Bell City Council Members To Subpoena Ex-City Manager's Records
LOS ANGELES (AP) — City Council members in a suburban blue-collar city voted unanimously Friday to subpoena the records of its highly paid former manager as part of an investigation into whether taxpayers were bilked out of millions of dollars.
The action demands that Robert Rizzo turn over all documents related to Bell city business, including those officials believe are contained in at least two non-city e-mail accounts.
Rizzo was forced to resign after residents of this working-class city of 40,000 learned he was being paid nearly $800,000 a year. Former Police Chief Randy Adams, who was paid $457,000 a year, also resigned. So did former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who was making $376,288 a year.
The council also voted unanimously Friday to direct interim City Attorney James M. Casso to look into pursuing legal action against city officials, political consultants or any others who may have conducted illegal or wasteful activities.
"At this point we don't have any specific issues for which we're going after them," Casso said after the meeting. "We're not going to limit ourselves to any one particular matter over another. We're pursuing them all."
The state attorney general's office and Los Angeles district attorney are also looking into allegations of voter fraud and other illegal activities in the city where 17 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
No one has been charged with a crime.
After the Los Angeles Times reported the salary scandal earlier this year, Bell residents also learned they have the second-highest property taxes in Los Angeles County and have been overcharged hundreds of thousands of dollars for sewage service.
They also learned four of their five City Council members were paying themselves nearly $100,000 a year for their part-time work in a city where the median household income is $40,556 a year. Those council members have since slashed their salaries and two have said they won't seek re-election.
Also Friday, the City Council voted unanimously to sever an agreement it entered into earlier this year to provide municipal services to the cash-strapped neighboring city of Maywood.
The council also voted to abandon a controversial proposal it had been studying to merge its police department with those of several small neighboring cities.
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