rules to individual cases can be tricky.

I would have used obfuscate, but that’s just me. At any rate, the door is wide open and people are starting to really get hot under the collar that they’ve been taxed to the gills and essentially working for the government. Working for people to have salaries far beyond that of the private industry respectively, benefits unseen at many capacities in the private industry, and pensions that are unprecedented. A second welfare state, if you will.

This should be an interesting election this year, considering who is involved. It’s going to be neck and neck between Jerry Brown, and Meg Whitman with respect to this issue. Attorney General Brown was instrumental in allowing state employees to unionize in the first place, but has jumped to the forefront of the press in saying that he’s going to attack abuses to the pension system. Meg Whitman hasn’t said much outside of her campaign commercials, but I’d have to imagine that her cast of thousands would let her know that this will be what people want to talk about now. I think the one that makes this their campaign might just be saying hello to us form Sacramento this year.

One interesting shining light is the strikingly bi-partisan revulsion of these possible abuses. It seems that this issue more than any other has catapulted to the forefront, and since neither party had a real stance against runaway salaries, people aren’t interested in the party of who attacks it. The feeling I get is that it’s just got to go and anyone will do to get it done.

Bell is takin’ out the trash.

BELL, Calif. – City Council members who make nearly $100,000 a year for governing this small, poverty-plagued suburb of Los Angeles must resign immediately or face a recall campaign, a community group warned Friday.

The threat came hours after it was announced that the city manager, assistant city manager and police chief were stepping down following a public outcry over their salaries, which total more than $1.6 million a year.

In the wake of that scandal, residents have lost trust in Mayor Oscar Hernandez and three other council members, said Ali Saleh, co-founder of the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse.

“We are happy that all three resigned but the fight doesn’t end here,” Saleh said.

The group, whose acronym is Spanish for “enough,” said if the council members don’t step down by Monday’s council meeting, it will begin working for their recall.

The group supports Councilman Lorenzo Velez, who makes far less than his colleagues and has called for the other members to resign or freeze their salaries.

You may remember my post about Maywood, CA and the corrupt losers that got the boot for not even being able to hold insurance. Well, the city they handed over services to is actually *this* city. What a shocker, huh? Many who have defended the actions of corrupt California government, Unions, and salaries may find nothing to be alarmed about with 100,000 dollar a year salaries (even though these city officials are paid this sum for part time work), but that’s only half of the outrage. We’ve already ironed out that I am allowed to bitch about salaries over 100, 000 a year, so I feel no shame in wanting a dungeon to put these people in.

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.

It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637—with annual 12 percent raises—and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.

City Attorney Edward Lee said the council members couldn’t discuss salaries in public without advance notice. The council then adjourned for a private session. About an hour later, the council members returned, and Hernandez read a statement saying the city would prepare a report on the salaries and seek public comment at the next council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 16.

Residents shouted in protest. Lee said he would have the room cleared if people continued to speak out of line. Police Chief Randy Adams said the fire department wanted to end the meeting because the crowd outside was blocking the door.

Hooray for socialism and government, huh? 800-fucking-thousand dollars a year, plus pension and benefits for this? A police chief that gets 500-fucking-thousand dollars a year? A city council that adjourns meetings after a minute and makes 100-fucking-thousand dollars for a part time gig (with pension and bennies, of course). What’s the defense for this behavior, you might ask? “What’s the problem? It’s not out of line with other people in government!”

In the city’s first formal statement on the salary issue, Bell released a letter from Mayor Oscar Hernandez in which he praised Rizzo’s service to the city and said his nearly $800,000 annual salary was justified.

“Unlike the skewed view of the facts, the Los Angeles Times presented to advance the paper’s own agenda, a look at the big picture of city compensation shows that salaries of the City Manager and other top city staff have been in line with similar positions over the period of their tenure,” Hernandez said in the letter.

Thank you for that, Mayor. Now we know that the implosion of Maywood, now Bell, should keep on rolling up the food chain.

How did this all start, though? Well, it started from a Los Angeles Times article that, instead of coddling liberal democrat socialist agenda, started to ask questions about it.

Council members hired Rizzo in 1993 from the High Desert city of Hesperia as interim chief administrative officer with a starting salary of $72,000 a year. By September 2004, he was being paid $300,000 a year. Ten months later, his salary jumped 47% to $442,000.

His salary continued climbing $52,000 a year until July 1, 2008, when Rizzo received his usual salary increase and signed an addendum to his contract that gave him a 5% raise in September and guaranteed 12% increases each July. His last raise was $84,389.76. Next July, he will receive a $94,516 pay hike.

Just like I’ve been saying here over, and over again. I have no doubt in my mind that this is every bit the common thread in many (if not most) of government employees in this state. The abuses are rampant, and if anyone wants to know why we’re broke, it’s because our services have been hijacked, and held by gunpoint for ransom sums. And I think I’ve been telling people here that resignation isn’t enough.

“I’m happy that they resigned but I’m disappointed at the pension that they’re going to receive,” said Ali Saleh, a member of the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse or BASTA.

