Blue-collar town seeing red over officials' whopping salaries

BELL, Calif. — The City Council in Bell, a blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles, on Thursday met to ask three administrators whose salaries total more than $1.6 million to resign or face possible firing.

The officials include Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo, who earns $787,637 a year — nearly twice the pay of President Obama, who earns $400,000 — for overseeing one of the poorest towns in Los Angeles County.

The others are Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who makes $376,288 a year, and Police Chief Randy Adams, whose annual salary of $457,000 is 50 percent more than that of Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.

Councilman Luis Artiga said before the closed-door meeting, which started in late afternoon and continued into the night, that the panel planned to request the resignations. A public hearing is scheduled for Monday.

Rizzo was hired at an annual salary of $72,000 a year in 1993, and the council rapidly increased that amount over the years. His most recent raise boosted his salary more than $84,000 a year.

Adams was recently hired at a relatively high salary, while Spaccia was paid $102,310 when she was hired in 2003 and received hefty raises since then, Artiga said.

All three officials under question have contracts that protect them from being fired without cause. If they refuse to quit, the city might have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out their contracts.

Revelations about the pay in Bell have sparked anger in the city of fewer than 40,000 residents about 10 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Census figures from 2008 show 17 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Enraged residents have staged protests demanding the firings and started a recall campaign against some council members.

Attempts to leave messages with city representatives seeking comment from Rizzo and Spaccia failed because their voice-mail boxes were full. A message left for Adams was not returned.

The council members are paid well, too; four of the five members, including Artiga, each make about $100,000 a year for the part-time work. The county district attorney's office is investigating to determine if the salaries violate state laws.

The City Council also intends to review city salaries, including those of its own members, according to Artiga and Mayor Oscar Hernandez. However, both men said they considered the City Council pay to be justified.

"We work a lot. I work with my community every day," the mayor said.

It turns out that City Council members were able to exempt themselves from state salary limits through a little-noticed city ballot measure during a special election that attracted fewer than 400 voters.

A state law enacted in 2005 limits the pay of council members in "general law" cities, a change prompted by the high salaries that leaders in the neighboring city of South Gate bestowed on themselves.

But the year the law passed, the Bell City Council held a special election with one item on the ballot. It asked voters to approve a measure calling for Bell to convert to a "charter" city.

The move was billed as one that would give the city more local control, and there was no mention that it exempted Bell from the salary regulations. Since then, salaries for council members' part-time jobs have jumped from $61,992 a year to at least $96,996.

Though many residents are poor, Hernandez said they live in a city they can be proud of, one with a $22.7 million budget surplus, clean streets, refurbished parks and programs for people of all ages.

When Rizzo arrived 17 years ago, Hernandez said, the city was $13 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Rizzo obtained government grants to aid the city, the mayor said.

Rizzo was arrested near his home in Huntington Beach in March and charged with misdemeanor drunken driving. He pleaded not guilty and is due back in court for an Aug. 5 hearing, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney's office.

If Rizzo leaves, he would be entitled to a state pension of more than $650,000 a year for life, according to calculations made by the Los Angeles Times, which reported the officials' high salaries last week. That would make Rizzo, 56, the highest-paid retiree in the state pension system.

Adams could get more than $411,000. Spaccia, 51, could be eligible for up to $250,000 a year when she reaches 55.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said his office has started an investigation in conjunction with the state's public employee-retirement agency into pension and related benefits for Bell's civic leaders.

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.