Opinion: How to fix Vernon ... or not

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Pretty much everybody wants to fix scandal-plagued Vernon, except, of course, the 90 or so Vernonites. After all, the residents of this industrial town live in city housing and most of them have some kind of connection with the city, whether they’re employees or not. You’re not likely to hear them complaining about the people who tried to move into town and challenge the status quo, who then were followed and pretty much run out of town. Nor have they been trying to ‘throw the bums out,’ the bums in question being city officials who have treated themselves to luxury items at tax expense and avoided holding elections when it doesn’t suit their purposes.

Just flat disincorporating the city is one possibility under discussion, under the philosophy that Vernon never has been a city the way most of us think of one, but more an industrial park set up to benefit a couple of families with longtime land ownership there.

The new proposal, to be discussed next week by the Board of Supervisors, would be a constitutional amendment that limits what charter cities can do with city housing. No more than 10% of such housing could be occupied by municipal employees or others with strong city ties.

But what if another city -- one that operates like a real city -- decided to build some public housing as a way to entice employees to work there? Assuming anyone has the money for such a venture, that’s not an unrealistic possibility, considering that various affluent areas around the state have long looked at ways that teachers, police officers and other public servants could afford to live in the place they work.

An amendment to the California Constitution seems like an awfully big hammer for one rusty nail.

-- Karin Klein