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The Editor
WatchOurCity.com

Saturday, July 24, 2010

From The Editor,
WatchOurCity.com
July 8, 2010

The City of Maywood is not
alone in its incompetence in
failing to manage municipal
insurance requirements:

- "Washington, D.C. - Attorney
General Peter Nickles ordered
an investigation in June after
learning that the city's payroll
office had, over a seven-year
period, failed to remit the life-
insurance premiums deducted
from the paychecks of at least
1,400 employees. Already, one
employee had been told that
her policy had been canceled
because of the unremitted
premiums. (Until the
investigation is finished, it is
impossible to say which of the
two usual explanations of
chronic D.C. bureaucratic
dysfunction -- theft or "large-
scale human error" -- is
applicable.)" [Washington Post,
6-16-10]

Sometimes, during a council
meeting, you just have to
nuke'em with an F-bomb:

- "At a public meeting of the
Dixon, Calif., City Council in
May, Councilman Michael
Ceremello refused to yield the
floor to a colleague ("(Y)ou
don't have the floor. Please sit
back and shut the (F-word)
up")". [KOVR-TV (Sacramento),
6-3-10]

- "Paul Gogarty, a Member of
Ireland's Parliament, during a
public session in May,
answering the criticism of an
opponent ("With all due respect
... (F-word) you, Deputy Stagg,
(F-word) you.")." [Sky News
(Isleworth, England), 5-25-10]
(courtesy of News of the Weird)

Other times, outside of city
council too:

- "Toledo, Ohio - The day
before Mayor Carty Finkbeiner's
spokesman was suspended for
three weeks for allegedly using
vulgar language with an off-air
radio producer, the mayor
himself used a profanity during
a live interview broadcast. Mr.
Finkbeiner uttered the "f-word"
followed by "ruckus" to describe
the "few days" after his order
last week to cancel a Marine
Corps weekend-long urban
warfare exercise in downtown
Toledo and in some abandoned
buildings."

Talking of the military and the f-
word, military folk just have to
let loose an f-bomb once in a
while, especially while on-record
in an interview for a Rolling
Stone Magazine report (by
Michael Hastings, 'The Runaway
General' June 22, 2010), where
the f-word was liberally
sprinkled like raisins on a bowl
of oatmeal; some quotes from
the report (who would of
thought military dirty laundry on
Afghanistan war strategy would
be so fun to read? Must be like
'Catcher in the Rye' for West
Point cadets):

- "The Boss would find the 24-
year-old kid with a nose ring,
with some (f-ing) brilliant
degree from MIT, sitting in the
corner with 16 computer
monitors humming," says a
Special Forces commando who
worked with McChrystal in Iraq
and now serves on his staff in
Kabul. "He'd say, 'Hey – you (f-
ing) muscleheads couldn't find
lunch without help. You got to
work together with these guys.' "

And sometimes an
F-bomb literally means an F-
bomb (again, from Rolling
Stone's 'Runaway General'):

-"For a soldier who has traveled
halfway around the world to
fight, that's like telling a cop he
should only patrol in areas
where he knows he won't have
to make arrests. "Does that
make any (f-ing) sense?" asks
Pfc. Jared Pautsch. "We should
just drop a (f-ing) bomb on this
place. You sit and ask yourself:
What are we doing here?"

Our own little Afghanistan in
southeast cities of
L.A. County: We finally make
full circle, going from the f-word
and dropping f-bombs to the C-
word - Corruption -, a gem of a
quote from the 'Runaway
General':

"[in Afghanistan] A tsunami of
cash fuels corruption,
delegitimizes the government
and creates an environment
where we're picking winners and
losers" – a process that fuels
resentment and hostility among
the civilian population."

For State, city and LAUSD
employees, The F-word takes
on a whole new twist in
meaning: Furlough.

