Contrary to those who think my criticisms of City Hall are over the top, I can only say now that everything I’ve ever said or written was understatement.
Even I’m surprised to say that. The turn of events with regards to DWP rate hikes is dizzying, a display of lies, abuses of power and political bungling by the mayor that is unprecedented.
It was just three weeks ago that the mayor leaked a fraudulent story to the New York Times that the DWP was losing $5 million a week and desperately needed massive rate hikes to pay its bills and avoid a downgrade in its credit rating.
Since then, we have seen him change his story about how high rates have to go and how the money will be spent at least five times, attempt to blackmail the City Council with threats of driving the city into bankruptcy if his demands were not met and thoroughly corrupt even the appearance of independence of the DWP Commission and the department’s conniving and incompetent leadership.
If there was a process for impeachment, he would be removed from office. There are more than sufficient grounds.
The presence of his three mediocrities — Jay Carson, Jeff Carr and Matt Szabo — at Wednesday night’s DWP Commission meeting giving board members their marching orders to defy the City Council is proof of his willingness to go to any lengths to impose his will as if he were some kind of dictator.
And what was at stake: $6 million in revenue over the next three months for a $4 billion utility.
It’s peanuts and what he has done is nuts unless you actually believe his ill-conceived and unplanned goal of making LA the “greenest city in America” is anything more than a political slogan.
What he is doing is nothing more than a power grab and an attempt to get his hands on billions of dollars to feed the green-washers and green-hustlers that surround him and stand to profit handsomely no matter what it costs the public, no matter how many jobs it destroys, no matter what the consequences are to the future of the city.
He has made fools of the DWP Board members, exposed the incompetence of DWP management and united the City Council, the business community and the public — with the exception of those who believe in green at any price like the Sierra Club leadership — in opposition.
It is April Fool’s Day and he has made a fool of himself.
He fabricated a credit rating downgrade threat and then missed the April 1 deadline for raising rates sufficiently to head it off.
Now, the only sane option is to cancel plans by the DWP to borrow heavily next month to buy wind and solar power at a premium on the open market to meet his artificial goal of having 20 percent renewable energy by the end of the year. The DWP is at roughly 15 percent already, on par with private utilities that are under a state mandate to reach 20 percent.
He has ignored the consultant’s report calling for complete transparency of DWP costs and rates, a report that showed the DWP has no plan at all to reduce the city’s reliance on dirty coal plants for half its electricity. In fact, the bunglers who run the DWP intend to get rid of cleaner but more expensive natural gas plants but have no plans to build a significant amount of green energy generating facilities.
It should be clear to everyone by now that the DWP Commission members need to be replaced at once if they don’t do the right thing and resign and that most of the DWP management needs to be fired starting with the missing-in-action David Freeman and Chief Operating Officer Raman Raj.
There can never be a credible green energy plan for LA until the stranglehold that union boss Brian D’Arcy has on the DWP is broken.
The City Council has shown no signs of having the courage to face him down but it does deserve credit for standing up to the mayor.
Even as the Council was giving 20 percent pay raises to D’Arcy’s union last fall, it scuttled DWP’s demand for a 2,000 percent increase in the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor, a quarterly surcharge that includes changes in the price of fossil fuels, green energy purchases and other costs that are obscured by being lumped together. .
With Councilwoman Jan Perry leading the charge, the Council hired PA Consulting to tear apart the DWP’s books and figure out what was really going on.
It recommended a one-time quarterly increase starting April 1 of .8 cents or 6 percent to protect DWP’s credit rating with further increases based upon real planning, real transparency, real accountability, real public debate and understanding.
Under the mayor’s order, the DWP Board ignored all of it except the 6 percent rate hike and approved a series of subsequent quarterly increases that would have raised rates 20 to 30 percent at a time of economic recession when business and residents are having trouble paying their bills.
The Council rejected that but suggested a .6 cent increase but that wasn’t good enough for the mayor who ordered the board to raise it to .7 — a deliberate act of provocation with only a lousy $6 million difference in revenue at stake this quarter.
The Council meeting late Wednesday night told the mayor to go to hell. I’ll eat these words but God bless them.
So now our city, already in a profound budget crisis, is in a profound political crisis.
Don’t wring your hands and beat your breasts and weep. Challenges are opportunities.
There will never be a better moment for the community to rise up and demand a seat at the table of power and reforms that bring real democracy to the city and make LA a beacon of freedom and public participation, a city where every segment of the population felt empowered to affect public policy.
That’s the only way we can ever become the greenest city in America.
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