LOS ANGELES -- Five former elected officials of the tiny California city of Bell were convicted Wednesday of multiple counts of misappropriation of public funds, and a sixth defendant was cleared entirely. Former Mayor Oscar Hernandez (pictured below) and co-defendants Teresa Jacobo, George Mirabal, George Cole and Victor Belo were all convicted of multiple counts and acquitted of others.
The charges against them involved paying themselves inflated salaries of up to $100,000 a year in the city where 1 in 4 residents live below the poverty line, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
Prosecutors brought an extensive case involving about 100 counts. An audit by the state controller's office found the city had illegally raised property taxes, business license fees and other sources of revenue to pay the salaries. The office ordered the money repaid.
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The current jury deliberated since Feb. 28, when one member of an original panel was replaced and the judge told the reconstituted group to start talks anew.
The officials on trial were Hernandez, former Vice Mayor Teresa Jacobo, and former council members George Mirabal, George Cole, Victor Bello and Luis Artiga. All except Artiga served as mayor at some point.
The trial was the first court proceeding following disclosures of massive corruption in the gritty town. As the population in the Los Angeles suburb has decreased in recent years, the poverty level has increased markedly.
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A lawyer for Hernandez said during the trial that his client was unschooled, illiterate and not the type of "scholar" who understood the city's finances.
"We elect people who have a good heart. Someone who can listen to your problems and look you in the eye," attorney Stanley Friedman said.
The scandal that rocked Bell raised the curtain on a fiefdom established by powerful former city manager Robert Rizzo. City records revealed that Rizzo had an annual salary and compensation package worth $1.5 million, making him one of the highest paid administrators in the country.
His salary alone was about $800,000 a year, double that of the president of the United States.
To fund his and other officials' salaries, prosecutors say, Rizzo masterminded a scheme to loot the treasury of $5.5 million. He and his assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, face their own trial later in the year.
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Witnesses at the former council members' trial depicted Rizzo as a micro manager who convinced the city's elected officials that they too deserved huge salaries.
He was said to have manipulated council members into signing major financial documents, particularly Hernandez who could not read what he was signing.
After the scandal was disclosed, thousands of Bell residents protested at City Council meetings and staged a successful recall election to throw out the entire council and elect new leaders.
Jurors heard more than three weeks of testimony and saw numerous documents. But when it came time to deliberate, things did not go well.
A juror who claimed she was being harassed by others on the panel acknowledged she had done research on the Internet about her jury service and discussed it with her daughter. The judge found she had committed misconduct and, after five days of deliberations, the weeping juror was dismissed from the panel.
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Should he be convicted on the corruption charges brought against him, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/28/local/la-me-bell-20120829">Robert Rizzo (pictured above) could go down as the king of swindling public sector</a> employees. Back in 2010, the Los Angeles<em> Times</em> reported that Rizzo, the city administrator of Bell, Calif., was the ringleader of a band of eight employees creating unusually large salaries for themselves in that Southern California city of about 35,000 residents. Rizzo himself allegedly received a payday that reached as high as $1.5 million a year, according to the <em>Times</em>. And that was for a work cycle that included 107 vacation and 36 sick days a year.</p>
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The investigation led to the dismissal of all eight of the employees. They reportedly got the money by creating "official looking documents" which they then delivered to city residents to alert them of fines that they owed for trumped-up housing violations. <a href="http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/08/30/fired-bell-calif-official-eric-eggena-sues-for-837-000-in-ba/">The Bell eight</a> are waiting their final day in court.</p>
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The story of <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/janitors_clean_up_zEecMaKxzR8m202QAPiVZP#ixzz26RVMlyp6">highly paid school janitors in New York City</a> has been a recurring topic in Gotham tabloids. "They're mopping up -- and cleaning us out," was how the <em>New York</em> <em>Post</em> put it back in 2010 when it reported on janitors making upward of $140,000 a year.</p>
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How do they do it? For starters, some have through their union been able to negotiate <a href="http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/08/24/janitors-accused-of-stealing-hundreds-of-thousands-from-new-york/">favorable contracts</a> that allow the janitors to collect two salaries for one job. Or they've been able to simply lie on their way to the big paychecks, as Trifon Radef is accused of doing between 2007 and 2010. In addition to his full-time job at Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/nyregion/06custodian.html">Radef was on the books for being a night custodian</a> at Harry S. Truman High School. In total, Radef is accused of stealing $500,000 from the city school system. After being fingered in a city investigation, he is <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/22/39153.htm">awaiting trial under the False Claims Act.</a></p>