The F-word, not to be confused
with the
U.K.'s Feminist website thefword.
org.uk

Also, for an exploration of the
F-word and other foul language
as you've never seen it before,
WatchOurCity.com explored the
F-word's many uses by local
corrupt officials caught on FBI
wiretap: "Cultural Nuances and
Pimpin' Politicos" (posted
November 5, 2007 by the
Editor, WatchOurCity.com)

______________________________

___________________________

Special Encore Presentation
(Editor's note: Encore posting of this
December 2005 report sets historical
context to today's report)
Honor Among Thieves
Depriving The Public of Honest
Services. George Cole's fingers
in Huntington Park cookie jar of
politics, city contracts, and
LAUSD

___________________________

Tuesday July 13, 2010
Huntington Park in
$1.2 Million Fiscal
Deficit Partly Cause
by City of Bell's
George Cole
Huntington Park, CA - The city is
operating under a $1.2 million budget
deficit, announced city manager Greg
Korduner in June. The deficit is
directly a result and precipitated by
Mayor Juan Noguez's public policy of
gifting public funds to friends and
campaign donors. Noguez is running
for L.A. County Assessor in a
November runoff race against John Y.
Wong of Monterey Park.
(click to see full report)

A WORRISOME DESCENT

Friday, July 23, 2010, 12:30 am
The Editor, WatchOurCity.com
Resigned!
Bell's Robert Rizzo,
Angela Spaccia & Police
Chief Randy Adams Gone
Pedro Carrillo appointed as Interim
City Manager, supported and defended
million dollar salaries. Who is Carrillo?
(see full report).

CURRENT POSTINGS

FROM 2008
CLICK BELOW

2004 to 2007

BODY POLITIC

George
Cole:
the Brains
behind
Rizzo's
Salary - A
Kickback
Scheme
Planned?

BELL

Bell's
$30Mill
ion
Dollar
Man

Robert
Rizzo

LINKS

The Media's focus on
Bell's criminal-level
salaries is merely a
one-dimensional view of
the endemic larger
problem; the bigger
problem is three
dimensional, the
festering network of
corruption between
officials in the southeast.
- The Editor

Tuesday July 13, 2010,
Update Wednesday July 14, 2010
The Editor, WatchOurCity.com
Depriving the Public of
Honest Services: Bell,
Maywood, Huntington
Park, LAUSD
Bell, Huntington Park and Maywood
Counci
(click to see full report)

Monday July 19, 2010
The Editor,
WatchOurCity.com
George Cole -
The Brains Behind
Rizzo's $800,000 &
$100,000 Salary for City
Council

Bell, CA -
Bell is not the tidy city painted as such by
city manager Robert Rizzo and mayor Oscar
Hernandez in justifying Rizzo's nearly one
million dollar salary.

Back in the early 90's the previous city
manager and mayor were indicted during a
major corruption scandal with Bell's Bicycle
Card Club Casino, involving the mafia and
massive siphoning of profits. That's when
the Feds stepped in to run the casino for a
while. The casino is still in operation.

That was then. Flash forward some twenty
plus years. In 2009, the County Sheriff's
office raided a super Meth lab in this city on
rental property owned by Mayor Oscar
Hernandez.

Then, just last week, in jaw-dropping news
that rippled throughout the country, we find
out that Bell city manager Robert Rizzo is
paid $800,000 per year salary, voted on by a
city council that makes $100,000 per
year......in a city of nearly 40,000 residents,
a low income area, demographically
equivalent to adjacent Cudahy, statistically
the poorest and most economically depressed
city in L.A. County, if not California. From
an urban planning perspective, Bell's urban
fabric is indistinguishable from neighboring
Cudahy.

George Cole was mayor in the city of Bell
during the time when Rizzo's salary shot up
nearly 11-fold, earning $72,000 in 1993,
finishing up at $787,637 today. It was Cole
who was, and still is, the de facto Don of
Bell.

The L.A. Times would agree. In a January 4,
2007 profile published of George Cole, staff
reporter Hector Becerra concluded that
George Cole is "an emerging political leader
in the southeast", the de-facto political boss
of the southeast cities region. At least that
was the thesis pitched to Hector by Cole
himself.

