Chief Deputy Mayor Jay Carson told a Chamber of Commerce meeting
today there will be a major announcement within 48 hours regarding the
DWP’s professionalism and openness and would show a willingness to work with
City Council and the public.
He implied that a major management
shakeup is in the works as part of the change in strategy from war to accommodation.
Carson’s comments echoed the mayor’s press release
announcing the appointment of insider Eric Holoman to fill the vacancy on the DWP Commission.
“It is time for a new era at the
DWP, and that begins with accountable
management and business and rate-payer-friendly reforms,” the mayor said.
Councilwoman Jan Perry, spearheading DWP reform and a charter measure to create a permanent Rate Payer Advocate independent of all political interference, and a representative of PA Consulting, the company that reviewed rate hikes plans for the City Council, at the Chamber meeting and outlined the long list of proposals to create accountability and transparency to what has become a rogue agency.
Community activists and several business people in attendance were highly skeptical of Carson’s remarks represented a genuine retreat from the mayor’s heavy-handed attempt to raise power rates dramatically without planning or detailed information or engagement of the public and the Council.
Once again Antonio had the chance to do the right thing and chose to do the absolutely wrong thing.
On Tuesday, the mayor passed up the chance to reach out to someone who would represent ratepayers on the DWP Board of Commissioners, to make a peace offering to the citizenry enraged about unjustified rate hikes and end the war with the City Council.
Instead, he nominated the ultimate insider, someone who will do his bidding on the DWP Board as he did on the LACERS pension board, someone whose political interests are closely tied with the mayor’s, someone whose financial interests are linked to key players in the mayor’s circle of solar energy profiteers, someone whose public relations consultant is an admitted and convicted felon for his role in the DWP overbilling scandal of several years ago. That man is Eric Holoman, president of Magic Johnson Enterprises, who like so many others who serve as city commissioners is a pillar of the community who has allowed his private interests to become entangled with city business.
Back in September when the Early Retirement Incentive Program for 2,400 city workers was falling apart, Holoman as president of the LACERS board got a majority to support a 15-year payback for the costs of ERIP over the recommendation of General Manager Sally Choi and the fund’s actuarial consultant who believed five years was prudent if more costly to city workers.
In October, he was forced to resign over a blatant conflict of interest that was ignored until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law legislation that prohibits pension fund board members from directly or indirectly selling investments to any state pension plan.
“Holomon already was chair of the system’s board when, in September 2007, he was hired as president of Johnson Development Corp., an urban development company owned by former NBA player Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr.,” Pensions & Investments reported at the time.
“Mr. Johnson is also a partner in Canyon Johnson Urban Funds, an institutional real estate joint venture with Canyon Capital Realty Advisors. LACERS is invested in Canyon Johnson funds, although the amount could not be immediately learned.”
According to the LACERS website, Villaraigosa, who got strong support for his election from Magic Johnson, appointed Holoman to the $9 billion pension fund board where he served as Chair of the Private Investment Committee that oversaw the funds
alternative investment Strategies.
LACERS not only lists Canyon-Johnson as manager of some of its funds but also Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies, where key Villaraigosa fund-raiser and strategist Ari Swiller was a principal. The Magic Johnson Enterprises site boasts it operates a “small business private equity fund, Yucaipa-Johnson Corporate” for capital investments.
For its part, Canyon-Johnson relies on the PR services of Steve Sugerman, who testified he lied and cheated the DWP in a plea-bargain deal for probation in the DWP/Fleishman-Hillard billing scandal and provided testimony that helped convict Doug Dowie and John Stodder who are still out on appeal.
CIM Group also is listed as an investment manager. It’s the controversial Hollywood development firm that Swiller teamed up with to buy out from under the DWP the 68,000-acre Rudnick property in Kern County for a major wind farm where DWP has power lines.
“Over the last seven years, city agencies have agreed to provide CIM with $58 million worth of loans and subsidies. And two city pension boards have agreed to invest up to $115 million in CIM funds on behalf of city retirees,” the LA TImes reported in September..
“A few weeks before Swiller met with the Rudnicks in Century City, CIM Group had persuaded the California Public Employees Retirement System to invest up to $200 million in a new infrastructure fund managed by the firm.”
It’s also worthy of note that the company Swiller used for the deal was his Renewable Resources Group that was set up with Villaraigosa’s environmental wizard and his interim DWP General Manager David Freeman.
Freeman, you might remember, hired Fleishman-Hillard more than a decade ago to handle public relations at the DWP at the time of deregulation, a $3 million contract that included $2 million more that passed through to another firm, Donna Andrews.
Both contracts evolved into nebulous forms that came under scrutiny of City Controller Laura Chick whose audits cast doubt on their value and led to the pay-to-play investigations that helped bring down Mayor James Hahn and lead to Villaraigosa’s election in 2005.
Chick’s attacks on those contracts, particularly the pass-through to Andrews, so enraged then DWP Commission President Ken Lombard that he issued an immortal epithet:
“I’d rather swim across a river of snot than apologize to Laura Chick.”
At the time, Lombard was president of Magic Johnson Enterprises.
S. David Freeman, the octogenarian anti-nuclear apostle of renewable
energy, sent out a farewell message Monday to the Department of Water
and Power’s 8,000 employees urging them to “Keep the Faith” despite the
controversies that have engulfed the utility. Freeman’s first term as DWP General Manager ended badly when then Mayor RIchard Riordan fired him. He didn’t fare much better in his second as interim GM when controversy swirled around his veracity and the lack of planning.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa moved Freeman from his role as deputy mayor the for environment to interim GM of DWP and the Council approved him for a six-month term that ends this week.
Critics of the DWP say DWP’s problems got dramatically worse when Villaraigosa fired the unpopular David Nahai as GM and put the “green cowboy” in charge.
Lies, attempts to blackmail the City Council over withholding $73.5 million in general fund transfers, fiscal mismanagement, an overly generous union contract, a demoralized executive tem, failure to provide timely and accurate information were among the accusations laid at Freeman’s feet.
His credibility had fallen to the point that the mayor’s staff told him to stay on vacation overseas when they attempted unsuccessfully to ramrod through power rate increases of 20 to 30 percent.
Insiders said the mayor has been unable to find a top manager to take over the reigns of the DWP despite the services of an executive recruiting firm in great part because of the likelihood Freeman would either become head of the oversight board which has a vacancy that must be filled this week or would return to the mayor’s office.
