It's not easy to find a story that makes Pennsylvania's politicians seem restrained when it comes to salary and benefits, including pensions. Given the notorious pay-raise vote of 2005 and the pension grab of 2001, through which state lawmakers gave themselves a 50 percent increase in pension benefits and approved a 25 percent increase in pension benefits for most state employees and public school teachers, Pennsylvania's lawmakers are hard to top in terms of greed and self-serving actions.

But now, Pennsylvania lawmakers can point to Bell, Calif., and say, "We're not so bad."

Bell, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles where about 17 percent of the population lives in poverty, has been in an uproar over city salaries since a newspaper report last week.

A Los Angeles Times article revealed that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo was being paid $787,637. That figure, the news report notes, is twice what President Barack Obama makes.

Others on the hot seat are Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who was making $376,288 and Police Chief Randy Adams, who was being paid $457,000, or about 50 percent more than the police chief of Los Angeles.

After an emergency seven-hour, closed-door council meeting Friday, it was announced that Rizzo, Spaccia and Adams would be resigning. Details of their settlements are not being announced, although some experts say that the financial information should be public record. They are right.

And even with those three workers with outrageous salaries leaving their posts, the pension costs are expected to be equally stunning. Rizzo, 55, will be entitled to an annual state pension of $650,00 a year, making him the highest-paid retiree in the California retirement system.

The obvious question is: How did this happen?

It sounds like organized crime. It also sounds like citizens did not keep an eye on their city government.

Bell's city council has taken plenty of heat, as it should. And Mayor Oscar Hernandez, amazingly, defended Rizzo's $787,637 salary, saying it was comparable to the pay of others in similar jobs. But it clearly is not — newspaper reports revealed he was the highest-paid city manager in the country.

It's worth noting in this controversy over excessive salaries that council members in Bell treat themselves pretty well too, with four of the five taking a $100,000 annual salary for the part-time job.

The pressure forced three people out, but with a more involved community it might never have gone as far as it did. Community anger has built support for a recall campaign against some city council members, and the county's district attorney's office is looking into whether any laws were broken in awarding those eye-popping salaries.

According to Hernandez, Bell was nearly bankrupt 17 years ago when Rizzo started work there and conditions are much better now, with cleaner streets, better lighting and nicer parks.

Still, three-quarters-of-a-million dollars is not a reasonable salary to be paid by a struggling city to any employee.

Last week's drama and resignations should not be the end of the hows and whys of these city contracts. The Los Angeles Times reported that the council gained the ability to set pay through a ballot initiative that only 400 people voted on.

That too must be examined, to help make sure something like this cannot happen anywhere else.

A few greedy and self-serving public officials have shown what can happen when the public is not paying attention. But this sort of thing can happen anywhere, not just Bell, Calif. — even in Harrisburg or Washington, D.C.