I wouldn’t have thought this was legal.
Center-left professional blogger Kevin Drum linked this morning to a disturbing article in today’s Los Angeles Times about political shenanigans in the City of Vernon.
Vernon, it seems, has a total population of 91, consisting of 25 households. According to the LA Times, everyone who lives within the city limits is a city employee of some sort, and most live in city-subsidized housing. The city hasn’t held a contested election in twenty-six years. The most recent attempt to hold one failed:
Twenty-five years after its elected officials last had a contested ballot, eight strangers took up residence in the tiny city four miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Last month, after just a few days in town, three of the newcomers filed petitions to run for City Council in the April 11 election.
Within days, city utility trucks had turned off their power. The building they shared was slapped with red tags by inspectors who said the property was “unsafe and dangerous” as a residence. Strobe lights flashed through their windows. They and some of their relatives were placed under surveillance. Shortly, city police and other officials drilled holes in the locks and evicted the would-be office-seekers.
Having deprived the interlopers of city residence, Vernon officials on Jan. 27 disqualified them from the ballot.
To be fair, Vernon city officials claim that the evicted candidates were part of a plan by a notorious corrupt outsider to, in essence, mount a hostile takeover of the city. That’s a plausible claim; a city with five dozen voters in which the municipal officials are effectively lifetime office-holders and have more or less unchecked authority to dispense the city’s tax revenue to themselves is a very good candidate for a hostile takeover.
But surely that misses the point: it’s not clear to me that there should be, in the United States, cities with unelected “governments” that are accountable to nobody, in which every voter who could hold them accountable are in some fashion dependant upon them for their livelihood, their home, or both. If the situation in Vernon is remotely as the LA Times has described it, the City is a farce: a Potemkin democracy in which the legal forms are being observed in order to frustrate their intent.
Surely there must be something California can do to shut them down.
February 12th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
I don’t know about the California constitution, but there was a village here in Ohio that had a similar situation: the town (with about 60 residents) was financially dependent upon speeding tickets and other traffic violations on the main road that cut through the village (on the way to other places); they were getting over $6,000 per year per resident in traffic fines. The state dissolved the village altogether:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio
“Judge Cain granted the order to formally dissolve New Rome on August 9, 2004, and also ordered the clearing of all unpaid traffic tickets and all drivers licenses suspended by the village. No appeal was filed by the September 9 deadline, and so New Rome was irrevocably absorbed into Prairie Township.”
I don’t know, though, whether the state of California has the same laws available in this situation.
February 13th, 2006 at 1:53 am
If the police harassed someone for running for office, wouldn’t that be a civil rights violation? Couldn’t the feds bring charges?
February 15th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
I’m sure that more people would try to run for office in Vernon except the smells of manure and rendered pork fat are a bit offputting.
In the same general corner of L.A. County, the problems with Maywood seem to of greater concern:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/004579.html
Note that there’s a connection between the Vernon insurgents and South Gate, another nearby city that’s had its own corruption/telenovela problems:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/000331.html
November 13th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
The problems in Maywood have to be at the top of L.A. Counties list. The problems in Vernon are miniscule to the drama and corruption that is slowly but surely taking over Maywood.
November 13th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
“Surely there must be something California can do to shut them down.”
Probably not. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I would not want to see the Amish communities, for one example, eliminated.
I know Sarah’s example (Comment #1). The morons gave a ticket to a state legislator. It’s an example of a town which is a criminal enterprise. Doc (Comment #2) also has a point but the remedy would not necessarily be disincorporating the town.
But that’s not the real question here. Aphrael, I didn’t know you liked guns, motorcycles, SUVs and pitbulls.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Apparently I stepped in as a guest blogger at one point. I’d forgotten all about it. :)
November 14th, 2006 at 12:13 am
Still … you know … after the way you’ve described yourself at Patterico’s … it kind of makes one question stereotypes. ;)
November 27th, 2006 at 11:32 am
It was just a matter of time before the vernon city official’s were jailed. I saw it firsthand as a past Vernon employee. To stay in power, City officials controlled City residents. To be a City resident you must first be a City employee. You are then screened and if you pass you are offered housing at a rate of 100 to 200 dollars monhtly. Most this individuals were minimially qualified and were given outrageous salaries. You could find a phone operator on a $60,000 salary for example. Or an unlicensed surveyor with no degree with a 100K salary. The phrase “never bite the hand that feeds you” describes the City official’s power. Every resident’s livelyhood depended on keeping office in power. It was very well known that if you attempted to run for office, you would immediately be fired and be evicted. So why didn’t residents do anything about this…let’s see…lose your job, high salary, and low rent housing, ec…Obvious reasons.