After a brief lull in 2017, there’s now another embarrassing chapter in Los Angeles County’s emergence as an epicenter of American political corruption.

Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar has been stripped of all his council committee assignments after having his home and office raided by the FBI earlier this month. Law enforcement authorities have been tight-lipped about their probe so far, but speculation has focused on Huizar’s close relationships with developers and his now-former role as chair of the powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which reviews all large development projects that come before the City Council.

It’s the second time in six months that the city’s planning approval process has faced criminal scrutiny. In June, it was revealed that the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office was investigating the city Department of Building and Safety over allegations of “unauthorized purchases, falsified invoices and $24,900 in payments to a consulting company that did not exist,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Five members of the department’s technology office have resigned or retired, including the division’s chief, Giovani Dacumos, who was named in most of the allegations.

Huizar replaced Antonio Villaraigosa as the 14th District’s councilman in a 2005 special election after Villaraigosa became mayor. The district includes most of downtown Los Angeles as well as Boyle Heights, Highland Park and Eagle Rock.

The first Mexican immigrant elected to the City Council, Huizar has repeatedly won re-election easily. But his political standing has taken several hits this fall. Besides the FBI raid, two former staffers have sued him, saying they faced retaliation when complaining about Huizar favoring an aide he was allegedly having an affair with as well as requiring them to do personal favors like picking up his dry cleaning or moving his wife’s car so it wouldn’t be ticketed. Huizar had previously admitted to having an affair with an aide in 2013, but he was cleared in a related sexual harassment lawsuit.

Misconduct at 10 cities and water district since 2006

Huizar joins a long list of officials – mostly Democrats – who have faced serious accusations of wrongdoing in Los Angeles County since 2006. A 2016 overview by CalWatchdog found 21 officials with 10 cities and a water agency had been targeted by law enforcement over that span.

The list: Bell, Carson, Central Basin Municipal Water District, Commerce, Cudahy, Lynwood, Maywood, Montebello, South El Monte, South Gate and Vernon.

The range of offenses ranged from outrageous – the Bell city manager and City Council looting the city treasury of tens of millions of dollars – to the mundane – council members using city government credit cards at strip clubs and for party weekends in Las Vegas.

The main theory about why the county has so much corruption has to do with the inability of watchdogs to keep track of public officials’ wrongdoing, especially with many local newspapers disappearing. There are 88 incorporated cities and more than 500 government agencies and special districts in the county’s 4,083 square miles.

Study says Chicago only region with more convictions

This has led to the argument that the corruption is no surprise given that Los Angeles County is the most populous in the country. But a 2012 University of Illinois study of all federal corruption convictions since 1976 found the L.A. region was ninth in per-capita rates of corruption convictions – meaning they were far more common than in most metro areas. L.A. was second to Chicago in total convictions.

Bill Boyarsky, a veteran journalist who served on the city of Los Angeles’ ethics committee, told Southern California Public Radio in 2012 that he was unsurprised by the findings.

“There’s always been a long, long history of corruption and bending the law in the Southland,” he said. “This area is so vast [and] there’s so much going on that the corruption hasn’t been shown-up yet.”

Hayes-White’s defenders depict the criticism as being ginned up by the fire union to gain advantage in ongoing debates about pay, staffing and hiring. But KQED’s reporting suggests that there is more in play than just political jousting.

Over the last 16 months the department has come under criticism for doing a weak job of documenting fire safety violations in the city’s older apartment buildings after a series of deadly fires. It has also come under scrutiny for moving too slowly to reduce a backlog of hundreds of fire investigations going back several years.

Fire chief for 12 years as problems built

Hayes-White, who was appointed fire chief in 2004 and by some accounts is the longest-serving fire chief of a large city in the U.S., can’t say she inherited her department’s problems. A San Francisco native, she joined the department in 1990 after graduating from the University of Santa Clara and quickly moved up the ranks, being promoted to lieutenant in 1993, captain in 1996 and then acting battalion chief that same year.

During her 26 years with SFPD, the quality of department management has been increasingly questioned.

