City Of Bell Slowly Recovers From Scandal
Sitting on beige plastic chairs in the community center, residents were eager to learn more about Bell’s recovery since a scandal that rocked the small city over three years ago.
In 2010, the Los Angeles Times revealed that Bell’s city council and mayor cheated the city out of millions of dollars by unlawfully increasing their salaries and hiking up business taxes—along with many other dirty tricks.
READ MORE: State Controller Audit Reveals Details Of Bell Corruption Scandal
“It was hell,” said Guillermo Romero, 73, a long time resident of Bell. “The scandal put Bell on the map.”
Since then the members of Bell’s city council have been replaced as have many other public officials.
On Tuesday night, Doug Willmore, the city manager said that Bell is well on its way to recovery, but a lot of work still needs to be done "to make Bell a fabulous place to live, work, and play."
“Financially we are a lot better off,” Willmore said. “We have settled a lot of lawsuits, eliminated a lot of potential liabilities, reserves are growing, we actually have a balanced budget now…we’ve instituted a lot of new financial controls.”
Members of the crowd—still learning to trust their local government again—were very vocal about their concerns over how money was being spent and if the city was in fact in better shape.
“It’s similar to building a foundation in a house,” Fillmore said to the crowd. “When you inherent a council from such a scandal, you do what you have to do.”
Since the scandal, the city of Bell has not only filed lawsuits against different entities, but also fought lawsuits of its own. Bell’s disgraced ex-city manager, Robert Rizzo sued the city for $837,000 in unused sick time and vacation time.
READ MORE: Bell City Official Facing Jail Time in Corruption Scandal
One resident asked if the millions spent on attorney fees and filing lawsuits were necessary.
“Should we not have sued Rizzo?” Willmore asked. “Rizzo wanted the city to pay his legal bills.”
Willmore also said that due to their legal efforts Bell avoided $15 million in potential judgments and has recovered $7 million.
Both Willmore and Josh Betta, the finance director, emphasized their policy of transparency.
“Under the Rizzo regime everything was under wraps,” Betta said. “Our intent is to bring everything out into the open.”
The term transparency is overused and often cliché, Betta explained, but in their case he believed the word was suitable.
“Look at our website and what’s on there,” said Betta. “The warrant registrar, which is called the city check book, has been up there for a long time. All our audits, all our budgets are up…so there’s a lot out there.”
But some residents like Romero continue to be concerned, despite all the available public information.
“That’s why I’m here,” Romero said. “I want to ask them…how big our debit is. I don’t know how many millions of dollars they have borrowed.”
Later in the town hall meeting, Betta said that they were able to cut the city’s debt by $18 million.
Contact Senior Reporter Danielle Tarasiuk here.