people of Bell are trying to find out where those charitable contributions went and if any funds were ever donated to breast cancer awareness organizations. Property taxes An investigation into the city's property taxes found that the homeowners of Bell were paying a rate higher than those of the affluent Beverly Hills. Homeowners in Bell paid the second-highest tax rate of any city in Los Angeles County. Wendy Watanabe, Los Angeles County's auditor-controller, stated that residents of Bell paid as much as 1.55% of their home's assessed value in taxes, 34% above the county average of 1.16%. State Controller John Chiang said the raised rate was illegal. Auditors discovered that taxpayers were overcharged by $2.9 million for a "retirement tax" to fund city employee pensions. Under California's state tax code, the nearly $3 million overpaid by Bell homeowners should have been redirected to local schools; however, on September 1, 2010, lawmakers approved AB 900 by Assemblyman Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles), which returned $2.9 million in property tax refunds directly to the overcharged city residents. On September 13, 2010 Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, approved the bill. Illegal sewer fees The city of Bell assessed property owners for sewer fees without getting the mandated voter approval. The Times acquired a letter to the city in which Controller John Chiang stated that property owners overpaid $621,737 in fees that were illegally increased since 2007. The extra tax added about $20 per parcel for each of the last three years' tax bills. After the salary scandal surfaced in July 2010, about a hundred residents protested at City Council meetings, saying they believed that their taxes were too high. Many residents said they had noticed assessments on their tax bills that they were never informed of and did not understand. ABC News announced that Bell homeowners who had overpaid their property taxes over the last three years would be refunded the funds that were collected illegally. In September 2010, Lieutenant Governor Maldonado signed Assembly Bill 900, which returned $3,000,000 collected from 4,000 residents. Auditor negligence In connection with an accusation (AC2012-17) that the auditing firm Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C. (MHM) of Irvine, California "committed repeated acts of negligence on more than one occasion in the 2009 audit of the City of Bell (Bell) and the Bell Community Redevelopment Agency (Bell CRA) that departed from professional standards" and "insufficiently documented its audit for Bell and