Last June, a civil grand jury report found, among other things, the Fire Department’s emergency medical response times fail to meet state standards, in part because of “a chronic lack of serviceable ambulances.” The grand jury also found that half the department’s ambulance fleet exceeded its expected service life of 10 years and that the agency lacks a strategic plan for replacing ambulances and other emergency equipment. …

One high-profile example of the equipment problems: the failure of the department’s “jaws of life” devices after last November’s tour bus crash in Union Square.

The complex tools, used to cut open vehicles in which victims are trapped, were unable to cut through the high-grade steel of vehicles involved in the accident.

That’s also from KQED.

Mayor and police chief also have many critics

Meanwhile, Mayor Lee appears to be the ultimate target of an influence-peddling corruption investigation by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon that is apparently piggybacking on information from the far-reaching FBI probe that led to the corruption convictions of former state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and legendary Chinatown gang figure Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, among others. In January, Gascon arrested two former employees of the city’s Human Rights Commission and alleged they had tried to sell access to Lee to an undercover agent.

Police Chief Suhr faces multiple problems. On Feb. 1, the Justice Department launched a probe into his department after complaints from the ACLU and African-American groups over police violence. In December, cellphone videos caught officers shooting to death Mario Woods, a 26-year-old crime suspect, as he walked away from them toward an open area. The contention that Woods was an immediate threat to public safety has drawn broad ridicule.

Suhr has faced criticism from both sides: from officers who say he doesn’t stick up for them in an era in which police feel under siege and from activists who say he has condoned bad behavior for years.

Suhr is also caught in the middle in a scandal that began a year ago over text messages showing officers using racist and racially charged language. Activists wants the 14 officers involved to be fired. Suhr’s most prominent response has been to ask his officers to make a seven-point pledge not to be racist and intolerant.

But a fresh round of racist texts from another group of officers emerged late last month, prompting national coverage of the disarray within Suhr’s department. Gascon, the DA, told The New York Times that he had profound questions about the SFPD’s internal culture, given that “officers involved in the new case were sending offensive texts even as the city investigated 14 of their colleagues last year for sending and receiving similar messages.”

“What do we get out of this? What do our residents get?” he asked before voting against the higher fees. Two others joined him, defeating the measure.

 

The next day, Amezquita’s phone rang with a call from a lobbyist working with Jimmy Sandhu and Sukhbir Singh, the owners of H.P. Tow. She asked him to lunch.

 

It was just the move FBI agents had hoped the men would make. When Amezquita sat down with Singh and the lobbyist at a restaurant days later, he was wired with recording equipment that secretly captured the conversation. Federal agents hid nearby.

 

The August 2013 encounter was the first of several meals, phone calls and tow yard meetings with Singh and Sandhu that Amezquita recorded as an informant for the FBI and which now are at the center of a federal bribery case against the men, court records show. Since their arrest and an initial court appearance in October 2015, Singh, 39, and Sandhu, 37, have been free on bond and have not been formally indicted by a grand jury on criminal charges.

This continues the trend first launched with the Times’ 2010 discovery that Bell was being looted by its top officials. This led to investigations of neighboring cities in southeast Los Angeles County with similar characteristics — low-turnout elections, apathetic electorates, few civic watchdogs, and cliques of elected leaders and department heads working behind the scenes to enrich themselves.

Dishonor list includes Cudahy, Vernon, South Gate, Lynwood

Southern California Public Radio looked at this phenomenon in 2014:

The indictments of state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, and his brother Tom Calderon are just the latest in a string of bribery, money laundering and corruption cases to hit the area bordered by the 110 and 710 freeways to the west and east, and by the 10 and 105 freeways to the north and south. …

 

Cudahy: Three former city officials – Osvaldo Conde, David Silva and Angel Perales – pleaded guilty in a federal extortion and bribery case. They admitted to accepting $17,000 in bribes from an FBI informant who purportedly wanted to open a medical marijuana clinic in town. Documents in that case outlined rampant corruption in Cudahy. Conde was sentenced to three years in prison. Silva was given one year in prison. Perales was placed on five years’ probation.