Austin Beutner, the mayor’s jobs czar, has been floated as a possible interim successor but he has no experience running a utility although he is a wealthy equity fund manager. Raman Raj, the DWP’s chief operating officer, also has been mentioned but he was fired by both the MTA and DWP previously and has close ties to IBEW union boss Brian D’Arcy which would make his confirmation by the Council unlikely in the current political climate.
It is obvious that our Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is out of control, a rogue department which believes it is above scrutiny and oversight, under the control of our manipulative and destructive $25 Billion Mayor who has no respect for commercial and residential Rate Payers.
This is the moment when we find out who among our elected officials stands for the public interest and who should be thrown out of office.
There are no gray areas, either they are for us or for themselves and the special interests.
The drama that has unfolded in recent weeks has stripped them all bare, exposed their webs of worn-out fictions and outright lies, left naked their mismanagement as they danced around the result of years of overspending and sweetheart contracts.
Ten months into the fiscal year, they still have a $200 million deficit or is it $300 million or do they have a $100 million surplus as Council President Eric Garcetti speciously boasts.
They have failed to face the harsh realities, deflected responsibility and left most city agencies in chaos with huge gaps in staffing and services. And now they are at the precipice where denial of accountability and juggling the books to paper over their failure will only make them look more ridiculous than they already are.
The bills start come due this week for the Department of Water and Power with Jan Perry pushing relentlessly forward to rein in this rogue agency while the mayor faces the deadline for appointing a fifth member of the DWP Board and replacing David Freeman as interim general manager.
Next week, he must deliver his State of the City.and present his budget plan to deal with the $484 million deficit for 2010-11 — or is it $600 million or has the rise in pension fund investments eased some of the pressure. Their numbers are pulled out of thin air so it’s hard to know.
We will quickly see whether any of our elected officials learned anything at all from the fiasco over DWP rate hikes that ended with gridlock over $6 million and alarmist budget warnings from Controller Wendy Greuel that evaporated to her satisfaction when $30 million was found lying around in an undisclosed place.
Bernard Parks’ Budget Committee kicks off this week’s festivities by taking up the CAO’s latest financial guesstimates at 1 p.m. today and play more games with moving funds around to at least get through next month without running out of cash..
It will also consider Tom LaBonge’s proposal to sell a valuable Seagrave fire engine for $1 dollar to Los Bomberos “a non-profit organization comprised of Los Angeles City firefighters in partnership with community and business groups (that) mentors firefighter candidates; participates in efforts to recruit and train qualified candidates…and fosters upward mobility among its members.” So maybe things aren’t as bad as they look or perhaps LaBonge’s rose-tinted glasses have him living in a separate reality.
Then, on Tuesday at 2 p.m., Perry’s Energy and Environment Committee will start to take apart the DWP by first examining the two-month-old report on how the utility handled the more than 100 claims of losses from last fall’s Coldwater Canyon water main blowout — a report that relies on the usual arrogant bureaucratese to avoid engaging the widespread complaints of residents and businesses.
She also will get an “independent third party assessment of the LADWP’s water system and to determine the cause(s) of the recent water main breaks and related matters.”
Of greater concern to many is the DWP Rate Payer Advocate issue and Perry’s Committee will consider several different motions that date back to the end of last year..
“LADWP customers do not need a ratepayer advocate since…customers have reliable service..customers enjoy the lowest cost of service in Southern California…LADWP has already numerous levels of oversight, supervision and control…Executive Management Team continues to share information and create opportunities for dialogue to increase transparency and education…The Mayor, Los Angeles City Council, Controller, and the Board already perform the role of protecting the ratepayers, including the low income and lifeline customers…The costs to establish a ratepayer advocate position/division at LADWP are unknown…”
We all need a good laugh to start off the week so the DWP Dec. 29 letter should help.
Then, there’s a proposal from Greig Smith, Perry and Garcetti for an Inspector General within DWP that dates back to October.
“Over the course of the past year, the Department of Water and Power (DWP) has faced a variety of issues that have impacted the City and brought concern to its residents,” the motion says at the outset citing “the ongoing deterioration of tbe DWP’s infrastructure,” rate hikes, lack of transparency and other well-known problems like the lack of a coherent green energy program.
Both these motions would seem to be out of the question given recent events which have discredited Freeman and his No. 2 Raman Raj.
A third motion that also has languished since October is by Garcetti and Perry to actually create the Rate Payer Advocated through a Charter Amendment that would truly make it independent and permanent and largely immune from political influence.
“The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is at a critical point in their history,” the motion says.
“LADWP rates, costs of water and energy procurement and infrastructure needs have increased. While LADWP has taken some measures to improve efficiency and spur conservation, often in the form of rate increases, their lack of responsiveness to customers and providing transparency has made these attempts ineffective and left customers disenfranchised.”
Not on the agenda is the latest move to derail accountability and transparency in the DWP, the proposal from the mayor, controller, DWP Board and its officials to let Greuel be the public’s watchdog — which is like sending a kitten on a leash to do the work of a junkyard dog roaming free.
The bottom line in all this is whether the Council’s standing up to the mayor and the DWP on massive rate hikes without a plan was just a rare show of courage or whether they actually get it.
The DWP is broken and failed in its mission. It has betrayed the public trust and lost the confidence of the people.
No capable utility executive wants the job of General Manager as long as Freeman is hanging around and there is no political will to take down union boss Brian D’Arcy.
Any attempt to raise rates without coming clean about the Integrated Resources Plan that is being suppressed and clearly showing what all costs are of fossil fuels, green energy, job creation, salary and benefits costs and all the rest that the DWP works so hard to keep secret or unintelligible.
How the full Council deals with these issues and the mayor’s budget plan will determine whether City Hall is capable of fixing what our elected officials have broken or whether they all need to be replaced and major reforms instituted through boroughs or other measures that will share power with all segments of the community and turn LA around.
Welcome to the doghouse, Steve. Hope you don’t have fleas. As everybody knows, Steve Lopez is the highest paid writer at The Dog Trainer, making about ten times more than my master Ron got as editor of the Green Sheet.
Lopez is also famous for writing about a musical homeless guy that was made into a movie. Lopez was portrayed by Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr., who was on his way to being homeless himself before cleaning up his act. Now he’s Iron Man. Good for him.
As a columnist, Lopez does have a tough job. He needs to come up with 800 or so words every few days to earn those big bucks. So I suppose I shouldn’t be offended if he borrows from me.
But for the record, all I get for my efforts is some crappy kibble, which is now doled out by some Nazi-like contraption in a fruitless effort to control my behavior after I bit the pool guy.