The Times profile of George Cole as the
head of the political machinery of the
southeast was timed to raise Cole's cache
right when L.A.'s mayor Villaraigosa was
strong-arming LAUSD with his AB 1381
takeover plan. Villaraigosa allowed room in
the ill-fated, ill-advised bill to specifically
meet George Cole's demands that southeast
cities Council of Mayor's, of which Cole was
one at the time, would get a vote to control
schools in this area (see WatchOurCity.
com's report from August 2, 2006).
Becerra's theme placed Cole as an Anglo
survivor in a Latino surrounded political,
demographic and ethnic community. More
remarkable was the political power wielded
by Cole, and not just in Bell, but throughout
the southeast region and beyond, with his
influence reaching the office of the mayor of
L.A., the West Basin Water Board, LAUSD,
and Sacramento.

In Bell, Cole hand-picked city council
candidates, that is, when elections were held.
Bell held no elections during the 2002 or
2005 election years, officially due to a lack
of candidates opposing George Cole and his
incumbents. It is most curious that during
these same two election years, neighboring
Maywood, Huntington Park and South Gate
saw multiple candidates running for the two
or three seats up for grabs, with Cole even
giving them campaign contributions, as he
did to Elba Romo in 2005 in Huntington park
($1,000), and John Noguez in 2003 ($3,500;
a bit more on this later).

In early 2005, a young college grad, fresh
from a stint at San Diego State University,
long time Bell resident, comes home to run
for public office. The timing couldn't have
been worse, nor the opponent more
formidable. An employee of George Cole's
Oldtimers Foundation, Enrique Aranda,
approached the young man's employer at the
time, LAUSD's Facilities Department,
Community Outreach Unit, to demand that
LAUSD fire the young grad. The threat was
enough to spook the young man, recently
married with a new baby, to not only move
out of Bell, but find suitable employment
elsewhere, now working for the Orange
County Transportation Authority, where
threats to his livelihood couldn't reach him.
Such tricks do tend to thin the herds of
prospective candidates opposing George
Cole's council seat.

Then there was the case of Nestor Valencia
who ran twice against the George Cole
machinery, in 2007 and 2009. See
WatchOurCity.com's report on how George
deployed other tricks of the political trade on
Valencia (click here and here). Suffice it to
say, George likes it down and dirty when it
comes to protecting his territory from
poachers.

Cole used his tenure in Bell city council to
consolidate his hold on Bell's municipal
finances and finesse his plans in casting a
region-wide net. Then abruptly, without
warning, quits his city council seat in early
October 2008, as reported here at
WatchOurCity.com ,
but not before securing a place for his
council seat replacement, a reverend, Luis
Atiga. Then, when Artiga was up for
reelection in March 2009, Cole took a most
active role in managing Artiga's campaign, at
the same time that Cole was managing the
incumbents in Cudahy (see WatchOurCity.
com reports from March 3, 2009 and
March 16, 2009).

The question is, why, when George Cole had
a most complete grip on the local political
machinery, would he quit his city council
seat so unexpectedly and abruptly, and so
uncharacteristic for a regional power broker
of his stature? Over two decades invested in
building up a well-oiled political machinery
was not going to be wasted that easily.

Ironically, George Cole's entry into politics
was on the heels of that Bell Casino political
scandal, telling the Times “...it was not
about simply replacing white faces with
brown faces. It was about replacing bad
leaders with good leaders,” Cole said." (see
full reprint of Times report below).

All the FBI needs to do is follow the money.
Such criminal salaries as given to Rizzo,
assistant city manager Spaccia and Police
Chief Adams (close to $1,620,925 million
combined for all three, plus another half a
million to council members), are not voted
on gratis by city council members like
George without some understanding or
expectation of a kickback scheme taking
place, in one form or another.