 

Vernon: The city’s mayor, Leonis Malburg, and his wife Dominica were charged with voter fraud and conspiracy in 2006. They were found guilty in 2009; Leonis was given five years’ probation and ordered to pay $579,000 in fines and restitution, while Dominica was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to pay nearly $40,000.

 

South Gate: Over the years, Al Robles served as a South Gate councilman, mayor, treasurer and deputy city manager. He went on to be a member of the Central Basin Municipal Water District. In 2005, he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. In 2013, a federal appeals court threw out Robles’ convictions on public corruption and money laundering. The bribery counts remained; Robles is scheduled to be released from prison in 2015.

 

Lynwood: Two former city councilmen were convicted of misappropriating funds. Prosecutors say they received stipends for sitting on city commissions that didn’t do any work. Louis Byrd was sentenced to five years in state prison while Fernando Pedroza was given four. Politicians also used city-issued credit cards for concerts, golf tickets and sexual favors at a Mexican strip club.

Towing company profited off undocumented immigrants

An interesting aspect of the Times’ story about the Huntington Park scandal was that it showed the towing company targeted undocumented immigrants with its excessive fees — and were bitter about efforts to protect these individuals:

For decades, H.P. Tow, registered officially as H.P. Automotive and Tow Service Inc., has contracted with Huntington Park, city officials said.  …

 

Such city contracts traditionally have been coveted by tow companies as they often provide a steady flow of business and allow tow companies to charge the city and car owners an array of fees, including the daily storage fees while owners try to get their vehicles released from police custody.

 

In recent years, however, tow operators have been squeezed by local and state laws that restrict when police can impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The new regulations, which were enacted primarily to ease hardships experienced by immigrants living in the country illegally, have undercut significantly the number of vehicles impounded by police.

State law bans the Fresno Democrat from lobbying his former colleagues for one year following his tenure in the state Assembly. Yet, the state’s ban on influence-peddling hasn’t stopped the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America from hiring Perea as a senior director of state advocacy. Perea, according to published reports, began talking job prospects with the industry group in September.

Beginning on January 4, Perea will direct political operations in California, Arizona and Nevada for the group known around the Capitol by the acronym PhRMA. The group represents the country’s biggest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including Allergan, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Pfizer.

“They innovate, they discover cures, they represent a lot of California employers,” Perea said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “The debate in health care, especially after the Affordable Care Act, is going to be very robust over the next decade or two and I look forward to being a part of that.”

PhRMA’s Robust Lobbying Operation

Since Perea’s first term in the state Assembly in 2010, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has spent big money to lobby the governor, state lawmakers and other state government officials.

A CalWatchdog.com analysis of state lobbying disclosure forms found that Perea’s new employer has spent more than $2.59 million in state lobbying over the past five years. That half-million dollars per year in annual lobbying fees doesn’t include money spent by PhRMA’s member organizations.

Just one PhRMA member, the multinational pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, spent more than $3.18 million in lobbying over the same period, according to CalWatchdog.com’s review of disclosure reports.

Perea’s Campaign Contributions from PhRMA

The pharmaceutical industry’s robust lobbying operation in Sacramento has frequently crossed paths with Perea. Over the course of his career, Perea has accepted $157,144 in campaign contributions from the industry, according to FollowtheMoney.org’s analysis of campaign contributions. That ranks him 119th of every politician in the country and, according to FollowtheMoney.org, means he’s accepted more pharma money than Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, Speaker of the Assembly Toni Atkins and former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

During the 2011-2012 legislative session, the pharmaceutical industry contributed more than $74,000 to Perea’s campaign accounts, making it the second largest industrywide contributor to Perea’s campaign, according to an independent analysis by the transparency group MapLight.

Perea’s multiple campaign committees also appear frequently on campaign finance disclosure reports and political action committee summaries filed by pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this year, his campaign committee for a 2018 Insurance Commissioner campaign accepted $2,000 from Amgen. In 2014, Pfizer gave Perea $3,500 and counted his re-election among its important wins.