For those of you with short memories, two days ago I compared City Hall to a circus:
“I’ve been sitting on the sidelines over the last couple weeks watching our so-called leaders turn City Hall into a circus, seeing the showdown between our ringmaster mayor and his clowns at the DWP with the Council over whether LA is going to go broke without the a bailout from the utility. Controller Wendy Greuel’s been the girl on the flying trapeze.”
Pretty good, if I do say so myself. I particularly like the Wendy line. She’s so damn cute. Much cuter than the scary woman she replaced, who I think I once compared to the Wicked Witch from the East. Or was it the Wicked Witch from the West. You know who I mean. The one with those freaky flying monkeys.
But I digress.
Anyway, the headline on Steve’s offering this morning is: “Attention Cirque du L.A. ringmasters: Do your jobs”.
Steve’s subject, of course, is also the chaos and foolishness going on at City Hall over the last couple weeks
“They could sell tickets to the spectacle at City Hall — it might help fill the budget gap — and I’ve got the perfect name for the show.
“Cirque du L.A.”
OK, so the guy knows French. Big deal. I bet he can’t lick himself like I can.
Steve did come up with an original twist, one I hadn’t seen anyone do up till this point in the absurdity – he quoted the Wicked Witch from the East, or West or somewhere, and guess what? She had absolutely nothing interesting to say. At least Dick Riordan told Rick Orlov of the Green Sheet that the city should declare bankruptcy. Don’t you just love old Dick, don’t you miss Jimmy even?
But I digress — again. Back to Steve.
Before you hit me with the old “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery” crap, please remember I am a freaking dog writing for a blog that nobody at the Dog Trainer admits to even reading. Those guys on Spring Street have been dissing Ronnie since he was at the old HerEx writing front-page stories about crocodiles – or was it sea serpents? — in the storm drains.
And I suppose the circus-cirque thing could be just a coincidence. It’s not like it’s the most original metaphor. So I’m going to cut Steve some slack. It’s hard coming up with new ideas all the time and he did give credit to Walter Moore, remember the guy who ran a strong second to Antonio last year and would be a favorite to beat him if the election was this year..
So when we hear about the city running deficits of hundreds of millions of dollars and facing billions of dollars in liabilities, we know things have gone badly wrong but why?
The politicians would have us believe it’s the fault of the bad economy but we’ve learned better day after day as we have seen them grapple the problems caused by their years of failed leadership and mismanagement of city affairs.
We see them panic over the DWP withholding $73 million and send out red alerts of imminent financial catastrophe, proclaim city government will shut down 40 percent of the time, gridlock over $6 million in power rate hikes as if we weren’t talking about a city government with nearly $7 billion at its disposal annually and a utility with $4 billion in revenue and $1 billion in cash on hand.
We watch as they talk about 4,000 layoffs but only carry out 33 while transferring hundreds of others to special funds and proprietary departments, some of them getting raises of up to 50 percent instead of pink slips and unemployment checks.
We get the picture clear enough: Things are bad and getting worse.
Let me fill in one small detail that will help bring this picture into focus and help you understand why our parks and libraries are closing and the basic services we all rely on are being slashed and they are imposing fees and rate hikes, planning tax increases and selling assets.
It’s the case of Environmental Affairs Department General Manager Detrich Brown Allen, Council File Number 10-0404.
Unfortunately for Ms. Allen, her department was eliminated as a cost-cutting measure and with it, her $152,299 a year job.
But all is not lost. Ms. Allen has accepted a demotion to environmental affairs officer within the Department of Transportation, a position that pays $122,607. There is upside since she no longer is working at the pleasure of the mayor and now has Civil Service protections and like all other city employees, her pension someday will be based on the highest salary she earned as a city worker.
If you have listened even occasionally to City Council meetings during the last 10 months, you know that for all the occasional lip service paid to the impact of what is happening on LA’s four million people and its hundreds of thousands of businesses, the real work that has been done involved protecting the wages, benefits and jobs of city workers.
That should come as no surprise since our elected officials regard city government as a jobs program, not a services provider.
And so it is with Ms. Allen.
Why should she lose anything just because she was demoted, her responsibilities diminished, her department eliminated?
“In order that Ms. Allen not be harmed by the elimination of the General Manager’s position, it is recommended that her salary be V-rated to maintain her current salary level,” City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana wrote March 10.
“The EERC and the City Council have previously approved V-rates for other employees whose positions were eliminated. The EERC approved a V-rate for Ms. Allen on March 2, 2010.
“Because the class of Environmental Affairs Officer is represented by SEIU 721, the V-rate must be included in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The V-rate has already been discussed with the union and they have agreed to include it in the MOU.”
I added the emphasis to make sure you notice that the mayor and City Council leaders not only approved this gift to Ms. Allen but they have “previously approved” the same deal for other city workers whose jobs were eliminated.
And the union that is so strenuously fighting to save the jobs and salaries of the city’s lowest-paid workers agrees to these kinds of deals for six-figure employees even though they are taking money out of the pockets of the people they represent — unless, of course, a way is found as usual to sock it to the public to pay the bills.
Last Wednesday, the Council Personnel Committee approved Ms. Allen’s $30,000 a year gift and sent it to the full Council.
But don’t let this worry you, it won’t add to the $222 million general fund deficit this year, or the $484 million deficit year, or the nearly $800 million deficit the year after, or the $1 billion deficit the year after.
“The cost to the Department of Transportation will be fully funded by the Mobile Source Fund and there will be no fiscal impact to the General Fund,” Santana noted.
I hope this helps fill in some detail in the picture you hold in your mind of what’s happening at City Hall as they juggle the books and raid special funds for special purposes and protect the same old special interests at your expense.
Sometime it gets too ridiculous – even for Bruno. I’ve been sitting on the sidelines over the last couple weeks watching our so-called leaders turn City Hall into a circus, seeing the showdown between our ringmaster mayor and his clowns at the DWP with the Council over whether LA is going to go broke without the a bailout from the utility. Controller Wendy Greuel’s been the girl on the flying trapeze.
But this morning’s news inspired me to get off my tail.
After crying wolf so loud the financial guys in New York put down their martinis and started paying attention, Antonio issued a big “never mind” yesterday about his call to shut down some city departments two days a week.
“To all of our surprise, we’ve gotten an increase in revenues of $30 million more from property tax than we expected,” Antonio said.
“To all of our surprise?” What in God’s name is going on? Does he think we’re all idiots?
Word in the kennel is that Antonio is being advised during this crazy crisis by Chief of Staff Jeff Carr, Deputy Mayor Jay Carson, former mayoral flack turned energy expert Matt Szabo and his new $1-a-year jobs czar Austin Beutner.
