After a year of legal battles, Los Angeles County prosecutors have obtained volumes of documents from Vernon City Hall that are at the center of a public corruption probe of the small industrial city.
Vernon city leaders fought to keep the records from the district attorney's office, taking the case to the California Supreme Court.
But the high court refused to hear Vernon's final appeal last week, and prosecutors are now reviewing 1,700 pages of city records. Soon after receiving the documents, prosecutors served search warrants last week at City Hall as well as at homes both in Southern California and out of state.
Prosecutors have criticized Vernon's aggressive efforts to keep the records private, saying that they are looking at whether former city employees -- including the former city administrator -- defrauded the city treasury.
It's one of several legal battles that Vernon is now fighting.
In early January, eight people moved into a small building in Vernon. Within days, three of the eight filed papers to run for the City Council. The group was evicted, and their voter registration was canceled by City Clerk Bruce Malkenhorst Jr.
The City Council subsequently voted to cancel the election and to reelect the three incumbents. But a judge ruled that canceling the voter registration was not lawful and ordered the April election to go forward.
The city has still not counted ballots from the election, alleging that the challengers committed fraud. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge is expected to rule in that case in just over a month, but it's unclear when officials will count the ballots in what was the city's first contested election in 25 years.
Prosecutors have said the documents they obtained last week are at the center of their public corruption probe.
David Demerjian, head deputy of the district attorney's Public Integrity Unit, declined to provide details about the new searches.
"We're going to do a preliminary review to see what we have," Demerjian said of the records. "Right now, we're just not sure if we have a smoking gun or what."
In court papers filed by prosecutors, an investigator said that documents that should have been on file at City Hall were either missing or destroyed.
The legal wrangling involves documents that then-City Atty. Eduardo Olivo presented to the Vernon City Council in 2004.
