VERNON – It's easy to understand why Leonis Malburg would rather not live here. But for more than 50 years, Malburg has been helping run this dreary municipal oddity, and he has been mayor since 1974. Vernon, about five miles south of downtown Los Angeles, touts itself as “Exclusively Industrial,” and has fewer than 100 residents. Its 5.2 square miles are wall-to-wall with warehouses, meatpacking plants and asphalt. Trucks rumble through the streets. There are no parks – even patches of grass are scarce. An estimated 44,000 people work here every day but return to homes outside city limits when...