A Dream Machine

See 1/16/09 addendum at bottom

The dream of every machine politician is to have his city controlled by those who work for him. Unfortunately, every city has citizens who don’t work for the city administration. Or so I thought until I learned about Vernon, California.

Vernon is “an exclusively industrial city,” which is a fancy term for one big conflict of interest.

Here’s how it works, according to the Economist and a wonderful fictional dialogue by public administration professor H. George Frederickson (the dialogue is fictional, he says, not the facts on which it is based): There are only 91 people living in Vernon. The great majority of them work for the city and rent their homes from the city at extremely low prices. The mayor has held power for 34 years, and was on the city council for another 18 years before that (his grandfather co-founded the city in 1905 and was also mayor for many years). The city administrator’s father was city administrator for 30 years.

Elections were not contested from 1980 to 2006 (which means there weren’t any), when some outsiders renovated an industrial building in the city and petitioned to stand for three of the five council seats. To see what happened next, read Frederickson’s piece.

This brought a lot of attention to the city. The mayor and his family (who allegedly don’t even live in Vernon) were charged with voter fraud and the city administrator was charged with misappropriation of public funds. Charges against the mayor’s son were even worse. I haven’t been able to find out what happened to any of these charges, but the mayor is still in his position, according to the city website.

“What outsiders miss is that the damn place works well,” one of the city’s business owners told The Economist (February 23, 2008 issue). That says it all. And it seems to work well. According to the city’s website, it has a Class 1 Rated fire department (one of 35 in the U.S.), it is one of only four cities in California with a health department, it has low electric rates, a great police department, etc. And why not? A high grand list and no schools. What more could any city want?

Vernon is proof that without good government, we would just have good old-fashioned dynasties abusing their power. And it doesn’t stop at corruption. From 1992: “A recent investigation by the California Public Interest Research Group revealed that Vernon annually emits, processes, or stores 27 million pounds of toxics—more than three times as much as the entire city of Los Angeles.” You don't have to worry about NIMBYites when you don't have any backyards.

Vernon got a lot of attention back in 2006, but I haven’t been able to find anything about it since. No more scandals, it seems, just one big running scandal. It very well may be that business there has gone back to usual. And there are supposed to be a few other cities in Southern California just like it. Sounds like the perfect study for an aspiring municipal ethicist.

Addendum: On January 13, 2009, a California appellate court found that the outsiders were permitted to have registered to vote in Vernon. The legal arguments are not relevant to government ethics concerns, but there are many facts in the case about what was happening back in 2006. As for the other cases, there still seems to be silence. The mayor is still in office.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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