Is any part of city manager Rizzo's $800,000
salary making its way back to any of a
myriad of accounts controlled by George
Cole such as the Oldtimers Foundation,
Southeast Cities Schools Coalition or
Southeast Schools Foundation, city council
campaigns, Political Action Committees,
such as the Better Southeast Coalitions, the
Bell Food Bank, or to associate candidates in
Huntington Park, namely John Noguez?

In 2005, at the strong insistence of George
Cole, Bell converted from a General Law city
to a Charter City. The differences are quite
stark. Other cities, Cudahy, Huntington Park,
South Gate and Vernon, all operate under the
General Law statute.

Why did George Cole insist so much on
going Charter? It made little sense for such a
small city. Typically, only large metropolitan
cities have incentive to go Charter due to
structural requirements of increased
municipal complexities. A small city such as
Bell gains no such structural efficiencies of
scale. However, there are other huge legal
benefits which George was salivating to own.

Going Charter (click here to see a
comparison chart: Charter vs. General Law)
was a critical milestone and most important
juncture for George Cole and the city of Bell.
That's when things started to get interesting
in Bell, and the entire Southeast cities. Bell's
graduation to a charter city allowed the city
liberties not permitted under General Law
statute, and set the groundwork for actions
leading directly to the legal predicaments Bell
officials find themselves in these days.
Pasadena, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Santa
Monica, are all Charter cities, share similar
traits, meet certain similar criteria such as
population threshold levels. But Bell?

For example under "Ability to Govern
Municipal Affairs", a General Law city is
"bound by the State's General Law". In
contrast, a Charter city has "Supreme
authority over municipal affairs". Also, under
"Finance and Taxing Power" of the
comparison chart, a General Law city is
limited in its taxing abilities, whereas a
Charter city has the "power to tax" (and,
boy, has the city taxed its residents, creating
indebtedness without residents voting; such
taxes help to pay for the criminally inflated
salaries). Most telling, under "Public Funds
for Candidates in Municipal Elections", a
General Law city cannot use public funds for
elections or candidates; a Charter city can.

When on July 1 the city of Bell took over the
entire municipal functions of the city of
Maywood, it raised some interesting legal
questions. A Charter city taking over a
financially defunct General law city is
something new and untested. But Cole's city
of Bell likes to test state statute, as recently
illustrated with the high pay
L.A. Times report. Little did Bell realize that
though it has complete control of its own
municipal affairs as a Charter city, those
rights do not extent to it the privilege of
usurping the State's right to deal with
General Law city troubles, such as in
Maywood. We'll leave this question to Jerry
Brown's State Attorney General's office to
answer (it would be surprising if the State
abrogated its rights to Bell already).

The public record reflects that it was George
Cole who led Bell's Charter effort, then led
the drive to increase salaries to a criminal
level. George knew, as the D.A.'s office
confirmed, that a city administrator's salary
is not job market driven, but rather pegged to
the whim of city council members.

The Times' front page breaking story on Bell
salaries included a graphic chart showing a
time-salary relationship of Rizzo's salary. The
highest spike occurred right when Cole
resigned his council seat (WatchOurCity.
com was the only media reporting on this on
October 8, 2008). Right before leaving, Cole
inserted in city ordinance language the
equivalent of a time-release salary capsule,
giving authority for Rizzo's last final spike in
salary taking effect months after George was
no longer an elected official.

The timing of George Cole's sudden
resignation from Bell city council coincided
perfectly with Rizzo's final salary spikes,
thus begging the question, was there an
understanding of a kickback to George?

George is quite familiar with kickback
schemes, or Quid Pro Quo (WatchOurCity.
com reported back on May 15, 2006).
George donated $3,500 to Huntington Park's
John Noguez for his maiden city council
political campaign in 2003. In gratidue, few
months later, Noguez makes sure his city
council awards Cole a $3.9 million dollar
transportation contract, then an over
$600,000 housing management contract, and
given the lion's share of city Community
Development Block Grant monies (CDBG's).

