Vernon California, what a town!

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley is trying to disband a minuscule city that has sucked up state funds and leaked scandal for 80 years, according to LA Times.

All you have to know about Vernon, Calif. is it has a population of 90 and a municipal budget of $300 million. That's a $3.3 million budget per person. Vernon has this much money thanks to the 1,800 businesses incorporated within its borders -- generating money that would otherwise flow to the bare coffers of Los Angeles. Business Insider

Let's go corruption hunting, shall we?

Here the LA Times names the crooks explicitly:

o far, the Los Angeles district attorney's investigation appears to have focused primarily on Donal O'Callaghan, the former city administrator who was indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury on charges regarding two contracts the city established with his wife.

The attorney general is now demanding that Vernon make officials available for testimony regarding the compensation and perks received by former city attorney and city administrator Eric T. Fresch, Finance Director Roirdan S. Burnett, former City Atty. Jeffrey Harrison, former City Administrator Bruce Malkenhorst Sr., and former City Clerk Bruce Malkenhorst Jr., as well as O'Callaghan.

Those six constitute the last decade of leadership in Vernon, a small, well-heeled industrial city just south of downtown Los Angeles. Vernon has been dogged for decades by claims that it is run by a small fiefdom of well-connected people who use the city of 90 residents to generate large incomes.

The Times reported this summer that those six officials all earned more than $500,000 in at least one of the last five years, with Fresch, a former city administrator who now works as a legal consultant, making $1.65 million in 2008. Source.

On reading Wiki about the town, however, we find it is just a 90 person family town that run the city for profit. There real crimes are restriction of voting and assembly rights as new residents were discouraged from moving in. Of the 90 residents, half work for the city and live in city owned housing, The place runs their own power utility. It seems less corrupt and more like a fiefdom. If you steal, the only group to steal from is the founding and managing family. They produce quite a bit of odors since they cater to meat, food and metal processing. Otherwise, just a libertarian town owned and managed by one family.

This town should be a private business, it is not clear why they incorporated in the first place except to confer titles onto the founder family.