“We continue to face significant legislative and regulatory challenges and each election cycle is critical to our industry,” Sally Susman, chair of Pfizer PAC, wrote in its 2014 Pfizer PAC annual report, a 102-page report detailing the company’s effort to build “positive public will.”

Perea’s history of luxury gifts, trips

Although Perea has refused to disclose his new salary, it’s likely to be more than the $97,197 annual salary and $33,000 in annual tax-free per diem payments he received as a member of the state Legislature.

Over the course of his career, Perea supplemented his income with tens of thousands of dollars in luxury goods, entertainment and travel, according to his economic disclosure reports.

In 2011, Perea accepted $9,397 worth of lodging, meals and transportation for a junket to Italy sponsored by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, “a San Francisco-based nonprofit made up of oil companies, utilities and environmental groups.” Two years later, Perea again accompanied the group on its junket to Eastern Europe – a trip valued at $9,984.

Perea’s biggest haul came last year, when he accepted $16,090 from the group, including a $10,221 trip to Chile. He also traveled to: Maui on a $2,148 trip paid for by the Independent Voter Project, Israel on a $11,550 trip paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Central America on a $1,500 trip paid for by the government of El Salvador.

3rd lawmaker resignation since 2013

Perea will become the third California lawmaker in two years to quit in the middle of a term in order to take a job with a Capitol interest group. In 2013, Democrat State Senator Michael Rubio abruptly quit his position to take a job with Chevron’s government affairs unit. That same year, Republican State Senator Bill Emmerson quit mid-term for a high-paying job with the California Hospital Association.

Perea’s resignation will trigger a 2016 special election that is expected to cost Fresno taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars. The March 2014 special election to fill Emmerson’s seat cost Riverside County taxpayers $415,000, according to the Press-Enterprise.

Two candidates had already announced their intentions to run for the 31st Assembly District: Democrat Joaquin Arambula and Republican Fresno City Councilman Clint Olivier.

But instead of taking a muted approach in response — or attempting to work out some reforms behind the scenes — the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is gearing up for war, admitting nothing and saying the improprieties were on the part of investigators, not guards.

This is from Associated Press:

Inspector General Robert Barton said the California Correctional Peace Officers Association advised members not to cooperate and filed a lawsuit and collective bargaining grievance in a bid to hinder the investigation.

 

The union sent a letter last month to Gov. Jerry Brown and every state lawmaker in what Barton called “the latest strong-arm tactic” to obstruct the investigation and discredit the inspector general before the report was released.

 

Union President Chuck Alexander’s letter to Brown accuses Barton of taking a prosecutorial “burn a cop a week” approach to overseeing the corrections department. Union spokeswoman Nichol Gomez-Pryde said the union’s only interest is in protecting its members’ legal rights.

 

The report came more than a decade after the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tried to stamp out a culture in which prison guards protect one another when they witness wrongdoing.

CCPOA’s hardball tactics reminiscent of Gray Davis era

The stance taken by the CCPOA was remindful of its tactics and attitude during Gray Davis’ nearly five-year run as governor. The prison guards union won a 2002 contract that not only provided big raises — 37 percent over five years for many union members — it also gave union officials a say in management. At a remarkable July 2003 Sacramento hearing, lawmakers heard testimony about how this made it difficult to prevent, much less punish, outrageous guard behavior similar to what’s being alleged at the High Desert prison. The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time:

On Thursday, eight witnesses shared their versions of a controversy that began at the California Institution for Men in Chino (San Bernardino County) on May 9, 2002. In an alleged incident that included as many as 20 guards, some participating and some watching, five prisoners whose hands and feet were bound were slammed to the ground, beaten and kicked.

 

Internal affairs agents for the corrections system launched a criminal investigation, according to Special Agent Richard Feaster. A recording of an informant provided especially damning evidence, agents said Thursday. … But the probe quickly ran into trouble.

