Hawthorne, California former mayor Larry Guidi served for nearly twenty years. It's amazing that no matter how often power corrupts, no matter how often pundits and journalists implore people to keep an eye on local government, voters still will turn out in small numbers and vote into office a incumbent of controversial character and questionable integrity. Experience in office eventually turns into experience in corruption, time and again. Apparently, the individuals who serve in local government share little in common with the needs and the well-being of the communities that they serve.
It is both laughable and deplorable that the former mayor of the "City of Good Neighbors" went down over stealing a pizza mixer from a school warehouse. At least he did not parlay his power into rampant pervasive perversion of the public trust. Guidi helped bring back businesses to the area, a region that had been hard hit by report of ongoing criminality and threats to the public peace.
The same mayor went on to serve as a facilities manager for the Hawthorne school district, a questionable move that should have alarmed someone. Someone could have complained about a conflict of interest. School districts have no reason to engage in ongoing rapprochement with local government.
City government affects us the most, yet it receives the least attention. Perhaps media markets have become immune to the infrequent killings that trouble Hawthorne. Perhaps most investors are still wary of investing in a community where a large portion of its revenue and resources were poured into a mall that has long since closed down and closed up for good. Let us hope that the new mayor will drive away the untoward ill repite which has lighted upon the hometown of the Beach Boys.
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