Rizzo would be entitled to a state pension of more than $650,000 a year for life, according to calculations made by the Times. That would make Rizzo, 56, the highest-paid retiree in the state pension system.

Adams could get more than $411,000 a year.

Spaccia, 51, could be eligible for as much as $250,000 a year when she reaches 55, though the figure is less precise than for the other two officials, the Times said.

I’m voting for any and every measure to eliminate (retroactively-if possible) any state pension that I possibly can. It is this kind of egregious abuse that should be criminal in the state. These people are literally robbing the taxpayers without shame. The audacity to call anyone a criminal, when this is the type of behavior exhibited by governance. The fact that this isn’t already criminal behavior is gut wrenching, to say the least.

This year should be a pretty interesting. Our budget hasn’t been met, Unions are still not budging on making state workers millionaires, and we’re seeing city by city exposure as to what the real problem is in California. One more corrupt city government pulled out by pitchfork, let’s see who goes next.

There are a great many booths at Comicon…

Caught this one in action.  It’s Douchelord Spurloch.

Here’s a pretty prime example of the type of stupidity that California government has relegated itself to lately.

BALDWIN PARK, Calif. (AP) — The birthplace of California’s drive-through craze has had its fill of fast food restaurants.

Amid complaints of obesity and lines of idled cars stretching into neighborhood streets, this blue-collar town is banning new drive-throughs in hopes of shedding its reputation as a haven for convenient, fatty foods.

It’s an ironic development for a community that proudly claims to have opened California’s first drive-through restaurant more than 60 years ago — a little joint named, appropriately enough, In-N-Out.

“We here in Baldwin Park have taken strides to create a healthy community, and allowing one more drive-through in is not going to meet that goal,” said Baldwin Park city planner Salvador Lopez, who helped craft the ordinance that takes effect Fourth of July weekend.

Lopez estimates the town’s drive-throughs and liquor stores outnumber sit-down restaurants and grocery stores six to one. And with 90,000 people crammed into 6.5 square miles, this suburb east of Los Angeles is concerned that its 17 drive-throughs are causing traffic jams stretching outside its parking lots.

The obvious solution to the Council Members of Baldwin Park is to beat up on In-n-Out. For anyone who doesn’t know about In-n-Out chains, there’s a few facts that should be shared here. First, In-n-Out is delicious, so delicious and preferred over other drive through restaurants that it causes long lines to be formed. The reason why this is true is that In-n-Out has a very small menu of natural ingredients cooked on the spot, nothing coming from concentrate or preservatives. Yes, that means they shuck and slice the potatoes that are your French Fries right before your eyes. Secondly, In-n-Out is known for paying it’s employees more than the Federal average.

The company’s business practices have been noted for employee-centered personnel policies. For example, In-N-Out is one of the few fast food chains in the United States to pay its employees significantly more than state and federally-mandated minimum wage guidelines – starting at $10 per hour in California, as of January 2008.[4]

That’s quite a pedigree there, from great business model, to personally mandated standards of higher wages, to quality ingredients. Just the type of successful private enterprise that the lunatics running shop in some of these municipalities would like to stop. Interestingly enough, I was out a little early yesterday and we went through Hollywood for food and a movie. I was taken aback by how many places through the entire Hollywood/WeHo/Melrose area are just entirely shut down and boarded up. I was going to do a post on that alone, as I’ve never seen it this bad before that it was worth note.

Imagine my surprise when I thumb through the news to see that at a time like this these fleas are destined to destroy the host on which they survive, all the while saying they’re doing it for your own good. The private sector has been hammered so hard as of late, that if I were a city I would welcome an In-n-Out. I’d even be clever enough to allow a pot dispensary next to it for maximum coffer filling effect. But, nope. A city like Baldwin Park thinks that a nice honest privately held chrisitian family restaurant is what’s wrong here. Nevermind that some of the city’s finest “sit down” Chinese and Mexican joints are some of the worst health offenders, featuring lard and copious amounts of oil in every gut busting bite. However, you can’t drive through them, so problem solved.

It’s times like these that I wish there were a reset button on California, a state that used to be the idealic model of prosperity and commerce, is now a bed wetting state featuring a government of panty waist crossing guards, intent on destroying the freedom of choosing the most delicious restaurant to eat at. Nope, you go to the sit down artery clogger across the street, because we say so. For anyone who ever wondered about government intrusion into your life via telling you what to eat, we’re already walking this path here in California. The irony being that the state run license plate ad in front of you might just tell you where the In-n-Out in neighboring West Covina.

I catch a lot of shit for my positions as a conservative. Positions so pie eyed, so far removed from reality that the reigns need to be pulled in on me form time to time. Case in point, my views on California, the state workers, and the future. Well, if you’ve nibbled your nails reading my posts for the past year, rest at ease. I’m right.

The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department effective July 1, officials said.

In addition to contracting with the Sheriff’s Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.

“We will become 100% a contracted city,” said Angela Spaccia, Maywood’s interim city manager.