 

Using a clause in their contract with the state, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association began demanding that agents share the evidence being amassed against guards. Agents were concerned that the case would be compromised if union officials learned who key witnesses were.

 

The contract the CCPOA signed with Davis …  includes many … provisions, including allowing guards to obtain information being collected against them.

Schwarzenegger demanded, won concessions

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who succeeded Davis in the fall 2003 recall, fought the CCPOA tooth and nail and won back some of the concessions that Davis had made. This led the union to consider mounting a recall attempt against Schwarzenegger in 2007, but it eventually gave up.

In 2010, the CCPOA endorsed Jerry Brown for governor and was rewarded with a 2011 contract that prompted complaints from a Long Beach Press-Telegram editorial:

Brown’s deal reverses some reforms that were made under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, such as the requirement that guards meet physical fitness standards and that allows managers to take action against sick time abuse. To top it off, the deal includes a pay increase.

The recent state inspector general’s report came shortly after Jeffrey Beard announced he was resigning Jan. 1 as secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The former Pennsylvania prison official was brought in by Brown three years ago to shake up a dysfunctional culture, and he got high marks from the governor.

But Beard’s departure won’t be tidy, coming against a backdrop of the ugly fight playing out at the High Desert prison. Brown — like Davis, his former chief of staff — and his next prison boss will have to figure out how to treat a union that resists boundaries on its behavior.

Brown said the six bills had several worthwhile ideas. “Unfortunately, taken together there are various technical and conflicting issues that make the over 50 proposed reforms unworkable. Some prudent prioritization is needed,” he wrote.

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, who co-sponsored Senate Bill 660, the most sweeping reform measure, expressed disappointment and dismay. So did Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, the Lakewood Democrat who will take over as speaker in coming months.

The measures were intended to limit back-room dealings in which PUC officials and board members met surreptitiously with representatives of the state’s powerful investor-owned utilities. The most notorious example was a 2013 meeting in a Warsaw, Poland, hotel between then-PUC President Michael Peevey and a Southern California Edison executive at which the parameters were set for a later-approved deal in which ratepayers bore 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant. Southern California Edison is San Onofre’s majority owner and San Diego Gas & Electric is the minority owner. The meeting and its central role in the bailout approved by the PUC wasn’t disclosed until February of this year.

Ex-PUC president’s home searched by investigators

Peevey is the subject of state and federal criminal investigations over the San Onofre deal and other PUC decisions. He left the PUC under pressure in late 2014. Soon after, his La Canada Flintridge home was searched by investigators looking for evidence of improper relationships with the utilities he used to govern.

Within weeks after the raid, the PUC released emails that raised troubling questions about the cozy ties between Peevey and top officials at Pacific Gas & Electric, the giant Northern California utility. This is from a February CalWatchdog account:

Emails show Peevey pressured PG&E to give money to oppose Proposition 23, the failed 2010 ballot measure opposing AB32; appeared to link his support for rate hikes to PG&E actions on unrelated issues; and was open to PG&E efforts to influence inquiries into a San Pedro pipeline explosion that killed eight people. … He sought to prop up a project by the Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) firm by constantly reminding PG&E how much he had done for it.

The Brown administration promised to work with lawmakers on a more streamlined reform proposal in coming months. But in the meantime, as Hueso told the Union-Tribune, the PUC has “little incentive to work toward a culture of openness and accountability.”

The agency has been accused of being excruciatingly slow in releasing crucial documents, whether to criminal investigators, the Legislature or journalists. It also appears to be shrugging off growing calls to scrap the deal on how to cover the $4.7 billion cost of closing San Onofre.

Michael Aguirre, the San Diego attorney who led testimony against the San Onofre plan last fall, had the sharpest reaction to the governor’s decision. He told the Union-Tribune that “Jerry Brown’s vetoes show he is helping — not stopping– the dishonest practices known to the people of California.”

