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High Bell salaries mostly from boards that rarely met, D.A. says

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The lead investigator for the prosecution in the Bell corruption case testified Monday that former council members drew most of their nearly $100,000 salaries from panels that seldom met.

Craig Rhudy of the L.A. County district attorney’s office’s public integrity division verified several charts he created that listed how often four different authorities met between 2006 and 2010 and what those boards added to the paychecks of defendants Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal.

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The chart for 2006, for instance, showed that out of 20 City Council meetings, the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority met just once; the Community Housing and Public Finance Authorities each met five times, and the Surplus Property Authority had four meetings.

CRISIS IN BELL: High salaries stir outrage

All of the defendants, except Artiga, who was appointed in 2008, were paid $12,857 for each authority served in 2006.

The next year, the Finance Authority met once and the Housing Authority met twice, Rhudy confirmed.

By 2009, in spite of the fact that the panels continued to meet only sporadically, the pay for serving on each had jumped to $18,368, according to Rhudy’s chart.

In 2010, none of the authorities met except the Housing Authority.

In total, the defendants drew more than $1.3 million of their salaries from the authorities in question, Rhudy confirmed. ALSO:

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-- Corina Knoll

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