Lynwood has an annual per capita income of only $9,500, but its elected leaders are among the best-paid part-time politicians in California.
A majority of the City Council enjoy six-figure incomes, lavish foreign travel and the generous use of city credit cards for meals and entertainment, including steakhouse dinners, a New York musical and a dance show in Rio de Janeiro.
Travel and credit card expenses by the five-member council have cost taxpayers more than $600,000 over the last five years, records show, and include city-paid trips to Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America.
Council members Louis Byrd and Paul Richards have each made more than 25 out-of-town trips in the last two years.
The travel, Byrd said, helps promote Lynwood, a city of 70,000 residents located at the junction of the Long Beach and Century freeways.
Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn, representing the nation's second-largest city and one of the world's busiest ports, took nine business trips during the same period.
The council jobs pay annual salaries of $9,600, but three members -- Byrd, Richards and Arturo Reyes -- each earned more than $100,000 in 2000 and 2001, city records show.
Council members boost their salaries by serving on two city agencies, earning $900 for back-to-back meetings that often last only minutes. Council members also collect a $100 per diem to represent Lynwood at local parades, golf tournaments, beauty pageants and USC football's Salute to Troy.
The appearances and meeting stipends add up. In 2001, Byrd, a former elementary school principal, was paid $121,000; Richards, an attorney, got $110,000.
"We earn every penny of it," Byrd said.
By comparison, City Council members in Long Beach, which is six times larger than Lynwood and has an international port, are paid $26,000 a year.
Lynwood, one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County, can hardly afford its big-spending leaders.
The city's $1.3-million budget gap in the current $13-million general fund had to be covered with emergency reserves. During budget deliberations, however, council members did not cut their own expenses.
Faustin Gonzalez, who resigned earlier this year as city manager, said he had trouble reining in his free-spending bosses.
"It was extremely difficult to control them," he said. "If you asked them to justify what they did, sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. If they didn't, what could you do?"
