SALON

Monday, Jan 14, 2013 9:15 AM UTC

Massive corruption case going to trial

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Massive corruption case going to trialFILE - This Sept. 21, 2010 file photo shows Jesus Casas, a member of the Bell Association to Stop The Abuse, or BASTA, which also means "enough" in Spanish, joining other residents of the city of Bell, Calif., celebrating the arrest of current and former city officials on corruption charges, outside City Hall. an official of the city of Bell, Calif. Jury selection begins Tuesday, Jan. 15, in the trial of former officials of the scandal ridden city of Bell in a massive corruption case that nearly bankrupted the working-class Los Angeles suburb. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)(Credit: AP)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Six former officials of the scandal-ridden city of Bell go on trial this week in a massive corruption case that nearly bankrupted the Los Angeles suburb.

The former mayor and vice mayor and four former City Council members are charged with misappropriation of public funds in a 20-count felony complaint.

Prosecutors claim they looted the city’s treasury in order to pay themselves exorbitant salaries. The complaint says sham commissions were created to enrich the defendants.

Two major figures in the scam are not part of this trial. Former City Manager Robert Rizzo and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia are scheduled to be tried separately. They have been accused of making millions while hiking taxes and fees for residents in the modest, blue-collar suburb where many live in poverty.

Jury selection begins Tuesday and the trial is scheduled to last seven weeks. Key witnesses are expected to be former city employees and officials who discovered the shady dealings and were granted immunity from prosecution for their testimony.

A judge who presided at a preliminary hearing for the officials concluded they had shirked their responsibilities and sold out their constituents for financial gain.

“These people were elected to be the voice of the people, to be a safeguard,” said Superior Court Judge Henry Hall, who ordered them held for trial. “And they basically sold that off.”

Defense attorneys had argued that the council members earned their salaries, working full time on the city’s behalf, not only attending monthly council meetings but taking part in community projects that benefited low-income people, the aged and numerous others.

Prosecutors contend that Rizzo had an annual salary and compensation package worth $1.5 million and masterminded a scheme to loot the city of Bell of more than $6 million. His assistant city manager, Spaccia, was paid $376,288 a year

Council members drew salaries of about $100,000 a year, which Hall said was about 20 times more than they were entitled to make.

The six defendants are expected to claim they worked hard for the city and were unaware of Rizzo’s financial manipulations.

Those set to go on trial Tuesday are former Mayor Oscar Hernandez, former vice mayor Teresa Jacobo and former council members George Mirabal, George Cole, Victor Bello and Luis Artiga.,

Testimony at the trial is expected to focus on the creation of sham boards and commissions such as the city’s Surplus Property Authority which met a handful of times between 2005 and 2010 and never for more than a minute or two. Hall calculated that resulted in council members being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour for sitting on the authority’s board.

He said the city’s Solid Waste and Recycling Authority was never legally created and, in any case, met only one time in 2006 — to vote its members a pay raise.

“It was a sham agency,” said the judge.

Former District Attorney Steve Cooley, who filed the Bell corruption cases, said more than $5.5 million was taken from the city coffers.

After disclosure of the scandal, Bell residents revolted, turning out in the thousands to protest at city council meetings and ultimately staging a successful recall election at which they threw out the entire City Council and elected a slate of new leaders.

More By Linda Deutsch.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
42 points43 points | 1 comment
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
31 points32 points | 1 comment
vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
5 points6 points | comment
vote
Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic shows the famously flamboyant entertainer as a person, not a stereotype
6 points7 points | comment
vote
Experts: Fox News spying scandal a game-changer - I think that crackdown is ideologically driven and I think it’s hard to come to a different conclusion given the vigor with which this justice department has gone after people. So I think it is about a method of control that is badly misplaced.
3 points4 points | 6 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations