The Southern California city of Vernon is fighting one of the state’s most powerful public officials for its life. Targeted for destruction by legislation introduced by Speaker John Perez, Vernon once waged a weak defense of its right to exist, but is now in an all out war for survival.

It’s a battle that the city’s leadership has been either quietly fighting or ignoring entirely for decades. Wrapped in their self-induced isolation, they have weathered controversy and scandal before, but this time it was more of a struggle than they imagined.

It took a strange coalition of labor, business, and local government lobbyists to keep them alive this long. Over the last several months, dissolution looked like a foregone conclusion, now they have a fighting chance.

But can one victory outweigh a legacy of corruption that is synonymous with the name Vernon? The Los Angeles Weekly tells the whole story of how the city ended up under the knife.

From the Los Angeles Weekly:

The industrial city a few miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles is home to the region’s last remaining slaughterhouse, a handful of rendering plants, chemical manufacturers and a gas-fired power plant.

It may also be the most corrupt five square miles in California, with a former city administrator quintuple-dipping his way to a $600,000 annual paycheck and other executives pocketing huge salaries.

Read the full article here.
(Warning: There is some foul language in the article.)