A Special Report for the Compton Bulletin
No matter where you are in the world, it is likely that you have heard of Compton. Most people’s idea of this city lives somewhere between Boyz n the Hood and prodigy rappers. But the truth is Compton is so much more than the story that was written about it.
What many people do not know is the great lengths that individuals and institutions went to in order to dismantle what the Hub City had already built. Compton was an economic powerhouse. You lived here, worked here, and shopped here. It was not a city striving toward something. It was a city that had already arrived.
A 1970s article titled “Compton: a Self-Sufficiency Test for Black Leadership, Other Majority Negro Cities Wait and Watch” captured exactly what was at stake. The success of Compton as a majority-Black city was not going to be a local story. It was going to be a national blueprint. Other cities were watching to see whether independent Black governance could work. Whether it could build something lasting. Whether it could be sovereign.
The article read: “But if they fail, a great many people will share the consequences. The bell will also toll from Oakland in the West to Newark, NJ in the East.”
This was the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, a federal program built on a mandate to disrupt, discredit, and destroy Black political leadership across this country. The success of independent Black governance would have disrupted entrenched political and economic interests at a national level.
Compton was not just a city. It was a symbol. And symbols are rarely allowed to rise uncontested.
Compton had to fail. And fail it did.
But history is not an excuse.
There was a time when external forces worked to destabilize Black leadership in this country. When disruption was organized, funded, and intentional. But today, no federal program is stopping Compton from building. No outside agency is preventing this city from governing well.
If Compton fails now, it will not be because it was sabotaged from the outside.
It will be because of what is happening on the inside.
And as a Compton resident who has been paying attention, I need to tell you what that looks like right now.
The Hero Pay
In March 2022, the Compton City Council voted 4-0 to authorize what was called Essential Worker Premium Pay, drawing from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. The resolution was passed by Mayor Emma Sharif, Councilman Isaac Galvan, Councilman Jonathan Bowers, and Councilperson Lillie Darden. Each of them voted yes. Each of them received up to $15,000 in those same funds.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission opened an investigation into Mayor Sharif for a potential conflict of interest violation under Government Code 1090, which prohibits public officials from having a financial stake in the decisions they vote on. Bowers and Darden received the same federal funds.
The investigation is still pending. And depending on how it resolves, the taxpayers of Compton may be required to pay back what was taken.
Residents who had no vote in that room. No seat at that table. No say in what was decided. They may carry the full financial consequence of it anyway.
That is not a technicality. That is the cost of governance that serves itself.
The City Manager
Willie Hopkins was appointed as Compton’s city manager in late 2023. The city was beginning to move. There were signs of progress. For once, it seemed like someone was being allowed to actually do the job.
On April 7, 2026, less than two months from the primary election, that came to an end. The council voted to place Hopkins on administrative leave. No clear explanation was offered to the public. No accounting of what prompted the action. No transparency about what had changed. Residents were simply told it was done.
Hopkins remains on administrative leave as of this writing. He is still on the city’s payroll. Compton is paying a city manager who is not managing the city, with no public explanation for how long that will continue or why it began.
The vote that placed him on leave was 3. His contract required 4.
Compton’s city charter, which can only be changed by the voters, sets the threshold at 3. But Hopkins’ contract required a higher bar, and that threshold existed for a reason: to prevent a small coalition from sidelining a city manager without broader consensus. It is a guardrail against exactly the kind of instability this city has lived through for sixteen years.
The city moved with 3 votes anyway. And Hopkins has grounds to sue for breach of contract. If he does, it will not be the council that pays for it. It will be the residents of Compton.
In Emma Sharif’s four years as Mayor, Compton has been through two city managers. In the eight years she served as a councilmember before that, eight more came and went. She was in the room for the hiring and voted in favor of every hire and departure.
This is not an isolated incident. This is a pattern.
Thirteen City Managers in Sixteen Years
Since 2010, Compton has had thirteen city managers. Thirteen.
That is not leadership. That is a revolving door that never stops spinning.
Think about what that actually means. A city manager needs time to understand the organization, build relationships, diagnose problems, and execute solutions. Meaningful change in a city does not happen in months.
It takes years. Imagine a company that hired a new CEO every single year. No strategy would survive the turnover. No institutional knowledge would hold. The ball would not just get dropped. It would never stay in anyone’s hands long enough to move it forward.
That is what Compton has been doing. And an independent audit said so.
In 2018, a State Controller’s Office audit found the city had nine different city managers in seven years. The audit reviewed 79 measures of internal accounting and administrative controls. The city was found deficient in 71 of them. Nearly 90 percent.
That same period of instability created the conditions under which a former deputy treasurer embezzled more than $3.7 million from this city over six years. Money that belonged to the people of Compton. Gone because no one was steady enough, or accountable enough, to catch it.
