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On March 8, voters in the city of Bell will elect an entirely new city council during a special, combined municipal-recall election. For the first time in nearly a decade, candidates that have not been hand-picked by former city manager Robert Rizzo, who has been at the center of a massive corruption case since last September, will run for a spot on the city council. Of the eighteen candidates running for the five vacancies on the city council, several are current or former Bell city council members. Among the candidates are Teresa Jacobo, who was arrested in for her involvement in the Rizzo scandal, and Lorenzo Velez, the only city official not involved in the corruption scandal. Two seats have been left vacant since last September, after former council members Oscar Hernandez and George Mirabal were arrested for misappropriating city funds. A third seat was vacated after Luis Artiga, a pastor, resigned from office after misappropriating city funds. Several of the remaining candidates are associated with “Bell Association to Stop the Abuse”, or BASTA, which formed in the wake of the scandal. BASTA is the official pro-recall organization that petitioned for the March election. However, the organization has received criticism from Bell residents for being overrun by “aspiring politicians and professional insiders.” Meanwhile, over the weekend, 34 year old Miguel Sanchez, one of the candidates, died after being admitted to the hospital for flu-like symptoms. Sanchez was active among the Bell residents who protested against the corruption in the City Council.

GUEST: Ruben Vives, Staff reporter for the LA Times who along with Jeff Gottlieb broke the story about the exorbitant salaries and compensation packages of Bell City Council members.

Ruben Vives is joined us from Boston today. He and Jeff Gottlieb are finalists for the Goldsmith Award in Investigative reporting for their story on Bell, “Breach of Faith.” Vives and Gottlieb’s reporting on Bell has already been honored with the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting–an award given out by USC’s Annenberg Journalism-school, and the George Polk award, one of the most prestigious awards programs in journalism.