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Pedro Carrillo, City of Bell's Interim City
Manager. Bell City Council considering to
appoint Carrillo as it's full time city manager.

Thursday, August 5, 2010, Updated Friday August 6
The Editor, WatchOurCity.com
P edro Carrillo Takes City of Bell Deeper into
Corruption, follows Rizzo's Policies
Bell, CA - Bell's Interim City Manager Pedro C arrillo, a Sacramento
Latino Caucus insider, was assistant to Bell's Robert Rizzo. After Rizzo
resigned, it was Carrillo who was identified in TV broadcasts as
"Spokesman for Rizzo", justifying Rizzo's criminal-level $800,000 salary.
Bell's previous mayor for 23 years, George Cole, the intellectual author
of Bell's Charter City initiative and high salaries, hired Carrillo back in
'08 as director of the Southeast Cities Schools Coalition whose mission
is to break away from LAUSD. Pedro runs a sham company called Urban
Associates, Inc., noted WatchOurCity.com in a report on Carrillo posted
on July 23, 2010.

While the rest of the world looks on with disbelief and nauseating
disgust at the public policy wreck left behind by Bell's recklessness with
public funds, and as several authorities actively investigate evidence of
criminal wrong doing, Pedro Carrillo continues against the tide, to
obfuscate, hinder and block release of public documents, and, in fact,
continue the very same activity being looked at by justice agencies.
Who's covering his back? The proven track record in southeast cities of
L.A. County such as Bell, Maywood, Cudahy and Huntington Park, is
that law breaking is actually legal and carries no consequences. The
legal precedent for legal consequences of corrupt actions is so weak,
that it actually serves to encourage and enable, with Bell Rizzo as
Exhibit A, Carrillo, Exhibit B. And if caught, the Statutes of Limitations
has expired (yeah, so what if I took an illegal $11,000 campaign
contribution from an single individual, but that was 5 years ago; can't
touch me).

Already, Carrillo has hired disgraced Bell Assistant City Manager Angela
Spaccia to manage city of Maywood's municipal operations, who along
with Rizzo, resigned two weeks ago. Carrillo unilaterally hired Spaccia
at $10,000 per month, retaining her even after she announced, for a
second time, her resignation. Carrillo's connections to George Cole and
Sacramento's Latino Caucus are key in understanding the dynamics
behind all this. At Bell's Wednesday council meeting, council members
considered but took no action in the matter of promoting Carrillo from
interim to permanent city manager, pushing instead the matter to next
council meeting.

Council did act during last night's special council session to remove Ed
Lee, Bell's long time city attorney, who for some 20 years provided
legal cover to George Cole and Rizzo's criminal level enterprise with
public funds, hiring instead the city attorney for Pico Rivera, Casso;
Fallout from Bell's scandal resulted in Ed Lee's removal as city of
Downey's attorney. Covina is also considering removal of Ed Lee as its
city attorney (who was busy working on a Charter City proposition a la
city of Bell and Vernon). Even Lee's employer, the firm at Best, Best &
Krieger, began to distance themselves from Ed Lee, though the firm
profited mightily from Bell through two decades of dedicated service.
While Best, Best & Krieger is doing its best to avoid the taint of
corruption, Pedro Carrillo swaths himself even more with it, earlier
embracing Ed Lee, even as other cities were booting him, then
embracing Spaccia to continue running things in Maywood, and actually
defending Rizzo's salary even as the California League of Cities issued
a statement essentially putting a 10 foot pole between Bell and other
cities.

It was Spaccia and Ed Lee who were at the helm of Maywood's
municipal affairs when earlier in June, Maywood officials announced it
would dismantle it's civil service work force along with the entire police
department, all orchestrating Maywood's municipal demise intended to
benefit Bell's coffers. How to put illustrate this relationship graphically?
Lee and Spaccia represented Maywood's interests in negotiations
before Bell officials, who just happened to also be Lee and Spaccia,
both reporting to Rizzo, and counseled by George Cole. Who do you
think got the better deal between Maywood and Bell?

The baton of Bell's official world view as envisioned by Rizzo and
George Cole is now in the inept and corrupt hands of Pedro Carrillo and
his handlers.

When the president of the California League of Cities issued a press
release condemning Bell's brazen corruption and fiduciary management
failure as "nauseating", they didn't just mean Rizzo, but all officials and
their actions boiling in Bell's cauldron of corruption, Carrillo included. It's
as if Pedro Carrillo and city council daringly mock Bell's residents, the
Attorney General's office and everyone else in between.

John Chiang, the State Controller, was played by Carrillo. Chiang's visit
to Bell last week was staged by Carrillo in a cynical attempt to put a
feather in his cap as a reformer, when in fact, Carrillo's friend works for
Chiang's office and convinced her boss to take a Photo Op trip down to
Bell, with Carrillo putting his arm over Chiang's shoulder, as they both
walk towards city hall. Chiang is clueless. It's like the fox inviting the
chickens in to see that he's doing a fine job of keeping the hen house
in order.

It is becoming evident that Bell's transformation and house-cleaning of
historically unprecedented corruption on a deep and broad scale as
demanded by residents will not materialize. The same players are still
in place, actually, with the infrastructure neatly in place, only with a
new caretaker in Pedro Carrillo. Carillo's appointment as Bell's interim
city manager, his imminent appointment as permanent city manager,
the secrecy of his salary, and his relationship to George Cole, Robert
Rizzo and the Sacramento Latino Caucus, is alarmingly troubling, and
painfully and nauseatingly evident that the power structure originally in
charge of Bell's mess, is still in control.

All this is flauntingly happening right under the nose of the State's
Attorney General, the FBI and the Department of Justice. After the dust
settles in Bell, when the last of the Times reporters goes back to
covering the Arizona immigration fiasco, or another oil spill, Bell and the
southeast cities will continue business as usual. The looming tragedy in
Bell, Maywood and Huntington Park is no less in proportion to the Gulf
oil spill, and just like the oil spill, the damage to the political and civic
environment will be felt for years to come, particularly Bell's pension
obligations.

BELL