DWP Chief David Freeman was in Israel for much of the trouble, getting back just in time to make a fool of himself before the Council and managing to make Janice Hahn look like Margaret Thatcher – and that isn’t easy!
Try to imagine these guys meeting before announcing they’ve somehow found $30 million.
Antonio: OK, somebody remind me who the hell brought up the idea of “brinksmanship?”
Carson: That would be me boss. It worked for Clinton. Remember that thing with Newt?
Carr: Right on, Homey. In the hood you have to show you have balls.
Antonio: Well guys, I’m getting my balls handed to me. Anybody have any other brilliant ideas?
Szabo: I could put out a press release. Maybe tweet something.
Antonio: What would the release say?
Szabo: I don’t know.
Antonio: Anybody else? How bout you, Beutner? You’re rich. You must be smart. Beutner: This job sucks. Just give me all the money and I’ll cut deals that will fix everything.
Carson: I’ve got an idea boss.
Antonio: What now? Carson: It’s another Clinton thing. Let’s just lie!
Carr: Terrific idea. You can tell them we looked around and found a few million dollars and the crisis is over.
Szabo: I can write the bullet points.
Antonio: Think we can get away with it?
At this point, all the men start laughing and the meeting concludes. Freeman suddenly wakes up, burps and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell them anything you want.”
One of the universal signs of businesses going bankrupt is that they don’t know how much money is coming in or going out and their future projections miss the mark by double-digit percentages. The reason is obvious: Bumbling boobs are in charge, or in the case of LA, bobblehead bums.
During four straight quarters, city financial analysts missed their revenue estimates by more than 10 percent.
Even so, they warned over and over that this year was going to be bad and the next year worse and far worse in the years following.
But the man who likes to see himself as courageous and a bubbling brook of brand-new ideas went against their advice — and his own public and private statements — to reject the folly of a sweetened early retirement package that is only now nearly complete in sending 2,400 senior employees off on pensions averaging $55,000 while mostly still in their 50s.
The City Council was no better so nine months later we are mistreated to last week’s theatrical war over DWP rates — a spectacular tragi-comedy that seemed impossible to top — but somehow the magical world of Main Street did it this week.
On Monday, Out-of-Controller Wendy Greuel issued a proclamation so dark and dire it caused panic in the city and credit rating agencies to downgrade LA once again: “This is the most urgent fiscal crisis that the City has faced in recent
history, and it is imperative that you act now.”
The mayor acted quickly and pulled the strings on the windbag David Freeman to send the city reeling with his declaration that the DWP with a billion dollars in cash lying around in desks and drawers would not deliver the $73.5 million it promised: “We have deficits, not surplus…There is no surplus money to transfer at this time.”
That was Tuesday. The next day the mayor came out fighting and announced he was shutting down city government unless he got the massive DWP rate hikes he wants for purposes that are far from clear: “There are no easy decisions or simple ways to solve this budget
crisis. But as the CEO of this great city, it is
my responsibility to make these difficult but necessary decisions to
steer the city out of this crisis and onto solid financial ground.”
Of course, he was just blowing hot air like his order to lay off 1,000 city workers or was it 2,000 or 4,000 — only 33 have actually been axed two months later. It took only one minute Wednesday for the Council to show the mayor once again was trying to be an autocrat without authority when he ordered two-day-a-week furloughs for most of the workers who actually provide services directly to the public.
The only power he does have to act unilaterally is to bludgeon commissioners and bureaucrats into submission to his will, compromising their integrity and soiling their reputations — a power he and his minions are using mercilessly, which goes a long way toward explaining why the city is falling apart.
So Thursday morning, a slightly chastened mayor deigned to meet behind closed doors with Council leaders. It took two hours to find a fig leaf to cover his naked posturing — a $30 million windfall that arrived overnight we can only presume in a brown paper bag.
“To all of our surprise, we’ve gotten an increase in revenues of $30
million more from property tax than we expected…We might not be out of
cash after all,” Villaraigosa said Thursday, conditionally
surrendering to the will of the now renegade Council just two days after
announcing his government closure plan to keep the city from running
out of money.
With alarm bells still ringing across the city and attracting
national attention for the mayor’s campaign of self-promotion, Greuel
unashamedly backtracked insisting she was pleased that she was so
helpful in finding a solution to the crisis even if it meant reducing
the emergency reserve fund of 5 percent of revenue to next to nothing. “It
is never good to have to use that money,” Greuel said submissively
as she got in line in support of the mayor’s latest flip-flop position
as usual.
For his part, Council President Eric Garcetti was
ebullient as if he had just achieved his ambition to be mayor or
Congressman or who knows what.
“There’s
no scenario, unless something catastrophic happens, where we
are going to be in the red,” he said.
Not in the red? How else
do you explain the $200 million, or $300 million or whatever it is,
deficit 10 months into the fiscal year? Or the $500 million or whatever
it is next year or the $800 million or $1 billion deficits looming in
the years ahead?
Not to worry. Today, we are supposed to get
an update on the latest financial data but how useful can that be if
their numbers are always wrong.
LA’s top law enforcement officers — DA, Sheriff and LAPD Chief — joined City Attorney Carmen Trutanich at Skid Row on Wednesday to announce they were going to use a gang injunction strategy to crack down on rampant drug dealing.
Nearly shouted down by the homeless and homeless advocates, they explained they would seek court orders to bar 80 specific people from Skid Row now and seek to ban up to 300 later.
“The single biggest criminal threat facing this area is the open and
notorious drug dealing,” said Trutanich.
What’s interesting, really interesting, about this is how it represents the undoing of the heart of Bill Bratton’s strategy for reducing serious Category One crime — the violent acts that he so successfully brought down during his seven years in LA.
It was the “Baghdad Strategy” to sectarian violence that helped stem the flow of blood in Iraq: Sunnis could do what they wanted in their neighborhoods, Shiites in their neighborhoods, as long as they stopped blowing each other up and gunning each other down.
Here’s the revealing paragraphs in the LA Times story today:
“The injunction is needed because the more than 30 gangs who control the
skid row drug trade have come to a “mutual understanding” to forgo
rivalries, keep the peace and share business, according to Peter Shutan,
a deputy city attorney.
“The action is the latest step in the city’s attempt to crack down on
crime on skid row. The area has been home to the city’s most
concentrated police presence since 2006, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
and then-Police Chief William J. Bratton deployed 50 extra officers
there as part of the controversial Safer City initiative. Dozens of
undercover narcotics officers were deployed to the same area.
