Vernon must go

IMAGINE A LAND WHERE THE ruling clique decides who can or can’t live there; where elections are routinely canceled; where the leader gets all the bling he wants -- Escalades, limo service and one day off a week to play golf. Residents are afraid to even talk about their overlords, whispering off-the-record epithets like “dictator.” In the rare event when dissenters screw up the courage to challenge the two or three families who have run the place for a century, they find themselves almost immediately evicted, harassed by cops and shadowed by goons with handguns.

Sound like Haiti, or maybe the village from the paranoid 1960s TV show “The Prisoner”? Think again. These conditions exist right here in Los Angeles County, in the bizarre, 93-resident city of Vernon, four miles south of L.A. City Hall. This industrial wasteland of a town, as Times staff writer Hector Becerra detailed in a Feb. 12 article, has been a civic disgrace for generations. It’s time to put it to an end.

The latest outrage came, as it has periodically over the years, when some outsiders dared to establish residence in Vernon and run for City Council, a mean trick considering the municipality owns 80% of the housing units and hasn’t held an election in a quarter of a century. “Within days,” Becerra reported, “city utility trucks had turned off their power. The building they shared was slapped with red tags by inspectors who said the property was ‘unsafe and dangerous’ as a residence. Strobe lights flashed through their windows. They and some of their relatives were placed under surveillance.”

The interlopers were evicted, their names disqualified from the ballot, and then the election was canceled. Similar abuse was heaped on challengers in 1978 and 1980, the last two contested Vernon elections, both of which may have been decided by the number of vote disqualifications ruled by the then-city administrator, Bruce V. Malkenhorst Sr.

Malkenhorst, Vernon’s longtime strongman, was the highest-paid city employee in the state of California for much of the 1980s and 1990s, flashing his gold jewelry and enjoying taxpayer-financed limousine rides to City Council meetings and golf games. He finally retired last year after being placed under investigation by the district attorney for misuse of public funds (one of numerous legal scrapes city fathers have faced over the years). The new city clerk is one Bruce V. Malkenhorst Jr. Such nepotism is par for the course: Mayor Leonis C. Malburg is the grandson of one of the city’s founders, owns property all over town and has been on the City Council for 50 years.

Enough already. The state and maybe even the feds should investigate Vernon’s corruption and abuse of voting rights. The Local Agency Formation Commission should initiate an unincorporation study. Residents should put their future up for a vote.

Small governing units can sometimes be more democratic. But it certainly hasn’t worked out that way in Vernon. Cities were not intended to be cash cows for their elected leaders. Vernon must go.