The current investigation by the
D.A.'s office into Bell's salary problems will
probably not go anywhere, with precedent to
back this observation. Ample evidence
suggests that the D.A. protects some folks in
southeast cities (see WatchOurcity.com
reports from
January 16, 2006 and March 27, 2006.

D.A. Steve Cooley has some history with
these southeast cities that itself is shady, as
an L.A. Weekly report by Jeffrey Anderson
("The Town the Law Forgot ", 2-22-07)
exposed when reporting on Cudahy. Jefferey
noted that "I was always looking for fraud
and misconduct wherever I could find it: the
bigger, the better. The story about Cudahy
came from a lawsuit alleging conflict of
interest. Back in 2000, Los Angeles County
District Attorney Steve Cooley took office
and made a pledge to find and prosecute
corruption in L.A. County. One of the first
cities he went after was Cudahy. In 2001,
Cooley convened a grand jury to investigate
whether Cudahy City Manager George Perez
violated criminal conflict-of-interest laws
when he voted as a city councilmember for
an ordinance that lifted a one-year waiting
period between holding political office and
appointed office and then stepped down
from the council to become city manager --
the city's highest paying job."

Jeffrey continues: "Cooley’s office wasn't
able to get an indictment and concluded they
"could not prove a criminal violation." The
defense attorney was Cooley's best friend"
[editor's note: Philibosian was Cooley's friend
who defended Cudahy against Steve Cooley's
office].

The result was that no one was convicted,
but Cooley's friend, former L.A. County D.
A. Philibosian, walked away with a million
dollars and change in legal fees. Steve Cooley
babtized Philibosians son; they fished and
hunted together, and are all around best
friends.
Here in Huntington Park, the D.A. owes
political favors to the the grand mentor of
them all here in the southeast cities, Rosario
Marin, former Huntington Park
councilmember, and former U.S. Treasurer.
Back when Cooley was an unknown Deputy
D.A. under Philobosian, he decided to run
for office but found himself with a large
handicap: no name recognition. To beat this,
Cooley needed the State Republican Party's
nomination very badly.

Enter the top Republican Latina, Rosario
Marin, then Huntington Park councilwoman,
and Republican Party Secretary. It was in
this second post that Marin was instrumental
to Cooley, as she also sat on the Party's
candidate endorsement committee. She cut a
deal with Steve Cooley: Marin gets him the
Republican Party's endorsement for D.A., in
exchange, he protect her people in the
southeast cities. George Cole was one of her
people, the other is Huntington Park mayor
John Noguez and city attorney Francisco
Leal.

Such political cover does seem to encourage
and embolden the very seemingly criminal
actions taken in Bell and the rest of the
southeast cities. And with enough incentive
to wring opportunity, even the D.A.'s
compadres, such as Philibosian, can also
profit from impoverished municipalities as
done in Cudahy.

Here in Bell, Rizzo's attorney, Tom Brown,
comes well recommended due his political
pedigree in local politics. Brown was the
defense attorney who represented Albert
Robles in South Gate. Robles is now sitting
in federal prison arising from South Gate's
massive corruption probe. The law firm of
Shepard Mullin and Richter ended up firing
Tom after the firm's multi-million dollar legal
fees, agreed to by Robles, were rejected by
South Gate's new city council in the wake of
it's insolvency triggered by Robles' looting of
the city treasury. Tom now is partner in
Brown and White, the law firm also
representing the city of Bell.

____________________
George Cole's profile in the L.A. Times
(Reprinted from L.A. Times)

Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 4,
2007

When George Cole moved to southeast Los
Angeles County looking for factory work in the
early 1970s, the mostly white and working-
class area was being transformed by waves of
Latino immigration.

Cole applied for an apartment and the
landlady bestowed her approval.

Soon, he got a job—$3 an hour at a plastic
bag factory. He was the only white worker in a
plant full of illegal immigrants. He got the job
by tricking the white owner into thinking he
spoke fluent Spanish by reciting lines he
remembered from high school Spanish. He
received 50 cents an hour more than the
immigrants on the line.

