[1] Subsequent investigations found atypically high property tax rates, allegations of voter fraud in municipal elections and other irregularities which heightened the ensuing scandal.
[17] In 2005, a measure approved by Bell voters exempted the city from a state law enacted earlier that year which limited the salary of council members of general-law cities—cities without a charter of their own.
[20] As L.A. prosecutors investigated potential voter fraud, several citizens allegedly told the Times that city officials encouraged them to fill out absentee ballots in a manner that election experts said has significantly raised the possibility that state law had been violated.
[22][30] Documents released to the Times revealed that the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) knew four years previously that city administrator Robert Rizzo had received a 47% pay increase to $442,000.
"With record deficits and painful budget cuts facing California cities, astronomical local government salaries raise serious questions and demand a thorough investigation.
[citation needed] Marcia Fritz, who heads the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility stated that at age 62, when Rizzo could have begun receiving Social Security payments, his annual pension and benefits would have risen to $976,771, topping $1 million two years later.
[36] Governor Brown proceeded to sue, and a week later Rizzo and six of the other seven people named in his suit were charged in criminal court with plundering $5.5 million from Bell.
Councilman Lorenzo Velez, the only Bell official not charged with any wrongdoing, testified that he doesn't remember participating in any of the meetings for which other council members billed the city tens of thousands of dollars.
[48] Former city clerk, Rebecca Valdez, testified at the hearing she was instructed by Rizzo to lie to a resident, Roger Ramirez, who had enquired about council members salaries.
[61] At that arraignment on March 24, 2011, Rizzo, Spaccia, former Mayor Hernandez and ex-councilman Luis Artiga plead not guilty to the charges that they plundered Bell of millions of dollars.
A two-sentence order denying the petition was later signed without comment by Justices Dennis M. Perluss and Laurie D. Zelon of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles.
[67] In December 2011, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy rejected their motion to drop the charges and the contention that their salaries were protected by the city's charter.
"[67] On February 28, 2012, Judge Kennedy dismissed some felony charges against ex-Mayor Oscar Hernandez and two counts of misappropriation of public funds against former ex-councilman Luis Artiga.
In rejecting the dismissal motion by Rizzo and Spaccia, Kennedy said they "simply set their own financial terms awarding themselves huge raises and other fringe benefits," and that "This is a textbook case of conflict of interest.
Rizzo was released from jail after Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mary Lou Villar determined that the funds posted for his $2 million bail were not linked to any of the monies he acquired in Bell.
"[81] Rizzo was ordered to stand trial on an additional conflict-of-interest charge regarding a racehorse deal with Bell's privately contracted planning director.
[61][82] On September 24, 2010, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office finally began the investigation of former Bell Police Chief Randy Adams, as part of the expanding probe of city officials.
"[83] The injuries Adams cited in order to collect millions of tax-free dollars from a law-enforcement disability pension did not stop him from taking rigorous spinning classes and running in a 5K race, the Glendale Downtown Dash, in 2009.
Glendale joined two other cities in trying to block what had the potential to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in pension payments for Adams, whose highly profitable term as police chief of Bell had far-reaching consequences to the state's complicated employee retirement system.
[90] In June 2015, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) Board designated as precedential its decision to reduce former City of Bell police chief Randy Adams' requested pension by more than half.
[32] Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia collected $376,288 a year, with a similar 12% annual pay increase, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.
[99] State lawmakers and investigators traveled to the city of Bell on November 8, 2010, to probe the Los Angeles suburb's alleged corruption and governance problems.
When residents were told by the state auditor that their leaders mismanaged tens of millions of dollars of the blue-collar city's money, using it largely to pay themselves enormous salaries, they "gasped in shock and disbelief.
"[100] The auditors spoke at the hearing called by state Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, who said he wanted to give residents of the working-class city of 36,000 "a full accounting of what had happened".
[101][citation needed] The Los Angeles Times reported that in a review of state and local records it was discovered that independent audits of public agencies in California frequently failed to recognize and note cases of questionable mismanagement and obvious fraud.
Organizers with BASTA began the recall process in August after unsuccessfully calling for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and council members Luis Artiga, Teresa Jacobo, and George Mirabal.
Bell's records show that the city made nearly a million dollars just in impound fees in fiscal year 2008–09,[59] which works out to be about $10 per citizen in this small town.
Former vice-mayor Teresa Jacobo was one of the leaders of those campaigns and the people of Bell are trying to find out where those charitable contributions went and if any funds were ever donated to breast cancer awareness organizations.
[121] The crackdown in Bell received extensive coverage in the Spanish-language media and has resonated among voters in blue-collar Latino communities who often feel neglected in terms of both government services and the justice system," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.
The elected and unelected hierarchy of that [small] city went to the extremes while its voters slept... As it is today, every California citizen has a right to ask public agencies for an accounting of their taxpayer-funded salaries and other compensation.