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Bell trial: Ex-administrator Spaccia in court to ‘lend support’

By Jeff Gottlieb
 and Corina Knoll
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As the trial of six former Bell City Council members continued Wednesday, a surprise spectator watched from the back of the courtroom.

For the first time since the trial began last month, former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia –- who is awaiting trial on corruption-related charges –- watched as former Councilman Lorenzo Velez testified.

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Dressed in a purple top and black jeans, her brown hair streaked with blond highlights, Spaccia spoke with former Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo during a break in the trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

FULL COVERAGE: Bell corruption trial

Spaccia, who has been working for her attorney doing paralegal work, said she came to court Wednesday to “lend support” to the defendants, all accused of misappropriation of public funds.

She said her paralegal salary is about what she made in the 1980s. In Bell, she was making close to $400,000 a year.

Spaccia said she also came to court to observe Judge Kathleen Kennedy, who has had a somewhat contentious relationship with her attorney.

The former assistant city manager is expected to stand trial along with Robert Rizzo, the city’s onetime chief executive, sometime this summer.

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Velez is the lone member of the 2010-era Bell City Council not facing criminal charges.

Velez received one of the smallest paychecks from the city and was paid $310 biweekly. The other council members were earning about $100,000 a year from authorities that rarely met and did little or no work.

Former council members Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal are all facing multiple counts of misusing public funds. ALSO:

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--Jeff Gottlieb and Corina Knoll

L.A. Now
Jeff Gottlieb

Former Los Angeles Times staff writer Jeff Gottlieb shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011 for uncovering corruption in Bell. He also received the George Polk and the Selden Ring awards, among others. He previously won a Polk award while working at the San Jose Mercury News for uncovering Stanford’s questionable spending of federal funds. He received a bachelor’s in sociology from Pitzer College in Claremont and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.

Corina Knoll

Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

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