Life After Grad School

San Fernando Valley politics read like a novela.

latimes:

San Fernando government more like a reality show? Scandals involving San Fernando officials have residents of the town irate because attention is being diverted from serious problems, including a large budget deficit and deep cuts to services.

Man, this story…

• At a City Council meeting, the mayor confesses bankruptcy and an affair with a colleague while his wife was in the audience.
• Several months before that meeting, a teenage police cadet claimed that she had been fired after an affair with the current police chief, including one, ahem, “tryst” in his city car.
• The mayor is placing some of the blame on a local newspaper owner… whose wife is the sister of the mayor’s estranged wife.

Obviously, this is the best:

“I don’t care about your affairs,” John Espinoza, of the San Fernando National Little League, told the council. “I am here to complain about you wanting to charge children to play in your parks.”

Photo: San Fernando Mayor Mario Hernandez. Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times