Back then, Cole only knew enough Spanish to
trick a gullible businessman. But from the
moment he began working alongside the
immigrants, he began to learn—and never
looked back. It would help forge his identity.

Over the next 35 years, his adopted town of
Bell—along with surrounding cities such as
Huntington Park, Bell Gardens South Gate
and Maywood—were transformed from mostly
white to more than 90% Latino. Most of the
manufacturing plants, such as Bethlehem
Steel, Firestone Tire and General Motors,
disappeared.

Cole remained.

He was elected to the Bell City Council when it
was still all-white and now is its only white
member.

Cole has emerged as a leader for southeast
Los Angeles County. He took a prominent
role in making sure overwhelmingly Latino
cities served by the Los Angeles Unified
School District have a voice in Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s takeover plan,
which a judge threw out last month.

“George Cole is a Latino leader,” Supervisor
Gloria Molina said, “even though he is not
Latino.”

Consider a community meeting last year
where state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier)
introduced her Democratic successor, Ron
Calderon.

Calderon spoke in English. Escutia translated.
A few people got annoyed.

South Gate Councilman Henry Gonzalez said
one woman in the crowd referred to Cole and
cracked, “Here’s a white man who can speak
better than you can!”

Cole, 56, is not embracing another culture as
much as trying to fit into the world around
him. It was a lesson he learned from his
father, a Presbyterian preacher and activist
who ministered to Latino farmworkers in
Arizona in the late 1950s.

“My father taught me to embrace change,”
Cole said. “A lot of people were afraid of the
changes that were taking place, but I just
accepted it.”

After working at the bag factory, Cole landed
a job at Bethlehem Steel in Vernon,
eventually earning $16 an hour.

He became active in the union. Over time,
more Latinos joined him on the lines. He
traveled to Mexico City for a conference on
immigrant workers rights. His Spanish
continued to improve.

“He stood out as a big guy, this gabacho
speaking Spanish,” said Rudy Montalvo, a
longtime friend from his union days. “Our
people are downright brutal and cruel if they
see a pocho [American-born Latino] take
Spanish and tear it up,” Montalvo said. “But
you turn it around, and someone like George
starts talking Spanish and they embrace you.”

The next few years amounted to a
demographic earthquake in southeast L.A.
County as Latino immigrants—legal and
illegal—flowed in.

When Cole and his wife, Judy, moved to Bell,
one of his biggest worries was that his
children wouldn’t have anyone to play with
because “there were hardly any children in
the streets. Most of the neighbors were older,
white,” he said. Soon, his children had more
than enough playmates as streets filled with
Latino children.

One of the Coles’ sons, Jason, played on
Garfield High School’s varsity football team. It
was a tradition that the varsity players shaved
their heads.

“We told the coach we were not going to allow
our kid to shave his head,” Judy Cole said.
“We didn’t want him to be in a situation
where he could be construed as a
gangbanger.”

Her sons rarely complained about being
treated differently, even though they were
among the only white students at the East
Los Angeles school.

The Coles adapted, but transition was more
difficult for others in the community.

At the time, Bell was in the grips of a casino
corruption scandal that would lead to
indictments against a former mayor and a
city manager. Friends who knew Cole for his
union and nonprofit work suggested that he
should run for office.

Cole said the tipping point was when he took
his two boys to a park only to see part of the
playground area and the park being razed to
make room for an office for city staff.

“It told me the priorities of the city were all
screwed up,” Cole said.

Cole used Spanish campaign literature, a first
for the city, when he joined the all-white
council in 1984.

Hernandez campaigned for Cole and was
criticized by some friends.

“They said, ‘Why are you supporting a white
man? Why not support a Mexican American?’
” Hernandez recalled. “I told them, ‘It doesn’t
matter if he’s a white man. He’s got a
Spanish heart.’ “

Increasingly, Cole took on issues that
resonated with the growing Latino community.
Cole began to host Tuesday night meetings
to discuss education issues. Most of the
people who attended were Latino immigrants.
Cole helped ferry local parents to school
board meetings. He complained that schools
in the southeast got short shrift in part
because they were poor and Latino.

