The city of Vernon may be the nastiest place in California.
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
30th Street in Vernon dead-ends into an ExxonMobil terminal.
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
The downtown Los Angeles skyline, about four miles away, looms beyond the L.A. River as it flows through Vernon.
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The industrial city a few miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles is home to the region's last remaining slaughterhouse, a handful of rendering plants, chemical manufacturers and a gas-fired power plant.
It may also be the most corrupt five square miles in California, with a former city administrator quintuple-dipping his way to a $600,000 annual paycheck and other executives pocketing huge salaries.
All in all, there is little to recommend this ugly, smelly and rotten little borough.
But does that mean it deserves to die?
The region's most powerful lawmaker, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, is trying to take the unprecedented step of abolishing a charter city against its will. In his view, the only way to end corruption in Vernon is to wipe the prickly 106-year-old burg from the map.
Given that Vernon has just 112 residents, many of whom work for the city or are related to City Council members, Pérez says voters simply aren't capable of keeping their government honest.
It's a curious argument. If Vernon isn't worthy, why should the city of Bell continue to exist? And what's to stop the Legislature from abolishing San Francisco or Los Angeles if their leaders do something state legislators don't like? And who made the Legislature jury and executioner anyhow? When the Legislature suffered a major bribery scandal in the late 1980s, did anybody try to abolish California's statehood?
None of those questions has deterred Pérez from his single-minded quest to put Vernon out of business. He has refused to listen to those who say eliminating the city will lead to dramatic, unintended consequences, including the loss of thousands of jobs. He has turned a deaf ear to arguments that the city can be reformed. He has refused to negotiate for anything less than total surrender.
Now, as summer heats up, there's a running gunfight between one ornery lawmaker and the nastiest town in California.
Which black hat will win?
A CITY IN NAME ONLY
The truth about Vernon is that it has always been something of a charade — a functioning city in name only. Consider the city's public library. It's little more than a storage closet at City Hall. The hours posted on the door — Monday to Thursday, 3-5 p.m. — are fictional because it's always closed. Some books are on the shelves, but you can't check them out. Ask for a copy of a book on Vernon history and you'll be told to file a public records request.
The city has no parks, no pools, no playgrounds — not even a grocery store.
Vernon is less a city than an industrial park with its own police force. (See "City of Vernon vs. Assembly Speaker John Perez: A Photo Essay.")
The city owes its existence to John Baptiste Leonis, who persuaded three railroads — the Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe and the Union Pacific — to build a spur to his ranch and create an "industrial city" in 1905. Leonis was born into a poor Basque family in the French Pyrenees. He died a rich man in 1953, with a six-bedroom Italianate mansion in Hancock Park and an estate worth $8 million, which passed to his grandson.
Leonis, who served on the City Council for more than 45 years, gave a bit of wisdom to his grandson, Leonis Malburg, who would serve for 53 years: "Politics is a two-headed snake."
Vernon was run by a couple of families, and was closed almost entirely to outsiders. It rarely held elections. The city owned most of the residential property, and subsidized the rent. Many residents were city employees or relatives of the council members. They tended not to rock the boat.
Strangers who set foot in Vernon City Council meetings were treated with suspicion or downright hostility.
"It's a very, very private city," says Supervisor Gloria Molina, who has battled Vernon for decades. "Vernon has always operated for its own special and unique interests and doesn't really care about talking to anyone."
That secrecy has allowed a series of administrators to plunder the city treasury.
Bruce Malkenhorst, who held five city jobs at once, rode a city-paid limo to work and still collects the largest pension in the state. He pleaded guilty last week to misappropriating funds.
After Malkenhorst was pushed out, the city hired Donal O'Callaghan, who made almost $800,000, much of it through a consulting contract paid to a company run by his wife. Last fall, he was indicted on a relatively minor conflict-of-interest charge and forced to resign.
Nowadays, there is Eric Fresch, an attorney and former city administrator who consults for Vernon Light and Power. He collects more than $1 million a year, and has been described as the new power behind the throne.
In the absence of any electorate to speak of, the primary oversight of the city comes from the L.A. County grand jury. It has taken prosecutors three tries and 65 years to break the grip the Leonis family had on the city for a century. Leonis and Malburg each were indicted, 35 years apart, for the crime of serving as Vernon's mayor while living in the same 7,000-square-foot mansion on South Hudson Street in Los Angeles. In both cases, in 1943 and 1978, the charges were dropped.
