Poor City Pays Officials Top Dollars: Where is all Bell's money coming from?

UPDATE: Someone left the following links in the comments section. You can put in the name of a city and find out salaries: for actual salaries, by person, check out www.lasalaries.com or www.sanfranciscosalaries.com

Where is all this money coming from? I doubt that tax rates are unusually high. There must be something going on in the city that is generating a lot of revenue. Are officials being paid to look the other way? This should be an interesting investigation.

Poor City Pays Officials Top Dollars
Source: Los Angeles Times
July 15, 2010

Bell, one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County, pays its top officials some of the highest salaries in the nation, including nearly $800,000 annually for its city manager. In addition to the $787,637 salary of Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo, Bell pays Police Chief Randy Adams $457,000 a year, about 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck or Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and more than double New York City's police commissioner.