“Crime has dropped sharply in recent years — property crime dropped 44%
and violent crime dropped 40% between 2005 and 2009. The decline has
coincided with a downtown revitalization effort that has brought luxury
lofts and trendy shops to the urban core.”
Think about it: 30 gangs have a “mutual understanding” that allows them to engage in rampant drug dealing on Skid Row and avoid the murder and mayhem usually associated with the inevitable rivalries that occur.
They are doing so despite the presence of 50 extra cops and the result is a drop of 40 percent or more in serious crimes against people and property — categories that exclude drug dealing. In fact, of the more than 50 crimes LA readily provides statistics about, drug arrests and seizures are not included.
When I checked more than a year ago, the LAPD’s numbers for drug arrests and seizures showed declines far greater than the numbers for declines in serious crimes.
Nearly two years ago, I wrote about my theory of what was going on in the streets of LA, about how the tough gang cops and many narcotics officers were being assigned to other duties, about how former gang members were being hired to intervene with the gangs to keep them from killing each other or innocent people and to keep the cops from rousting them for drug dealing and other less serious criminal acts.
I wrote then: “It’s a devil’s deal if ever there were one…What’s the price of peace?”
The few paragraphs above are the closest the media has come to engaging the “Baghdad solution” in LA and the announcement Wednesday by local law enforcement officials represents a repudiation of that strategy.
It’s a morally repugnant strategy but I still don’t know if it’s right or wrong because we never have discussed it publicly and looked at the alternatives.
The decision to end the policy on Skid Row should give us a clue. If the 30 gangs and up to 300 gangsters are barred from downtown, where will they set up shop and will they still avoid violent turf wars if there isn’t a cop on every corner keeping the peace?
EDITOR’S NOTE: I was invited to appear on CNN on Thursday Sometime between 8:30 A.M. and 9:30 A.M. to respond to the mayor’s statements.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa went on a media blitz Wednesday to defend his plan to shut down nonessential city agencies two days a week starting Monday despite being told he didn’t have the authority to carry out his edict.
In apparent damage control from his announcement Tuesday, the mayor got on CNN to tell a national audience what he’s up to..
“We don’t
expect that we would be closing City Hall, if you will, two days a week
beyond July,” the mayor said during a morning interview on CNN, according to the LA Times..
Villaraigosa, in the final stages of drafting his budget plan for next years, said more severe cuts in services would occur after July 1 with plans to lay off 4,000 workers permanently. He pleaded with unions most of which have contract protections against furloughs and layoffs until July 1, to take 15 percent pay cuts although police, fire, and DWP workers would be exempt from all cuts, furloughs or layoffs.
“There’s no scenario where we don’t have to
trim our services and the cost of our payroll,” Villaraigosa told CNN’s
chief business correspondent Ali Velshi.
Former DWP Board President Nick Patsaouras sued the DWP Wednesday to force it to hand over $73.5 million it had promised to the City of Los Angeles. Patsaouras, an influential City Hall and Department of Water and Power critic who co-chairs the Saving LA Project’s Rate Payer Advocate Committee with Jack Humphreville, resigned from the DWP Board 18 months in protest with the direction the mayor was moving on utility policy.
The DWP backed out of the agreement when the City Council rejected the department’s proposed rate hikes. The lawsuit names the DWP, four members of the Commissioner board and DWP Interim General Manager David S. Freeman.
Westside lawyer and activist, Noel Weiss, handled the filing.
You can read the full lawsuit by visiting OurLa.org
UPDATE: Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller shot down the mayor’s plan to close most city government agencies two days a week starting Monday, saying he does not have the “unilateral” authority to carry out his threat. Council members said they would “never” approve such a plan.
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There are enough laughs and tears, pathos and bathos, fear and loathing for every taste — Channel 35’s hot new soap opera, City Hall.
Tuesday’s episode was one of the best with the apostle of clean energy left muttering in his cowboy hat he must have “misspoke” after being exposed as a liar with even the see-no-evil Janice Hahn calling out, “I think we need some honest answers here.” The mayor, with the mysterious Austin Beutner as his side, perhaps pulling his strings, declared the government would shut down completely for two days except for the cops and others but it was unclear whether that was to protect him or the public from growing unrest and lawlessness in the streets.
The obedient DWP Board then provided a ray of hope in the gloom by pulling back millions of dollars in new spending that could keep LA from going broke until late May.
But the unions put a damper on that slim hope by saying the mayor was playing games with fire and was going to get burned.
By day’s end, they all looked like kids playing in a lockbox filled with dynamite.. The mayor accused the Council of using “the politics of ‘no’…the kind of demagoguery you see in the Congress…the kind of scare tactics you saw around the healthcare
debate.”
Paul Koretz responded that the mayor’s behavior was “bizarre” and worried that “a crazier and crazier game of chicken” would lead to somebody actually getting hurt, maybe everybody.
The overnight reviews were devastating — for the mayor. LA Times Editorial: L.A.’s financial quagmire: The city is in deep trouble, and the mayor and the Department of Water and Power are to blame
What heartache and heartbreak will unfold today as the Council goes back to its snail-like efforts to micro-manage the budget crisis.
Will they finally make some decisions? Will they denounce the mayor or cuddle up to him? Will the unions make love or war? Tune in at 10 a.m. for today’s episode of City Hall, the LA soap opera.
It’s hard to believe that City Hall was in the doldrums so long it was hard to stay awake during their endless exercises in self-aggrandizement and self-service and now just look at what’s happening — it takes your breath away.
Let’s start with the City Council grilling David Freeman and calling him in the liar he is, leaving him dissembling and mumbling even as he insisted the DWP is going broke despite a billion dollars sitting idle in the bank.
Hopefully, it was his last stand for deceit and ripoff of the public with his disastrous term as general manager ending next week. It’s as hard to believe he could make David Nahai as it is the Antonio Villaraigosa could make us long for boring Jimmy Hahn.
Speaking of the mayor, he responded immediately to the Council’s calling on him to sit down with them and DWP officials to work out the transfer of $73 million to the general fund so the city doesn’t run out of cash May 5 and have to shut down.
The mayor has other ideas: He ordered the City Administrative Officer to prepare to close all city departments two days a week starting Monday with the exception of police, fire and revenue-generating agencies.
Now there’s a plan for the history books, a profile in courage in the mayor’s mind.
“There are no easy decisions or simple ways to solve this budget crisis,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “But as the CEO of this great city, it is
my responsibility to make these difficult but necessary decisions to
steer the city out of this crisis and onto solid financial ground.”
