Fixing Bell

The agony of Bell deepens with each passing day. After eight current and former leaders were marched to jail, the city was left with a thoroughly disgraced and discredited City Council. Only one incumbent escaped criminal indictment, and he failed to notice the rampant banditry among the colleagues who appointed him and the staff he was supposed to oversee. The current acting city manager and acting city attorney were appointed by the old regime in a frantic but futile effort to confine the scandal to Robert Rizzo and his top lieutenants. Now it turns out that no binding deal was struck amongst the thieves, and Rizzo is insisting that he never actually quit — and may be owed back pay!

More damaging than these sickening revelations is the meltdown of a functioning government for 40,000 residents. If Bell is not already bankrupt as a result of repaying illegal taxes, redevelopment boondoggles and candy store looting by its top officials, it will remain paralyzed by the media circus, lawsuits, audits and recall now consuming every molecule of civic oxygen in the small community.

There’s only one way out, and it is a path endorsed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors: State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown must request a court-appointed receiver to reinstitute honest administration in Bell.

Every day the attorney general delays yanking the plug on this criminal regime only deepens the hole into which Bell is falling. An intense political campaign may be distracting Brown, but nothing would be so gubernatorial as to see him march into court and asking a judge to appoint a respected and competent city administrator to halt the flailing death throes of the corrupt and dysfunctional government of Bell.

What are the objections to immediately appointing a receiver?

There is no legal authority. Nonsense. Mark Adams, an attorney specializing in the arcane arena of receivership law, says: “In my view, the well-established principle of necessity allows a court almost unlimited discretion to protect innocent people when no one else has the power to act. If a bankruptcy court can take jurisdiction over Orange County, a Superior Court judge can take jurisdiction over Bell. A court can invoke any equitable remedy needed, including appointing a receiver, until it enters judgment on the attorney general’s civil lawsuit charging fraud, civil conspiracy, waste of public funds and breach of fiduciary duty. “

It would be bad precedent to undermine “local control.” Hardly. The greatest threat to local control is the worsening Bell scandal. If that’s “local control,” we’re in deep trouble. The best defense for California’s tradition of local control is to put a swift end to its subversion by blatant criminal conduct.

The recall by local citizens will eventually solve the problem. Good luck with that. It is likely to be at least four months before a recall vote, assuming Bell can even muster a quorum to hold a council meeting to schedule the election. If they are still around by the time a recall happens, the targeted incumbents almost certainly will be ousted. But the principal funder of the recall effort is the Bell police union. Can a truly honest election be held with such special-interest clout looming over the candidate choices? The leaders of the political machine that fleeced the citizens of Bell may have been indicted, but many of its supporters continue to operate in the shadows.

One alternative that’s been floated by the state attorney general’s office is to negotiate a pact with the current officeholders to assign a “monitor” to Bell’s government. Like the Justice Department monitor who oversaw the Los Angeles Police Department’s consent decree after the Rampart scandal, the Bell monitor would have broad investigatory powers. But the citizens of Bell don’t need any more investigators. They need a receiver empowered to take immediate action to free their government from those who have unethically profited from bloated salaries, uncollected “loans” and customized pension benefits.

That’s why genuine grass-roots activists in Bell marched on City Hall last week carrying brooms and shovels, demanding that a receiver be named to sweep out the crooks and dig out their corruption.

The appointment of a receiver is no panacea. The receiver will need to make hard decisions to unravel the financial chaos and put Bell back on sound financial and administrative footing. The remnants of the old guard will conspire to undermine needed change. In time, a new City Council will need to reassert local authority in a community with great needs and few resources.

But the only way to put an end to the unfolding nightmare in Bell is to start fresh. The attorney general can make it happen. The sooner he does it, the quicker Bell can begin to recover and heal.

Rick Cole, a former mayor of Pasadena, is the city manager of Ventura. He won the 2009 Excellence in Government Award from the Municipal Management Assn. of Southern California.