Brown chose aide to replace Peevey, not outsider

A previous decision by the governor already suggested he doesn’t share the prevailing view in Sacramento that the PUC is badly in need of a culture change. When Peevey was forced out in December of last year, Brown could have appointed an outside energy expert with a history of independence. Instead, he named PUC board member Michael Picker as president. Though Picker has only been on the board since January 2014, he is an energy establishment insider, working for Brown — and with the utilities  — from 2009 as a senior energy adviser until joining PUC management.

Despite continued criticism of PUC secretiveness, Picker’s selection as board president was ratified by the state Senate a month ago.

This week, State Controller Betty T. Yee announced that her office would investigate the financial practices of the 12-square mile municipality, which has come under fire for awarding $326 million in taxpayer-funded contracts to businesses owned by a former mayor and his family.

“Our initial review shows significant discrepancies between the financial transaction reports submitted to my office and the city’s audited financial statements,” Controller Yee said in a press release. “As the state’s chief fiscal officer, I have the duty to bring my office’s expertise to bear to identify potential misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

The audit will begin with a review of local, state and federal programs administered by the city dating back to 2012. Yee’s office alerted city officials that it reserves the right to broaden its investigation at a later date.

$326 million paid to former mayor’s businesses

Earlier this year, an outside, limited-scope audit conducted by KPMG found that, over the past two decades, the city had awarded $326 million in government contracts to former mayor David Perez and his family. The city, which has just 99 registered voters, generates $140 million in annual revenue. Much of the city’s revenue comes from taxes paid by roughly two thousand businesses that have set up shop in Industry to avoid the high taxes and regulatory burdens of surrounding cities. 

According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, which first obtained a copy of the KPMG audit, the City of Industry paid one company $133,000 a month for street sweeping and parking lot maintenance — a rate that is six times higher than the city’s current contract. In one case, the company, which is partially owned by the former mayor, billed taxpayers “the equivalent to six street sweepers running for a total of 216 hours in one week.”

In addition to outrageous billing, the audit revealed that the city paid out $7 million arising from a sexual harassment lawsuit and water fine by Zerep Management Corporation, the company owned by the former mayor and his family members.

“This is crony capitalism at its worst,” Douglas Johnson of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. “This isn’t why cities exist. They exist to provide service and structure, not for the benefit of one family conglomerate.”

City of Industry’s checkered past

Corruption at the City of Industry has been an open secret for years. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times detailed the by then self-dealing Mayor Perez.

“Everyone who does business in the city of Industry is required to sign up with Mayor David Perez’s company,” read the opening sentence of a 2009 investigation by Los Angeles Times reporter Rich Connell. “For years, a firm partly owned by the mayor has held an exclusive, multimillion-dollar franchise to pick up trash from the warehouses, manufacturing plants and other commercial enterprises packed into this oddly configured, avidly pro-business San Gabriel Valley city.” 

Perez and his family have maintained control over the city, which rarely holds elections and instead hands off City Council seats to one of the 400 residents. The city currently has just 99 registered voters. In previous years, residents have claimed “to live in churches, houses that can’t be found.”

“If this were the old Soviet Union we were talking about – or current-day Russia, for that matter – we would understand that we’re not really dealing with a democracy here,” the local newspaper editorialized in 2012. “It’s an oligarchy, a clique of family and friends with enormous sums of money at stake.”

In 2009, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office opened an investigation into claims that elected city officials had filed fraudulent voter registration forms and were residing outside of the city. However, that investigation concluded without charges being filed. 

“I can’t say that we absolutely were sure that all the city officials really lived where they said they lived, but I know we didn’t seek criminal charges,” Dave Demerjian, the then-head of the D.A.’s Public Integrity Division, told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune’s Ben Baeder.

Antonovich, Solis demand answers

This time, the scandal appears to have reached a critical mass of support to finally force the City of Industry to clean up its act. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, led by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Michael Antonovich, stepped into the fray by demanding a grand jury investigation.

“The recent audit of expenditures by the City of Industry revealed millions of dollars in questionable payments to the former mayor and his family members,” the L.A. County Board of Supervisors stated in its draft motion. “Given the magnitude of the audit findings, a Grand Jury investigation into possible corruption and back-room deals is warranted.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation into the matter last Friday, according to the Pasadena Star-News.

