BELL, Calif. — A former city manager’s huge $787,000 salary is only half of the unusually generous total compensation given to the official in the small California blue-collar city of Bell, according to local media reports.
Robert Rizzo’s benefits, which included 20 weeks paid vacation, brought his total annual compensation to more than $1.5 million, KTTV Fox 11 News reported Friday night.
According to public records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Rizzo was to receive $386,786 in paid vacation and sick benefits this year, in addition to his base salary. The documents show that Rizzo’s investment accounts and other benefits received payments.
“It appears Rizzo was getting an inordinate amount of hours of vacation and sick benefits and being paid for it,” Jamie Casso, Bell’s new interim city attorney, told the Times.
Compensation experts said the payments to Bell officials are far above the norm.
Rizzo did not immediately return telephone messages left by The Associated Press on Saturday.
The Los Angeles district attorney’s office and the California attorney general are investigating the huge salaries of several former officials and City Council members, who earned nearly $100,000 a year before recent cuts.
Rizzo, assistant city manager Angela Spaccia and Bell’s police chief Randy Adams resigned last month after a public outcry over their huge salaries in the largely working-class city of about 40,000 residents southeast of Los Angeles.
Fox 11 also reported that Spaccia’s total annual compensation was $845,000, including her previously reported $376,288 salary, and Adams’ total compensation came to $770,000, including his $457,000 salary.
Rizzo was in line for a $600,000-a-year pension but the California Public Employees’ Retirement System has ordered a freeze on the benefits for all three officials pending the outcome of the investigations.
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