Breaking News:‘Vernon Killer’ Defeated On Senate Floor
By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer
Assembly Speaker John Perez’s nearly nine-month quest to dissolve the city of Vernon ended this afternoon after his bill, AB 46, failed on the Senate floor, on a vote of 13-17 against.
Perez introduced the bill last December to disincorporate any California city that had fewer than 150 residents as of the end of last year.
Vernon is the only city that would have been affected by the bill. Perez has said the city’s 100 or so residents live in city-owned housing and do not constitute a true electorate who can hold officials accountable.
According to Perez, this has resulted in the city being involved in a series of corruption and compensation scandals that have so far resulted in investigations by the State Attorney General, Los Angeles County District Attorney, and most recently, the IRS, as well as in three Vernon officials being convicted of crimes including embezzlement, voter fraud, and conflict of interest.
Vernon’s business community and labor unions teamed up with the city in recent months to fight Perez’s bill, raising concerns that 55,000 jobs would be at stake if the city were to be disincorporated.
In an 11th-hour move, State Sen. Kevin de Leon, one of AB 46’s original coauthors, dropped his support of the bill, and instead proposed a series of reforms to Vernon officials that would not require legislative action.
The city council unanimously approved the reform package that included reparation payments to surrounding communities that have “borne the brunt” of “Vernon’s shortsightedness.”
During today’s floor debate, De Leon spoke passionately against the bill, saying there will be “unintended victims, women and men, 55,000 employees with good union paying jobs.”
De Leon went on record promising that disincorporation will be revisited if the city does not “acquiesce” with reform efforts.
Sen. Lois Wolk speaking on behalf of Speaker Perez said Vernon was never a real city to begin with, and that reforms alone will not fix Vernon. “Leaders of a corrupt past are still in charge of a corrupt present. The people charged with reform are the problem,” she said.
Perez issued a scathing indictment of his colleagues in the Senate following the vote:
“Today’s action by the Senate is a deep disappointment to the men and women of the Southeast Communities. I introduced AB 46 to finally end the toxic corruption that has poisoned the Southeast Communities by disincorporating Vernon. The Senate chose to ignore decades of corruption in Vernon, and AB 46, like multiple bills that came in response to the Bell scandals last year, could not gather a majority of senators. The fact is clear: Senators Calderon and De León, along with their colleagues, have given Vernon a free pass to continue doing business as usual, and those senators will own the responsibility for any misdeeds that may occur in the future. I am proud of the fact that I stood with the men and women of the Southeast communities in this effort.”
Related Story: De Leon Recommends Vernon Start ‘Making Amends” to Its Neighbors
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August 29, 2011 Copyright © 2012 Eastern Group Publications, Inc.
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