The curtain was pulled back, and now the wizard will lose his job.

After it was reported last week by the Los Angeles Times that the small city of Bell’s City Manager, Robert Rizzo, was making a salary close to $800,000, the Vice Mayor of Bell said on Monday that Rizzo will resign or be fired.

In a report by the Times on Monday afternoon, Vice Mayor Teresa Jacobo said she expected Rizzo, Belle’s top city administrator, to lose his job at Monday night’s council meeting.

“Tonight we have a meeting where we will take drastic measures,” she said, according to the Times report. “Unfortunately, we had too much trust in people we felt were doing an excellent job.”



She added: “Mr. Rizzo will have to go one way or another.” Asked if Rizzo would resign, she said, “We hope.”

It isn’t just the City Manager, though. Bell Police Chief Randy Adams earns $457,000 per year, a salary that is 50 percent more than the yearly salary of the Los Angeles Police Chief and the L.A. County sheriff. The Bell Assistant City Manager even makes more than the L.A. Police Chief.

The Bell city councilmembers earn a part-time salary of more than $100,000.

More from the newspaper:

Earlier Monday, a Bell city councilman called for a “completely open and transparent” investigation into the salaries of top executives and his council colleagues, saying if a Times report that Bell officials are among the highest-paid administrators and elected municipal leaders in the nation is true, they should resign immediately.

Councilman Lorenzo Velez, who was appointed to the council in the working-class city in October, also said he received only $310.62 every two weeks for his work as a councilman — far less than the $100,000 his colleagues collected annually.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is investigating the council salaries. Normally, council members in a city the size of Bell would be paid about $400 a month, the D.A.’s office reported.