We haven’t had a good Bell update in a while, but now the drought is broken.
Eric Eggena used to work for the city of Bell. He was the city prosecutor, director of general services, and was in charge of code enforcement.
While Eggena was in charge of code enforcement, the city collected tens of thousands of dollars from business owners and scavengers cited for violating city laws. The Times found Bell officials created official-looking documents and told violators that they had to pay the city. The vast majority of these cases never were filed with the court, as they were supposed to be.
Mr. Eggena was fired after the fecal matter hit the rotating blades of the impeller in Bell. He has not been charged with any crimes, and is not currently under indictment.
Mr. Eggena is now suing the city of Bell for $837,000, “including compensation for 329 unused sick and vacation days.”
When Eggena went to work for Bell in 2002 he earned $90,000 a year, but his salary nearly tripled over the next eight years, his total compensation swelling to $421,000 annually, putting him in the top tier of city officials nationwide.
But wait! There’s more!
In addition to his salary, the city paid the employee portion of Eggena’s Medicare and Social Security deductions, and he accumulated double sick and vacation time, according to his contracts.
And because we can’t mention Bell without mentioning Robert “Ratso” Rizzo:
The Times also found that Eggena and Rizzo were involved in a deal in which the city bought a piece of land for more than double its assessed value as part of an unusual redevelopment deal that required the seller to donate $425,000 back to the city — a sum that cannot be accounted for.
Today’s NYT has a nice tribute to the late DeAndre McCullough. (Previously.) The paper did run an obit several days after his passing, but this is more of a retrospective piece about DeAndre’s life and struggles.
This, along with some things Weer’d has said, and my reading of Bill James’ Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence
, has got me thinking. If I have time this weekend, I’m hoping to do a longer, more thoughtful post tying these things together.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 7:43 am and is filed under California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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