The guys wants the public to pay 20 to 30 more for electricity to pay the inflated salaries of his pals in the IBEW who he keeps giving more raises to and spend lavishly on a crash program for green energy that will kill untold thousands of jobs and squeeze already strained budgets of residents.
What’s worse there isn’t even a plan to do what he says, his trust fund lockbox is a total fraud (even Freeman admitted that today) and he’s encircled by green-washers and green-feeders who stand to profit handsomely from his plan.
In just a few weeks of desperate and bungling miscalculation, the mayor has left himself with no friends other than those who are getting rich off of him, payback for sure for how well he has wined and dined off of them.
The public is angry at him. The Council is unanimous in their disgust with him with the exception of RIchard Alarcon and Tony Cardenas who duck every vote involving the DWP that they can.
And after being slugged with a 40 percent pay from losing two days of work, the Coalition of City Unions reached the point of no return putting out this statement:
LA City
Workers to Mayor: ‘This Is Not a Game’.
Residents who rely on city services and workers who provide those services are about to become collateral damage in a political fight around DWP funds. This is playing brinksmanship and city residents will pay the price. This is not a game, it shouldn’t be treated as a game. Los Angeles has a serious crisis, but we are doing something about it. We need to change how our city does business, to resolve budget problems and preserve services for the future. City workers are putting together a real plan, not political games. We call on everyone to come together as one City, put residents first, and work our way cooperatively through the very real challenges we face.
“Closing
libraries
two days a week will hurt thousands of children we see every day, who
rely on our libraries as places to study, discover their creativity, and
find
safety,” added Madeleine Kerr, a librarian who works with children and
teens. “Closing recreation facilities affects child care, sports and
after-school programs for Los
Angeles
families. The mayor is reacting not leading.”
“Today we are facing the consequences of the city’s failure to enact the
necessary rate increases with Fitch Ratings, a major credit rating
agency, withdrawing the DWP’s AA- bond rating, thereby costing the
ratepayers more in the long run.” — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on blaming the City Council for possible downgrading of DWP bonds..
“It seems they are holding the whole city of Los Angeles hostage because
of their inability to hold up to their word.” — Council President Eric
Garcetti on DWP’s refusal to turn over $73 million in surplus power revenue to the general fund.
“We have two weeks to address this crisis, which is why you must act
immediately. I cannot be more clear that urgent action is needed.” — Controller Wendy Greuel on discovering the city will run out of cash May 5.
Leave it to our city leaders to point fingers at each other and act like they suddenly awakened to find that thieves had looted the city treasury and left it broke.
They are all to blame. They are the thieves who looted the treasury and bankrupted the city. They must be held accountable or our collective guilt over having elected them in the first place will become our collective responsibility for the destruction of our city.
This is an artificial crisis over the $73 million the DWP promised the city. It was engineered by the mayor more than month ago as part of his strategy to win approval for an endless series of huge electricity rate hikes to force the City Council to approve his green energy scheme to enrich his friends, appease IBEW boss Brian D’Arcy and fund a “job buying” plan.
The real crisis occurred 18 months ago when the mayor and Council were told by city financial analysts that they were on the road to bankruptcy and must act urgently.
A year ago, they were told the city’s financial situation had gotten worse and this year and every year after for the foreseeable future would be even worse. They did nothing.
Six months ago, they knew they would run out of cash by May unless they took drastic action. What little they did was worse than doing nothing. They papered over the problem by transferring money and workers from one fund to another, approving plans to borrow to the hilt and sell off valuable revenue-generating assets.
Most of all, they talked about laying off 4,000 workers and slashing services and imposing backdoor taxes but it was all just talk that achieved nothing except to expose how badly they had managed the city, how little they knew about the havoc and inefficiency their policies had caused in virtually every department.
This is no longer a political machine feeding itself and special interests at the public’s expense. It is a chaos machine cannibalizing itself and the lives of the four million people who call it home.
The mayor has conducted a pogrom against our democratic institutions, politicizing every member of every commission, people who are supposed to be citizen watchdogs protecting the public interest, and every top manager of every department, people who are supposed to be the public’s servants.
It’s clear that commissioners and bureaucrats alike will be fired for even the slightest hint of disobedience to mayoral orders that are ill-conceived or even corrupt.
It’s easier to understand why people who are paid will knuckle under than to understand why reputable people with private lives and incomes would be part of this, yet only Nick Patsaouras and Jane Usher showed the moral courage to resign in protest.
It is going to take a massive uprising by the public to turn LA around. It won’t be done by the politicians or civic leaders, by the business community or by labor.
To do nothing now is to be the moral equivalent of a ‘good German,’ complicit by passivity. There is no time to waste.
Today, the DWP Commission will approve spending hundreds of millions of dollars despite its fantasy financial crisis, some of which will be payback to AECON Corp. for helping to fund Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner’s “job-buying” program, the greatest achievement of which is giving away $6 million to buy 30 sweatshop jobs. The DWP can do afford to spend so casually because it has $1 billion in cash lying around.
Today, the Council will take steps to eliminate virtually all of the public’s protections against destructive development projects and will give final approval to massive expansion of Playa Vista to enrich Goldman Sachs in gratitude for its help in funding Beutner’s efforts.
And they will sit around the horseshoe at City Council as they run through their agenda and blame the mayor for all that has gone wrong even as they put the bureaucrats once again through the fires of inquisition over why they have to cut services just because they are losing 30 or 40 percent of their staffs.
This would all be the stuff of comedy and farce if the consequences to kids and families, to businesses and workers, to health and public safety, to the future of the city were not so great.
We need new leadership. LA needs you. We need to fight them on every destructive act they attempt to make. We need credible new leaders to step forward and run for the seven Council seats on the ballot next March
If the mayor or Council members had a shred of common decency left, they would call together civic, business, labor and community leaders from across the city and start to go to work on how to rebuild LA together.
It’s not a mystery. It means real power sharing, complete transparency and accountability, a balance of competing interests and a commitment to the greater good of the greatest number.
If you won’t do the right thing now, it won’t make any difference later.
DWP Interim General Manager, refreshed from his extended vacation in Israel and France, retaliated against the City Council for its refusal to submit to a bigger rate hike and declared he won’t transfer the $73 million he promised to deliver without a problem barely two months ago.
His action — clearly on order’s from the mayor who has turned the DWP Commission and its managers into stooges — prompted Controller Wendy Greuel to put out her “most urgent” warning yet that the city general fund will out of cash to pay salaries and bills in 30 days.
