VIDEO: City of Bell Councilman Lorenzo Velez Denied Financial Records (90 seconds)

Councilman Lorenzo Velez of the City of Bell states on 9-13-10 that he has been denied city financial records that he has requested. He states that fiscal year 2009 finances have not been closed out even at this late date. The city of Bell city clerk website also states that fiscal 2008 city finances have not been closed and balanced even though this is over 2 years ago!!!

The part at the end's pretty interesting. By law, they can't hold a meeting without 72 hours prior notice. The only exception's an emergency meeting, which requires notice to the media at a minimum. In both cases the notice has to be posted in a place accessible to the public 24/7. There was clearly enough notice for all those activists to assemble, so if there was a conspiracy to keep Velez in the dark, then they're not only connivers, they're incompetent connivers.

Velez was sworn in last November and was being paid eight grand a year while the others were taking home a hundred grand. Normally, a glance at the city budget will tell you that, but they apparently failed to make their budget public.

The state's public meeting and public records laws are available to prevent this sort of thing, and the extent to which the public and its elected representatives failed to make use of them is a large part of the story here. The dereliction of duty extended all the way down to the individual citizen. It's kind of an object lesson for the consequence of individuals not wanting to “get involved”.

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