The scandal in Industry is only the latest in a long line of Southern California municipal corruption cases. In 2010, the tiny city of Bell was caught paying city employees excessive salaries. Earlier this year, a former employee at the city of Pasadena was arrested as part of a 60-count indictment for embezzling $6 million in taxpayer funds.

But this tactic and/or genuinely aggrieved reaction is being fine-tuned as the years go along. The first time this occurred to me was in early 2001 when auto-racing superstar Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in an awful wreck at the Daytona 500.

The New York Times’ amused, condescending front-page story about the emotional reaction to Earnhardt’s death in the South and some other parts of the nation led conservative intellectual journalist Christopher Caldwell to suggest the story should have been headlined “Inexplicably Treasured Cracker with Mustache Immolated in Bizarre Folk Ritual.”

Now Slate does this sort of analysis/satire all the time [with a liberal slant, unlike Caldwell]. So do lots of other folks.

But perhaps it’s time for this sort of pointed, judgmental angle to emerge in California coverage of the latest scandal involving Contra Costa County. Public uproars over stories involving generous public-employee compensation in the wealthy county are a staple of Bay Area commentary and news coverage. Here’s the latest example from Dan Borenstein of the Bay Area News Group:

In their pursuit of a ridiculous 33 percent salary increase, two Contra Costa supervisors may have violated county workers’ civil rights and, possibly, crossed a criminal line.

The FBI, state Attorney General Kamala Harris and the county grand jury should investigate. Contra Costa voters deserve to know what happened and whether Supervisors Karen Mitchoff of Concord and Mary Piepho of Discovery Bay are fit to continue holding office.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges the two supervisors threatened to retaliate against union backers of a referendum drive to block the raise. A television interview with Mitchoff buttresses those claims.

As referendum backers on Jan. 2 turned in nearly 40,000 signatures, far surpassing the 25,407 needed, Mitchoff, speaking with reporters from ABC7 News and KTVU, issued a warning to labor leaders.

“As I’ve told them many times, you may have won the battle, but I’m not sure you won the war.” Asked what she meant by the war, she replied, “We’re going to be going into contract negotiations over the next few years.”

The explicitness of this is unusual even in California hardball politics. Based solely on what is already in the public record, it seems awfully likely that were this to happen in a Third World country covered by U.S. media, the judgment would be harsh, with cliches about “Banana Republics” run by greedy despots.

On the other hand, despite the decline of newspapers, there are arguably more people looking for government wrongdoing than ever before. This could lead to an even-more cynical public that sees government officials trying to enrich themselves using their official powers as the norm in rich countries — not just those in the Third World.

Yes, of course, the phenomenon of government agency leaders and their managing boards getting into mutually beneficial, mutually reinforcing praise parties is common, especially where there’s a homogenous quality to board membership.

I covered the all-Republican Orange County Board of Supervisors from 1999 to 2001 for the OC Register, and members mostly couldn’t get enough of CEO Jan Mittermeier’s narrative of how the county had rebounded with amazing surefootedness from its 1994 bankruptcy.  Mittermeier was so intoxicated with her spiel that I even got her in a taped interview to say the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history was arguably a positive thing.

Now, as a San Diego journo, I’m confronted with more of the same from what until recently was an all-GOP county board, which ignores its chaotic pension system and operates million-dollar-per-member slush funds while simultaneously depicting itself as a divine inspiration to the rest of the planet. This is an actual passage from an actual story (by actual Chris Cadelago) about an actual California government official named Walt Ekard upon his retirement:

“I have been privileged for the past 13 ½ years to lead the finest local government in America, and I say that without fear of legitimate contradiction,” Ekard said.

“Without fear of legitimate contradiction”? Wow. There are some dark chords in that note — and some crazy ones.

Where’s CalPERS’ claim to glory?