She said she needs $90 million from the depleted reserve fund within two weeks to keep city employees working past May 5. The city could end the fiscal year June 30 in the red and with a “negative $43 million” in the reserve fund, she noted
Here is an excerpt of her letter to the mayor and City Council leaders (Go to OurLA.org for the full text and for the full text of Freeman’s letter):
“While we are still analyzing the .full impact of the actions taken – some tangible, some merely visual – to address the budget crisis, none of them have been successful in balancing the budget so far…
“This is the most urgent fiscal crisis that the City has faced in recent history, and it is imperative that you act now. The Charter authorizes the Controller to borrow funds but only for tardy receipt of revenue, not in the case where there is no anticipated repayment. The Charter also grants the Controller authority, with Council approval, for inter-fund borrowing, but only until April 26th, 2010. Thus I am asking you to immediately transfer $90 million from the City’s Reserve Fund to the General Fund so I can continue to pay the City’s bills, and to ensure the fiscal solvency of the City.
“With the City facing a massive budget deficit this year and a deficit twice as large next year, the time for talk is over, the time for action is upon us. As you know, City employees are paid two weeks in arrears and we cannot legally permit them to work when there are not sufficient funds to pay them. That is why I am alerting you that, unless you take action to transfer $90 million from the Reserve Fund, beginning April 19th, 2010, my office may not be able to pay the salaries of all City employees and/or make payments to vendors.
“We have two weeks to address this crisis, which is why you must act immediately,” Greuel said in her letter to the mayor and City Council. “I cannot be more clear that urgent action is needed.”
Freeman escalated the war with his letter Monday to the mayor and Council, blaming the action on the Council’s refusal last week to grant the extra $2 million a month in rate hikes under the catchall Energy Cost Adjustment Factor.
“As stated many times during the past 11 months, ECAF expenditures are increasing by $550 million over the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009·2010 to FY 2010- 2011 time period. The proposed ECAF increases are needed to fund this and without increases we have deficits, not surplus,” Freeman wrote..
“While the Power Revenue Fund closed its 2009 fiscal year with $444.7 million in unrestricted cash, it also had an under collection of $113.9 million in energy costs already incurred. It was believed that when discussions began on May 19, 2009, relative to increasing the ECAF cap above the $0.001 amount, the request would be vetted for its merit, the City Council third-part consultant would make a final recommendation, and rate relief would be approved within the 2009-10 fiscal year. At the time, the increase was being sought to provide cash for operations beginning in fiscal year 2009-2010. Since rate relief has not occurred, LADWP will be forced to use all funds to pay for energy costs that should otherwise be fully recovered through the ECAF mechanism. There is no surplus money to transfer at this time.”
Life is a mystery and the only certainty is change — those are beliefs I live by as I try to figure out what the hell is going on from the scraps of clues that are left lying around.
There’s a lot of scraps for an inquiring mind to play around with from Antonio’s bungled attempt to rip off the public to the tune of nearly $700 million a year supposedly to get rid of LA’s coal-burning power plants, build new gas plants, nearly triple the green energy portfolio, rebuild the electrical grid, erase the general fund deficit and enrich his cronies — all by 2020!
By my math, 700 million times 10 equals 7 billion which wouldn’t even pay half the cost of just fulfilling the Integrated Resources Plan that DWP claims it doesn’t have — a claim defies all probability given its best and brightest have been working on it as part of their yet-to-be-adopted strategic plan for years.
So why would Antonio reject union bully boy Brian D’Arcy’s advice, send his Three Mediocrities — Carson, Carr and Szabo — to destroy the last vestige of credibility of the DWP Commission by taking over its climactic meeting last Wednesday, call a recess for 45 minutes and order the sinister CEO Raman Raj to claim the utility would go bottoms up if it didn’t get $6 million more than the City Council was willing to approve?
Think about it: $6 million for just three months or just six-tenths of one percent of what the DWP rakes in per quarter when the board is prepared to spend tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars at its meeting Tuesday.
It doesn’t make sense unless a lot more is at stake, especially when you consider the Council will roll over in three months and approve far bigger increases unless there is a popular uprising.
Could it be he needed the money so jobs czar Austin Beutner can use it as play dough to subsidize job creation to justify his dollar-a-year salary and the $100,000-plus it cost the city to figure out how to give him free health benefits?
Could it be he needs the money to put hundreds of “green doctors” on the permanent DWP payroll to get gang members off the streets and into your homes to keep crime from soaring?
Could it be his party pals Keith Brackpool and Ari Swiller among others have so much money tied up in power and water speculative ventures they are desperate for cash the DWP can send their way?
There are so many possibilities and so many connected interests like the “green-washers” feeding off the environmental movement that believes we need to go green even if it bankrupts the city’s residents and businesses
And then there are the green profiteers.
Swiller, for instance, drives Antonio’s numerous fund-raising operations that channel favors for cash to various special interests. Before he got rich himself and set up Renewable Resources Group to profit from alternative energy and Hydrogen Now with partner David Freeman, now the interim DWP general manager, he used to work for supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle, who put Antonio on his payroll when he was out of work and now invests heavily in green energy and completes a circle that connects to such figures as Bill Clinton, Henry Cisneros and Stephen Bing to name a few..
He also managed to out-duel the DWP for the Rudnick property in Kern County which is perfect for a wind farm with DWP power lines running through it, a deal he instantly made a handsome profit on by selling half the land to the city of Vernon and while keeping the other half available to sell to the DWP should the opportunity arise someday. Then, there’s Brackpool, the Cadiz water project “visionary” who also had Antonio on his payroll as well as Susan Kennedy, the governor’s chief of staff who previously played a key role for Grey Davis, another best pal of Brackpool’s..
Last June, Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times wrote a brilliant article tracing the Kennedy connection to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s startling decision to revive Brackpool’s Mojave Desert water project, noting the British promoter “continues to attract political sycophants happy to attest to his wisdom
in the ways of water policy — while they accept campaign contributions
and consulting fees from him and his company.”
Hiltzik concluded that Brackpool’s maneuvers show “how to mix politics and water: For a catalyst, try liberal amounts
of cash.”
Throw in all the money he bestowed on Kennedy and Antonio, all the campaign cash he throws around to various politicians, his tight connections to Davis, his role as Antonio’s closest adviser and provider of his vacations to Iceland where he has a large estate, and you have a guy with clout and perhaps the foresight to join Burkle, Swiller and his longtime partner, DWP General Manager David Freeman in the solar energy market.
You can believe, as some do, that Antonio is simply so stressed out and over his head that he’s lost his mind or you can wonder about what deals have been cooked behind the scenes that might explain his desperation to soak the public for as much as he can get in rate hikes while calling himself a bold and courageous “new idea” leader.
I, for one, tend to see the dark side of things when there’s so much evidence that belies the notion that dramatic increases in power rates that will destroy jobs at a time commercial property is in the tank and millions of residents are having trouble paying their bills.
It is a mystery, no doubt, but given the history of the games these people have played in the past, it appears the more things change, the more they stay the same.
At the end of a daylong series of inter-connected community meetings, the Saving LA Project voted unanimously to seek candidates in the seven even-numbered City Council Districts for elections next March and run a “Clean Sweep” campaign for a slate that can clean up City Hall.
More than 20 people signed up to form a steering committee to recruit credible candidates with the ability to raise enough money to qualify for city matching funds. They will also develop a citywide strategy and explore formation of a political action committee that will hold incumbents accountable for the worsening city budget crisis.
Anyone interested in consideration as a Reform LA candidate should contact me at [email protected].
Incumbents up for re-election next year are Paul Krekorian, Tom LaBonge, Tony Cardenas, Bernard Parks, Herb Wesson and Jose Huizar. Greig Smith’s seat will be open and his chief of staff Mitch Englander has attempted to lock up the seat early.
SLAP also endorsed recommendations of Tony Wilkinson’s DWP MOU Committee to oppose the mayor’s vague “lockbox” proposal for a portion of his rate hike proposal and to advocate for breaking up the catchall Energy Cost Adjustment Factor into separate funds for fluctuating costs of fossil fuels, green energy, energy efficiency and other programs.
Former DWP Commission President Nick Patsouras and DWP Committee for Advocacy Jack Humphreville were named to head an committee to mobilize community groups behind creation of an independent Rate Payer Advocate protected permanently through an amendment to the City Charter.
The RPA issue will come before Jan Perry’s Energy and Environment Committee this month with a variety of proposals put forward by Council members and the mayor pushing to gut the RPA’s independence of Controller Wendy Greuel who has supported repeated large pay increases for the IBEW and received more than $250,000 in contributions from the union.
The LA Neighborhood Council Coalition spent considerable time discussing the elimination of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and its consolidation into the Community Development Department.
Proposals from Shawn Simons were adopted as the strategy for how this dramatic change might work to preserve efforts to achieve community empowerment despite what the mayor is doing. Read the plan here: (DONE-CDDsummary.doc)(DONE-CDDplan.doc).
The NCs’ BudgetLA Advocates also met and presented the facts about the city’s budget crisis and discusses strategies going forward with the mayor to present his budget proposal shortly.
How could anyone in their right mind question the good intentions of United Way and the generous contributions of Goldman Sachs, CB Richard Ellis, AECOM consulting and Herbalife to create jobs in LA working with the mayor and his jobs czar Austin Beutner?
Just because Goldman Sachs reaped a windfall paper profit of $145.6 million a week ago when the City Council approved upzoning the massive Playa Vista project the Goldman Sachs, union pension funds and others own “to allow about 2.6 million square feet of
luxury housing, a smattering of senior housing and about 341,000 square
feet of retail, offices and public buildings,” as LA Weekly reports, is no reason to question its motives.
After all, what’s a piddling $80,000 contribution mean to the firm’s chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, when he earned $77 million last year after being saved from bankruptcy by U.S. taxpayers.
That Beutner was put in place by a committee that included Playa Vista president Steve Soboroff and that approval of the development’s expansion won’t be final until next week and that the people trying to save Ballona Wetlands are set for a last-ditch fight are surely just coincidences.
Only a cynic would wonder about the enormous generosity of the giant real estate firm CB Richard Ellis’ tax deductible donation of $500,000 to United Way to bring six “young business executives and workers into city government
to assist with efforts to create jobs and help companies,” as the LA Times joyfully reported.
That the firm has enjoyed serving as the city’s long-time real estate broker under contracts with the General Services Department and other agencies could not possibly have anything to do with this.
“In these tough budget times, hiring people is just not the easiest
thing to do; in fact, we’re moving in the other direction,” Villaraigosa
said. “So looking for public-private partnerships that will bring fresh
ideas, new energy and not cost the city any money on the general fund
is my kind of new idea.”
One might quibble with how new an idea it is to bring insiders further inside City Hall’s dealings but really what’s the point.
The same is true for AECOM Corp., the global management consulting firm, and its handsome contracts with LA World Airports for hundreds of millions of dollars.
It has every reason to be proud of the $25 million initial contract that its subsidiary DMJM Aviation got in 2008 for “program management services supporting the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
That contract has blossomed today so that AECOM is unashamed to note on its website that is planning for design and phased construction to modernize the airport…Our management tasks included conceptual design, detailed phasing plans; scheduling; cost estimating; program and design criteria development; all necessary research; modeling; assessment; project definition; and pre-construction management.”
AECOM is involved in everything from “Bradley International Terminal Expansion, New Midfield Satellite Concourse, Relocation of south runway; addition of center taxiway to accommodate new large aircraft; and improvement of airfield movements, A new Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC) to improve land access to the central terminal area, Consolidated rental car facility serving over 16 rental car companies, with a total capacity of over 20,000 cars.”
We should be thankful that their fine work has avoided disruption and inconvenience at our wonderful airport and give double thanks for their $100,000 contribution.
As for Herbalife and its $100,000 donation, the piddling subsidies they got last year for street services and other special events dispensations for the “Herbalife Facility Tours” and later their Triathlon clearly would not represent a conflict of interest unless city unions negotiate a benefit that includes free lifetime supplies of their products or the firm has some land use needs.
The nobility of the rich should never be questioned which is why the Times felt no need to mention of this.
I, for one, agree. They are above reproach. My only concern is for how much it is going to cost me for these six charity consults and Austin Beutner to “buy jobs” in a city near bankruptcy, torn by dissension and facing billions of dollars in bills to fix the mismanagement of its far from charitable municipal utility.
Here’s what the mayor tweeted this morning, 12 hours after the City Council unanimously rejected his latest scheme to raiseDWP electricity rates without a plan, without any regard for the impact on business and residents — a shattering political defeat that undermines his credibility.
villaraigosa: It’s national Census Day! If you haven’t already, take 10 minutes to fill our your form. Your community is counting on you. sent 7:34AM
villaraigosa: Launching Visit Hollywood 2010. We’re celebrating the renaissance of Hwood and the #1 economic driver in LA, tourism. sent 1050AM
villaraigosa: RT@metrolosangeles Dodger Stadium Express service from Union Station begins tonight. Free w/Dodger game ticket. sent 1051AM
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. .