The audit called for stable, consistent leadership by name. It said directly that the absence of steady management was not a symptom. It was a cause.
The city was told in writing. The city did not change.
And without accountability for why each departure happens, we cannot know whether we are solving a problem or deepening the same one we have had for sixteen years.
Thirteen city managers. The pattern does not lie.
The Censure
One week before the June 2 election, the Compton City Council voted 4-0 to censure Councilman Andre Spicer, who is running for mayor on that same ballot, and strip him of his committee duties. The censure was brought forward at the request of Mayor Sharif, who is also on the mayoral ballot, and Councilman Bowers, who is running to retain his seat in District 3.
I will be transparent. Anyone familiar with my work in this community already knows where I stand in this race. I am not going to pretend otherwise. But what I am about to describe does not require my opinion to make its point. The facts are the facts, and they belong to everyone. It cited credit card purchases outside the parameters of the city’s Cal-Card policy.
The report documented 5 expenditures with no receipts totaling $701.29, 12 items categorized as unknown totaling $1,097.72, and 20 additional expenditures outside of policy totaling $5,994.97. Spicer acknowledged he could not recall what many of the purchases were for. He released a public statement taking responsibility. Upon further review, receipts for some city-related events were located, which reduced the outstanding amount. He repaid $513 to the city.
The report initially flagged nearly $8,000. After receipts were found, he paid back $513.
That is the conduct that triggered unanimous, immediate action.
Now I want you to sit with that for a moment.
I am a Compton resident. And I am struggling to name a single proposition, a single ordinance, a single piece of policy that this council moved on with this kind of speed for the people they represent.
They did not move like this when Councilman Galvan was arrested. They did not move like this when street takeovers were holding this city hostage. They did not move like this when contractors could not get paid on time. They have never moved like this to bring a restaurant to Compton, to build a skating rink, to create activities for our young people, to clean up parks that have been overtaken, to address the dirty streets that residents have been reporting for years.
Not once.
But they know how to draft an ordinance. They just proved it. They know how to call an emergency. They know how to move in days when they want to. Which means every time they did not, it was a choice.
That tells you who they are serving.
The hero pay investigation has been open since 2022. For years, residents have been calling for answers. No censure was introduced. No stripping of duties. No urgency.
The city manager was placed on administrative leave without public explanation and without the votes his contract required. No accountability. No answers. And the city is still paying him.
But $513?
That moved in days.
When a governing body is capable of speed and chooses when to use it, that choice is not procedural. It is personal. It reveals who they are protecting. It reveals what they believe their power is for.
It costs us a city manager who was building something. It costs us federal funds that may have to be returned. It costs us the businesses that chose Carson, Paramount, Long Beach, and Lakewood instead of us. It costs us the restaurants we do not have, the activities our children do not have, the clean and safe parks we deserve and have been asking for. It costs us trust. It costs us the version of Compton that keeps almost arriving and never does.
What This Election Is Actually About
Compton has paid enough for leadership that takes care of itself first.
And I mean that literally.
In November 2015, fewer than 5,000 people showed up to vote on whether to increase the school district’s debt by up to $350 million. 2,762 voted in favor. 2,175 opposed. Every homeowner in Compton felt the weight of that decision when their property tax bill arrived. Today, Compton residents pay some of the highest property taxes in the county. We are still driving past the same neglected streets, the same empty lots, the same parks that should have been rebuilt years ago.
We are still waiting on the city those taxes should have built.
Meanwhile, Compton still operates under an outdated city charter, with policies that other cities removed decades ago. Policies that limit accountability, constrain what is possible, and protect structures that have kept this city from moving forward. Every other city updated theirs. We are still governed by a document that belongs to a different era.
We’re tired.
Not the tired that keeps you home. The tired that makes you demand better. The tired that looks at thirteen city managers, an open investigation into elected officials, and a censure timed one week before a ballot and says enough.
Compton was once a symbol of what Black governance could build. There are people in other cities who have been watching this place their whole lives, waiting to see what we would become.
What we become next is still being decided.
Compton’s residents deserve a city manager who is allowed to manage. They deserve elected officials who cannot vote themselves federal funds and walk away without consequence. They deserve a governing body that moves with the same speed for the people as it moves for itself.
We have been shown who is sitting in those chairs. We know what they prioritize. We know what they move fast on.
Now the question is whether we are going to keep letting them.
The window is open. And it will keep opening until Compton decides it is done accepting this.
The pattern has shown you what happens when you stay home.
This time, are you watching?
Alysia Rivers is a Compton resident, author, and civic strategist focused on governance, accountability, and economic empowerment.
This article by Ms. Rivers was independently written outside of the normal scope of the editorial platform of The Bulletin newspaper
