The business community warned soaring electricity rates will costs jobs. LAUSD Superintendent reported he’ll have to fire hundreds of teachers. Residents complained the price of power was soaring too high, too fast at a time people are hurting financially. Activists questioned the lack of planning and transparency.
But the green-at-any-price crowd had their day and the DWP Board did the mayor’s bidding and unanimously rubber-stamped the first in a long series of rate hikes that will punish the middle class to pay inflated wages, ease pressure on the city general fund and perpetuate the mismanagement of a rogue utility.
In a master stroke of timing, broadcast three hours after the DWP Board acted, KCET’s SoCal Connected aired a hard-hitting story produced by Karen Foshay that focused on an interview host Val Zavala did with the villain of the DWP story, union boss Brian D’Arcy.
No words can describe the utter contempt D’Arcy holds for the city, its residents and businesses better than D’Arcy does himself, his arrogance and indifference fully on display on camera. The excerpts of his comments shown here are given a context in “The Price of Power” that exposes that as despicable as D’Arcy is, DWP General Manager David Freeman is even worse.
The actual rate hike approved Thursday is small, just 8 percent, but the DWP board lifted all protections for the public and failed to carry out any of the reforms recommended by PA Consulting that would restore credibility to the DWP. Even the momentum for creation of a Rate Payer Advocate was derailed by proposing to put the post under the control of Controller Wendy Greuel who voted for every rate hike as a Council member and owes her election to D’Arcy’s campaign cash.
Unless the City Council steps in, most people will face power bills that jump nearly 30 percent this year and keep on soaring by double-digit percentages for years to come.
With the mayor and his henchmen leaning hard and dispensing favors to buy the Council off, it’s unlikely 10 votes will be found to take control of the DWP rate issue and provide an informed and open public debate on how LA gets green energy at affordable prices and gets value for its money.
This is all about the mayor and his desperate effort to save himself politically no matter how much harm he does to the city. He has coerced the DWP Board into submission just as he has brow-beaten and threatened every department head to cover up his complete failure to deal effectively with the city’s budget crisis.
It’s asking a lot for bureaucrats to put their high-paying jobs on the line but it isn’t the same for city commissioners who have private incomes. Yet, only Jane Usher and Nick Patsaouras have shown the integrity and courage to resign rather than go along with disastrous orders from the mayor.
City Hall’s corruption is nearly complete now and things are going to get a lot worse in a hurry with the tax burdens rising rapidly even as services are being slashed.
We will soon see how people react in the coming weeks and months as they feel the impact on their lives, as the details of the unfolding scandal emerge and as they see their DWP bills are becoming higher than their rents and mortgages.