For many Latinos new to town, he became a
kind of fixer.

“He’s the guy who delivers, whether it’s a low-
flush toilet to a home or getting someone’s
kid some help,” said J. Arnoldo Beltran, an
attorney long involved in the Latino
community.

Once, a community activist—a former fellow
steelworker—pulled Cole aside and asked for
his help in filling more City Council seats with
Latinos.

“I told him it was not about simply replacing
white faces with brown faces. It was about
replacing bad leaders with good leaders,”
Cole said.

Some friends believe he many have
embraced Latino culture too much—or at least
the cuisine. After Cole had a heart attack last
winter, Felisa Martinez, 54, a patron of the
Oldtimers Foundation, told him he had to lay
off the burritos and tacos he loved. Instead,
she brought him dish after dish of diced
cactus salads.

Today, Cole is one of only two white council
members in the Latino cities of southeast L.
A. County. The other is Bill DeWitt, who kept
his lumber company in South Gate as other
businesses left.

Cole has his detractors. Some opponents call
him a wannabe political boss who uses his
long service on the council, in addition to the
Oldtimers Foundation, to bully foes. But even
those critics, many of whom declined to
speak on the record, say Cole is popular.

But Cole said he feels less comfortable when
he’s away from home. “When I’m in a
restaurant out in Rancho Cucamonga and
everyone around me is white,” he said, “then
I feel different. It feels funny.”

(Courtesy of the L.A. Times)

___________________________________________

WatchOurCity.com Slogan at Bell
City Council Protest (see all T's)

Friday July 23, 2010
Bell Breaking News:
C alifornia
League of
Cities
Blasts City
of Bell
"Situations like
this appall of of us"

Thursday July 22, 2010
$800,000
Turns Into
$30 Million
Rizzo's Salary &
Retirement Payout
Orchestrated by
Former Bell Mayor
George Cole
Bell in $1.8
million
Deficit
Bloomberg News:
"Bell’s general fund
revenue declined 4.6
percent to $14.1 million
for the fiscal year that
ended June 30, 2009,
according to the city’s
financial statement. The
city’s expenses rose 2.3
percent to $15.9 million
in same period." (Chris
Palmeri, Bloomberg
News, 7-20-10)

Reuters:
"A municipal manager in
California who makes
nearly $800,000 a year
working for a small, poor
city could draw pension
payments exceeding $30
million in retirement,
according to an activist
who has been calling for
an overhaul of the state's
public pension system.

"This guy will be our first
seven-figure retiree," said
Fritz, whose group has
played a leading role in
publicizing the issue of
California 's public
pension liabilities." (Jim
Christie, Reuters, San
Francisco, 7-21-10)

Wed, July 21, 2010
D.A.'s office NOT
investigating Bell, only
"Reviewing"

Jerry Brown's State
Attorney General's office
asleep at the wheel on Bell

Whitman may take
advantage of Bell's large-
scale looting of city
treasury to gain edge on
campaign against AG
Brown for Governor's race

Tuesday, July 20, 2010
- Former Bell councilman
Victor Bello, director of
Bell Food Bank is paid
$100,000 from re-directed
public funds
- George Cole Reports in
740 Form receiving
$10,000 from Corona
Elementary School, an
LAUSD school in Bell;
school principal denies
paying George Cole any
fee; where did such funds
come from? Laundering re-
directed public funds?
- George Cole created the
Food Bank when he was
in Bell City Council.
- George Cole is Director
of Southeast Cities
Schools Coalition
Foundation leading effort
to breakaway from
LAUSD, and partners
with LAUSD Options
Schools awarded to
Charter school operators.
- George Cole and
Huntington Park mayor
John Noguez trying to
grab $250,000 from tax
funds slated for LAUSD
- Maywood's Finances
directed by Bell's
Financial Director; Will
Spaccia also cook
Maywood's books and
redirect public funds?