Bell, CA city fathers agree to pay cut

City Council members in Bell unanimously agreed Monday to give up their controversial $96,000-a-year salaries and instead draw only $673 a month - a 90% decrease.

Council members in the small, working-class city southeast of downtown Los Angeles have been under mounting pressure since the salaries for the part-time jobs were revealed in The Times.

Mayor Oscar Hernandez on Monday went a step further than his colleagues and said he will finish his term without pay and will not seek another stint as the city's mayor.

Hernandez also apologized to residents for the high salaries the city paid to administrators, a reversal from the defiant tone he struck last week.

"Since my first day as mayor, my priority has been to make Bell a city its residents can be proud to call home," he said. "...I apologize that the council's past decisions with regard to the indefensible administrative salaries have failed to meet that test."

I suppose it's refreshing to see a politician remorseful for his greed - except they would have gone on collecting those exorbitant salaries but for a piece in the Los Angeles Times that brought their milking the taxpayer to national attention.

You wonder how many more "Bell, Californias" there are out there where the city fathers are drawing salaries fit for a king while cutting the budgets of programs that benefit ordinary people.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky