RECLAIMING PUBLIC SERVICE AS AN HONORABLE CALLING

Back in 1912, when New York City's main post office was built, this motto was carved above the stately Greek columns: "Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Even that bastion of progressive reform, the council-manager form of government, has been sullied, symbolized by the grotesque abuses of City Manager Robert Rizzo, who managed to squeeze more than $1.2 million in annual compensation from Bell, California, a city of 30,000 working-class immigrants. Here in California, the boom years triggered an unseemly escalation in annual salaries for local government managers, along with ingenious additional benefits off the public radar - at least until the Bell scandal broke.\n But what happens when you feel shortchanged by a vending machine, or it doesn't deliver what you want?