But at least in each case, the counties had fig leafs. Mittermeier was plainly way better than her predecessors, even if Orange County’s economic boom was mostly what made its recovery from the 1994 bankruptcy relatively painless. San Diego County’s bond ratings are strong — although it also benefits from the contrast with the city of San Diego’s intensely bad press from the early 2000s.

But what is one to make of this we’re-awesome mindset from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System? Its board meetings, dealings with the media and general demeanor all reflect the notion that it is a “forward-thinking” organization that should be held in high esteem — an agency with a history that is pristine. When I made fun of this attitude, the push-back was quick.

Which was pretty incredible, given CalPERS’ central role in both the state government’s and many local governments’ pension debacles. In a 2011 story about Gov. Jerry Brown’s pension reform manifesto, Ed Mendel — the king of the California pension beat — explained why Brown thought CalPERS was, ahem, unsophisticated:

The “unaffordable” pension increases [Brown cited] were not identified. But the reference may have been to two bills backed by the powerful CalPERS board, which sets annual rates that must be paid by government employers in the giant retirement system.

When a booming stock market gave pension funds a surplus, a CalPERS sponsored bill, SB 400 in 1999, sharply boosted Highway Patrol pensions and authorized the same pension formula for local police, which many obtained through bargaining.

For state workers, SB 400 rolled back a pension cut given new hires earlier in the decade. Low pensions earned under the old plan could be boosted through a “buy back” with increased contributions. Retirees received a 1 to 6 percent pension increase.

A second bill, AB 616 in 2001, authorized three escalating pension formulas for local governments in CalPERS and 20 county systems operating under a 1937 act. The top formula, “3 at 60,” provides 120 percent of pay after 40 years of service at age 60. (See table at bottom)

The CalPERS board, rejecting the advice of its chief actuary, encouraged local governments to boost pensions authorized under AB 616 by offering in 2001 to inflate the value of their pension fund investments to help cover the increased cost.

Yet in 2009, I couldn’t get a substantive reaction from CalPERS on the 10-year anniversary of the SB 400 mega-fiasco. Why? The pension fund would not admit that it was fiscal arson to tell the Legislature in 1999 that increasing pension-benefit formulas by 50 percent would have little or no long-term cost to taxpayers.

CalPERS’ bonfire of vanities

Now a story that broke Friday adds more fuel to the CalPERS bonfire of vanities.

The first two payments were made in paper bags. The last installment came in a shoebox. The handoffs all came at a Sacramento hotel near the Capitol.

In a stunning admission covering years of corruption, the former chief executive of CalPERS said Friday he accepted $200,000 in cash, along with a series of other bribes, from a Lake Tahoe businessman who was attempting to influence billions of dollars in pension fund investment decisions.

Fred Buenrostro, who ran the nation’s largest public pension fund from 2002 to 2008, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud. He has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors as they pursue charges against his longtime friend, Nevada businessman Alfred Villalobos, a former CalPERS board member. …

Most of those allegations had been aired publicly already. What was new Friday was the blockbuster admission that Buenrostro took $200,000 in cash from Villalobos. In his written plea agreement, Buenrostro said Villalobos paid him in three installments in 2007, “all of which was delivered directly to me in the Hyatt hotel in downtown Sacramento across from the Capitol.”

That’s from the Sac Bee.

There is no way, or at least no sane way, that this grotesque corruption can be compartmentalized away. CalPERS’ whistleblowers didn’t turn Buenrostro in. Instead, he was caught as part of a far-reaching federal probe into “pay-to-play” pension scams. This is a sad and troubling comment on how CalPERS functions.

The next time you see CalPERS start to pat itself on the back, feel free to laugh. Or maybe to start convulsing in pain.

But they’ll still get paid themselves, according to the L.A. Times:

“The paid suspensions of Sens. Leland Yee, Ronald S. Calderon and Roderick Wright all but guarantee Democrats will not regain their supermajority in the Senate this session.”

Well, that’s something, I guess.

In the private sector, those accused of such wrongdoing would be suspended without pay.

Which is another reason to sharply reduce the government sector close to zero — then to zero.