California politics and education update

The scandals in the city of Vernon continue:

Eric T. Fresch is Vernon's million-dollar man, a lawyer and former administrator who is not only one of the nation's highest paid public officials ever, but one of the least known.

No photos of Fresch hang in City Hall, and his image cannot be found on the Internet. Until recently, his name rarely appeared in print. He's not a familiar figure even in Vernon, where he has raked in $7.5 million in salary and fees since 2005, routinely flying down to the small southeast Los Angeles County city from his Marin County home on Mondays and back on Wednesdays — often first-class.

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By his own account, Fresch has been a tireless public servant: In 2008, he averaged 82 hours a week and worked 363 days, including every Saturday, every Sunday and every holiday except Christmas, according to city billing records. He made $1.65 million that year, as city administrator and assistant city attorney and is now a $525-an-hour legal consultant, on track through July to his fifth straight $1-million year.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board does not want the California legislature micromanaging the University of California system:

Some legislators in Sacramento think they've done such a fine job with the state budget that now they should take over operations at the University of California and California State University. No thanks.

We were as unhappy as anyone when the two public education systems accepted the Legislature's largesse — their budgets received significant increases while most other state services were cut — and then turned around and raised student fees. And yes, they could and should be doing more to rein in expenses at the executive level and elsewhere. But the university systems also have an obligation under California's Master Plan for Higher Education to provide excellent undergraduate and graduate education — in the case of UC, a top-tier, research university education. Micromanagement by the Legislature would be the fastest route to educational mediocrity.

The city of Bell is nearly bankrupt because of its ridiculous salaries and pension commitments:

Scandal-plagued Bell is hovering on the brink of insolvency and drastic cuts in city services — including disbanding the Police Department — probably will be necessary to fix its finances, according to a review of the city's books that Los Angeles County officials plan to release next month.

The report by the Los Angeles County auditor-controller paints the most dire financial picture yet of the southeast Los Angeles County city, where eight current and former city officials have been charged in a sweeping public corruption case. The findings were discussed with The Times by officials familiar with its contents who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document remains under wraps.

The review found that Bell has been running a deficit totaling several million dollars over at least the last three years under former Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo. The red ink is the result of hefty salaries and pensions for top Bell officials and extensive city-run programs, the review found. To cover part of the deficit, city officials took money raised by the sale of bonds for specific projects and diverted it to the general fund, a likely violation of the law, according to experts on municipal finance.