OK, how do these things happen?
The superintendent of a 6,600-student south state school district has been suspended by the same board that gave him a salary about twice that of the guy who runs the nearby LA school system with about 10 times the number of students.
Trustees Centinela Valley Union High School District voted 5-0 to suspend Jose Fernandez pending an investigation of his $674,559 salary. Are they going to investigate themselves?
As superintendent, Fernandez oversees three high schools in the Los Angeles suburbs of Hawthorne and Lawndale. The campuses have a combined enrollment of about 6,600 students.
Los Angeles Schools Superintendent John Deasy, who oversees more than 1,000 schools with an enrollment of more than 640,000 students, is paid $393,106 a year. And, in case you're wondering, President Obama's annual salary is $400,000 (of course the president has to live in public housing).
In February the Torrance Daily Breeze published Fernandez's salary, prompting outrage from district parents and teachers. After the disclosure, Fernandez said he was willing to take a pay cut. He said he hoped to work that out at a school board meeting scheduled for next week.
"I'm just disappointed that I wasn't able to work out an agreement with them," he told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. He didn't say how much less he was willing to take and he wasn't any more forthcoming Friday when The Associated Press tried to reach him.
District trustees did the right thing -- finally -- but only after it was disclosed that they'd given Fernandez the breathtaking salary in the first place.
This takes us back to the original question: how do these things happen?
They happen when the public and press get lazy and stops watching and questioning authority.
It's the opposite of the old Ronald Reagan bromide, trust but verify.
Maddeningly unrealistic as Fernandez's salary obviously is, his is but the latest example of what can happen when public officials -- some, not all -- are left to their own devices. Just this week a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sent to prison the first of what likely will be a parade Bell city officials who milked that small city dry.
Angela Spaccia was sentenced 11 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution to the city. Bell's former chief executive and five ex-council members await sentencing.
Spaccia, the city's assistant city manager, cornered a salary of $564,000 a year. In addition, she was found cashing out 26 weeks of vacation each year, effectively boosting her salary by 50 percent.
Bell, California has a population of 35,477, according to the 2010 census.
The Bell officials were convicted of corruption. Nobody is suggesting Fernandez broke any laws. What seems wrong here is an attitude of "it-ain't-our-money-so-who-cares?" on the part of district trustees and Fernandez's willingness to feather his nest at taxpayers' expense.
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