Three city officials in Bell, Calif., have agreed to resign after a public uproar over reports that make a combined annual salary of more than $1.6 million, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The resignations were announced to an angry crowd after midnight following a city council meeting that was closed to the public because it involved personnel matters.

The three officials, city manager Robert Rizzo, who earns $787,000 a year, police chief Randy Adams, who makes $456,000 (more than the police chief of L.A.), and assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, who earns $376,000, will not receive severance packages.

CNN reports that the average salary in the blue-collar town of around 37,000 people near Los Angeles is $30,000 and the unemployment rate is about 16%.

The crowd also demanded a recall move against city council members, the newspaper says.

The Times, which first reported the huge salaries last week, notes that that four of the five council members make close to $100,000 each per year. The fifth makes only $8,000.

Times reporter Jeff Gottlieb, in a separate story, writes that the council was able to skirt state salary limits by authorizing a little-noticed special election in 2005 that changed the legal description of Bell from a "general law city" to a "charter city."

Only around 400 voters turned out for the election, in which the change was the only item on the ballot.

The election was called after adoption the same year of a state law that placed limits on the pay of council members in "general law"cities.

That law, in turn, had been passed in response to high salaries that leaders in the town of South Gate,Calif., had given themselves.

The author of that law, Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, estimates that if Bell were not a charter city, the council members would earn between $10,000 and $12,000 a year, the Times says, not $100,000.

City leaders at the times argued that the change was needed to give the council more flexibility to govern.

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)