Deputies from the East Los Angeles Sheriff’s Station will begin patrolling the 1.2-square-mile city by the end of the month, said Capt. Bruce Fogarty of the Sheriff’s Contract Law Enforcement Bureau. The annual cost of providing those services for the small city is estimated at $3.6 million, Fogarty said.

At a council meeting Monday night, city leaders said they were forced to dismantle the Police Department and lay off city workers because they lost insurance coverage as a result of excessive police claims filed against the department. They also blamed years of financial abuse and corruption from the previous council.

Maywood is a shit hole, no need to mince words about it. A “Sanctuary City”, a city of citizens that promote the idea that California is borrowed land from the Mexican people. Where police allow the Mexican flag to fly above one of our government facilities.

Ouch. Why would anyone ever allow this to happen? Perhaps the answer is corruption. Corruption from the top level to the bottom levels. Just do a quick google about Maywood’s finest and you will see a sordid history of abuse. Maywood might even be the most corrupt and racist city in America.

All taxpayer paid, and all supported by the California government. Like an EBT card in a Casino slot machine, it’s just all too easy to call for “teh good guys”, an entire entity that couldn’t pass an order to tie their own shoes. Instead, they ran up debt like Paulie in Goodfellas and “struck a match.” This is exactly why I have measured skepticism of these employees from day one. If we care to even dissect this we can see an entirely corrupt city, a police force of losers given badges, and a people who allowed illegal aliens to dominate the population.

you may wonder about the passage of responsibility of duties onto neighboring Bell. Don’t worry it’s just refueling of the gravy train. As I have repeatedly said here, the amount of government corruption at every level of government, from the City Hall to the Police, to the Fire Department is something to behold. For anyone who considers themselves honest in any of these trades to defend this amount of criminal behavior is something to behold.

God truly does deal in justice, and revenge is a dish best served cold. As this dead branch falls, one can only pray for the rest of the rotten plant to be pruned. However, I have been pretty spot on in my observation of how corrupt and entitled California government is.

It’s kind of funny, I held onto this story because our resident purple shirt big gummint liberals here would probably attack it for the very obvious reasons (don’t insult the sacred cow). Unfortunately, Manwhore has just been trying to preach some truth about Unions, and gummint employees. Link.

Officer William Grundy with the Los Angeles County Police is sworn to uphold the law, but we found that he has hundreds of unpaid parking tickets for personal vehicles registered in his name.

Officer Grundy was happy to see me until he found out why we were there.

David Goldstein: “You have more than 250 citations on the two cars you have. Do you know that?”

Officer Grundy: “No, I didn’t know that.”

David Goldstein: “You have five pages of citations, all around your house. How don’t you know that?”

Officer Grundy: “I can’t talk about it but it’s nice seeing you.”

We have obtained a database listing thousands of unpaid parking tickets issued to people who work in law enforcement and other sensitive positions.

So while the average person, like Travis Franklin, has to pay his tickets, these people haven’t.

Travis Franklin: “That’s just not cool. It’s not right.”

David Goldstein: “You have to pay yours?”

Travis Franklin: “Of course.”

The same goes for law enforcement—they don’t get a free ride on parking tickets for their personal cars. They have to pay up just like we do.

But we have found thousands in the City of L.A. who haven’t paid and most of them never even received a violation notice in the mail reminding them that the ticket is overdue.

That is because the license plates are registered to people, like police officers and others in sensitive jobs, who are allowed to hide their home addresses under the state’s confidential records program. The license plates look like any others in the state, but if someone has access to a DMV computer, no personal information would show up.

It’s designed to protect police from criminals, but it also creates a loophole by making it difficult for agencies, like the city’s Department of Transportation to track down the registered owners if the tickets are overdue.

“The confidential plates are protected under DMV rules, so we do not receive the actual name of the individual or the address. So we are unable to make the required notification under the vehicle code.”

Without that information, they cannot ask the DMV to stop the renewal of the registration or even put a boot on the car.

We have found nearly 16,000 unpaid tickets in the City of L.A., amounting to just under $700,000 when you add up the original violations, but it is more than double with the fines.

There are all kinds of tickets, all over town—parking in handicapped spots, in front of fire hydrants, expired meters, red zones, yellow zones and white zones.

We found LAPD Officers, L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies and more.

We crunched the numbers and found the most tickets registered to two vehicles in the name of Officer Grundy—254 unpaid parking tickets. Officer Grundy works for the L.A. County Police; they patrol the parks and other county buildings.

I’d love for any of our residents to defend this.

This is the clinical definition of class warfare. You have one class to enforce the rules, yet above them. Then, you have one class that is just expected to pay for it. I truly, truly, truly, hope for a total bankruptcy and re-write of all government employee benefits. California is totally out of control, and this is a prime example broham.
Update:
As we can see, being a “shitty driver” has absolutely nothing to do with your capacity to drive, but more to do with your capacity to be a government employee and get out of tickets. There really is no such thing as “law and order” here in California unless you are in the private sector and can display the ability to pay.