Taxpayers Irate at City Leaders' High Salaries

Despite its name, Bell, Calif., doesn't have much of a ring to it these days. Unemployment is 16 percent and most people in this blue collar town make about $30,000 - unless they work at City Hall, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy.

Irate taxpayers stormed the building after finding out that the city manager is paid nearly $800,000 to run a town of just 37,000 people.

"We're being ripped off, we're being looted by this administration and we want to put an end to it," said one protestor.

Robert Rizzo has run Bell for 17 years. His starting salary was a reported $72,000. Thanks to pay hikes and an automatic 12 percent annual raise, his salary has skyrocketed nearly 1,000 percent.

He now makes three times as much as the mayors of Los Angeles, $232,425, and Chicago, $216,210 and nearly twice as much as President Obama, $400,000. Rizzo doesn't even live in Bell, he lives in a million-dollar home near the ocean in Huntington Beach. Tracy went to City Hall to talk to him and he wasn't on the job.

Taxpayers are also angry that the city's police chief makes $457,000. That's twice a much as New York's police commissioner, $205,000, who leads nearly 35,000 officers. Bell's chief oversees 33.

"They asked me to come in and make an assessment and bring best practices to this police department, and I have diligently been trying to do that," said Bell's Police Chief Randy Adams.

Cristina Garcia is leading a grass-roots effort to have both men fired.

"When you think about the fact that you have a police chief earning half a million dollars, you could create 17 new police jobs with that," Garcia said.

Taxpayers also want the City Council that approved these salaries recalled. Those council members make nearly $100,000 and their jobs are part time.

[wolfmann4u-2009]

the towns of Bell Ca and Maywood Ca have always been corrupt and they are not the only ones

[shylove2]

Guess what, don't think those big multi-national corporate CEO salaries affect us? They are used for determineing competitive salaries of management all down the food chain while workers ares asked to take pay cuts so no one has to be laid off, then again, and again, and then retirees not replaced on and on and on as the qualtity of everything declines but the managerial class still rakes it in...of course theri job is getting harder and harder since no one cares anymore anyway... just cannon fodder for the elites, like the soldiers... it hasn't ever been much different but while communism was around they had to pretend they cared...now it has all changed!!

[tiredofthecrap]

if your irate at city leaders salaries, then people should be asking all Goverment to take salary cuts. lets start where the problem starts

[tiredofthecrap]

all goverment starting with the President should be taking pay cuts & less vacation, instead of adding more taxes to the people who are already taxed to death

[tiredofthecrap]

all goverment starting with the PRESIDENT should be taking pay cuts & less vacations, instead of adding more taxes to the people who are already taxed to death

[cride1]

Oh darn it. They got caught ripping off the people. I want to get into politics/administrative work simply because I can bend the law and get rich at the expense of the people. The secret is out, but I know people don't vote...Probably very few here actually will be voting during the Midterm elections (did you get your ballot?) So I probably do have to worry. These guys just were unlucky. Give it a couple years, people will forget and vote these guys back in office... No big deal. That's how America operates.

[wtyates1951]

Thanks to Al Gore inventing the internets now we can all finally get all of the info we need to run these crooks out of town on a rail......

[LIBERALS-lie]

that is where all the money goes...

[cbsblogger]

Until Americans get off their axx and their recliners and give up their entertainment media propaganda, and their sports, and get on the streets demanding change and sacrifice from politicians, public servants, and especially the ultra rich---nothing will happen.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are peas in the same pod dividing average Americans on trivial issues, while getting rich and on the dole from the oligarchs (CEOs and Wall Street) that will ultimately control and destroy us.

[babooph]

City management go to seminars to learn how to rip off workers for pay & benefits-they seem to get very big money for the stress of shafting their employees...

[myopinionpal]

I wonder what the garbage man make proberly $90.000 a year.

[consciousnes]

You won't find a congressman or senator that will tell you all they make either. Like one term and they have a salary for life. Sure, Obama may make $400,000 but you will never see all the side benifits of being in political office outside of the best health care program in the world for free.