Conor McGarry is a graduate of California State University–Dominguez Hills, and a Journalism Fellow at California Policy Center.
Vernon is small industrial city with more city staff than residents. Despite its small population, we were surprised to learn recently that it has a municipal library. While doing research for our forthcoming Civic Profiles update, a CPC researcher found that the library was open zero hours per week and had a mere 1093 books....
Nice Benefits! Add in health and retirement, and 128 L.A. County lifeguards earned total compensation of over $100,000 last year. Los Angeles County boasts the world’s largest professional lifeguard association. But most of the association’s 850 guards work seasonally. The incomes of the 150 year-round lifeguards can seem surprisingly rich to anyone raised on the...
Vernon, California is so famous for its history of corruption that it was the municipal star of season two of HBO’s “True Detective” series. Now the tiny L.A. County city can claim another achievement: Vernon is the only California city with more public employees than residents. Vernon’s 210 residents are served by 271 city employees,...
CUSD’s Kirsten Vital In the space of just a few months, state officials have suddenly turned their attention to a problem in the public-educational shadows: insider dealing among California school district officials and outside vendors. In a January opinion, state Attorney General Kamala Harris concluded that school officials had become too cozy with companies that...