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There are many jobs that inspire such devotion that workers are pleased to put in as much time as possible. You would think the thankless task of <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sewer_worker_waste_deep_in_ot_cash_8c0x86j6ERs4qyTuyeYhOL#ixzz26RaaoA1O">sewage cleaning</a> wouldn't be one of them. But according to the <em>New York</em> <em>Post</em>, Christopher Carlson (not pictured above) worked last year at a rate of more than 80 hours every week, which comes to 2,109 hours of overtime in addition to his 2,091 hours of regular time. This means he earned $197,119 on a base salary of $81,662. Not bad for the man who was the only city employee to work more than 2,000 hours of overtime last year.</p>
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Why is such a dogged schedule necessary? His workplace, the Owls Head Wastewater Treatment Plant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn seems to be short-staffed. The facility, which requires coverage by a senior sewage worker 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has a staff of just three people. </p>
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Working as a lifeguard offers an appealing combination -- it's extremely important work in which you can save lives, while also getting a tan as you punch the clock. But lucrative?</p>
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In Newport Beach, a city in Orange County, Calif., <a href="http://orangepunch.ocregister.com/2011/05/10/lifeguarding-in-oc-is-totally-lucrative-some-make-over-200k/44783/">full-time lifeguards</a> earned six figures, thanks to a combination of base pay, overtime and benefits. Two battalion chiefs on the crew even make more than $200,000 a year, according to a report last year by <em>The Orange County</em> <em>Register</em>. This comes while the city struggles with the highest <a href="http://articles.dailypilot.com/2012-04-03/news/tn-dpt-0404-pensions-20120403_1_pension-liability-pension-costs-pension-fund">pension debt in the county,</a> according to the <em>Daily Pilot</em>, a local newspaper. </p>
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Nevertheless, the salaries are defended by local authorities, including Brent Jacobsen, president of the Lifeguard Management Association, who told the <em>Register</em> that he believes the salaries are "very fair and very reasonable with comparable positions and other cities up and down the coast."</p>
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<a href="http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/news-releases/year-2008/dr-kern-wildenthal-to-retire-after-22-yearsas-ut-southwestern-president.html">C. Kern Wildenthal put in 22 years</a> as president of UT Southwestern Medical Center, and when he retired in 2007, he cited benign reasons, saying that it was the "perfect time for me to turn the reins over to a new leader," according to the university. It was probably much easier to leave knowing that he would hold onto an annual <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2011/07/13/10-Insanely-Overpaid-Public-Employees.aspx?">salary of $841,557</a> for <a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20120711-OPINION-207110333">"philanthropy work,"</a> according to <em>Seacoast Online</em> and the <em>Fiscal</em> Times.</p>
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His official new title was as "assistant to the president for community affairs, but the dream didn't last forever. After an investigation<a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/351303-special-investigative-report-regarding.html"> into Kern's travel expenses</a>, Wildenthal's salary was <a href="http://watchdogblog.dallasnews.com/2012/05/utsw-cuts-kern-wildenthals-sal.html/">reduced earlier this year. But don't shed tears for him: It's now $490,000 per year</a>, reports <em>The Dallas Morning News</em>. </p>
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California has been battling an epic budget crisis for years, but for a three-year period it paid one of its prison surgeons a total of nearly a million dollars. That hefty pay was in spite of his having been fired once for alleged incompetence and inability to treat inmates from 2005 to 2011, according to <em>ABC News</em>. Instead, over that time <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/california-prison-doc-patients-earned-777423-year/story?id=14062247">Jeffrey Rohlfing has been reviewing paper medical records</a>, or been on "mailroom" duty in the words of prison doctors, while he collects his salary.<strong> </strong></p>
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Initially, the state wanted to hold back Rohlfing's salary in light of his competency problems. But after he appealed that decision, and won in state courts, California was ordered to pay up. "We want taxpayers to know we had no choice in this," Nancy Kincaid, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/13/local/la-me-prison-doctor-20110713">spokeswoman for California's inmate healthcare</a> told the Los Angeles <em>Times</em>. </p>
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Being a plumber can be tough work, but for <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/thanks-nycha-inefficiency-plumber-william-naddeo-live-500-000-new-jersey-mansion-article-1.1161091#ixzz26wd6Pqrh">William Naddeo (pictured above), and his fellow staff plumbers</a> for the New York City Housing Authority, the payday was pretty grand. The NYCHA plumbers have a base pay of $86,000. But in Naddeo's case, the final salary was upward of $190,000 in each of the past two years, thanks to overtime, reports New York's <em>Daily News</em>.</p>
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And by all appearances, Naddeo and his fellow plumbers are coming by their overtime honestly. According to Ray Rondino of Plumbers Local 1, "There are not enough plumbers to handle the work.... So the overload has to go into the night." Indeed, the authority is currently responsible for maintaining 178,000 apartments with just 180 plumbers.</p>
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But in spite of their heavy workload, it appears that the plumbers aren't working in the most efficient of workplaces. Apparently there's no system for tracking equipment in NYCHA's 5,200 storerooms. As a result, the plumbers, along with the other NYCHA staffers such as carpenters and plasterers, spend 120,000 hours a year just searching for the materials they need, says the <em>Daily</em> <em>News</em>. </p>
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