Author: Ron Kaye

Cityview Channel 35 is expected to broadcast today’s DWP Board meeting at 5 p.m.

1 p.m. The DWP Commission meeting started at 1 p.m., half an hour later because Cityfone wasn’t working.

President Lee Alpert opened by honoring outgoing Commissioner Edith Ramirez. DWP Advocacy Chairman Jack Humphreville spoke in public comment saying Ramirez never saw a rate hike she didn’t like, opposed creation of a Rate Payer Advocate and like other board members was remiss in her duty to provide oversight. A second commenter criticized the meeting as a violation of the Brown Open Meeting Act since it is a regular agenda and 72 hours notice should have been provided

Alpert then reported February water use was at a 32 year low.

Interim General Manager David Freeman passed on his report, saying it was in the interst of time.

1:30 p.m. Alpert skips general comment, limits comment on items to two instead of three minutes and starts with Item 22: Energy Cost Adjustment Factor Cap of the Electric Rate Ordinance,
General Provision G.7, from 0.1 cent per kilowatt hour to 0.8 cent
per kilowatt hour,
effective April 1, 2010.

Steve Twining of Bel Air/Beverly Crest NC notes Board has approved 70 percent increase in base rates from 2008-2014 and criticized lack of transparency.

Nick Patsaouras makes his first visit back to DWP since quitting as Board President 18 months ago, saying there must be accountability. He says the .8 cent increase is unjustified, that ratepayers face doubling of rates in a couple of years but there will be no carbon dioxide reduction for five years.

2 p.m. More criticism of full 2.7 cent increase and then Sierra Club and others who support rate hike to reduce carbon emissions speak, take over and call for heavier investment in renewable energy and reduction in coal reliance. Mayor gets their full support although some mention need for greater transparency and accountability with audits by Controller’s Office.. Coalition of Clean Air and Green LA join support.

Humphreville comes back, reporting bills already have risen by thousands of dollars a year for many people and points to Board’s lack of public examination of PA Consulting report. He says no background documents provided the public, that recommendations from PA to split ECAF into segments are not on agenda, no transparency and no planning.

Dr. Clyde Williams points out there is no plan to get rid of coal plants, which should be done. He calls for ECAF to be limited to fluctuations in fuel prices and separation of all the other elements and says MOU with Neighborhood Councils for 90 days notice isn’t being lived up to.

Tony Wilkinson, chair of DWP MOU Committee, expresses dismay at speed of meeting and lack of notice. He notes Board last year backed lifting 1 percent per quarter cap on ECAF but was overruled by City Council. He says .8 cent increase is necessary to clean up commitments already made but nothing else should go forward without full public debate.

2:30 p.m. Freeman still holding court, quotes AB32 and
governor’s executive order to reach 33 percent renewable energy by 2020,
less than mayor’s 40 percent.

Alpert kisses off questions of
whether the meeting is illegal and has City Attorney to explain only 24
hours notice was needed because it is a special meeting.

Freeman
says small users in apartment won’t pay much more but people with
swimming pools and 3,000 square foot house will be hit hard but will get
tips on energy efficiency. Promises an integrated resources plan by
summer with a lot of public input.

CFO Jeff Peltola provides
financial info, citing PA Consulting report and says it would cost $70
to $80 million annually on $3 billion in borrowing if downgraded from AA
to A by bond rating firms.

Freeman cuts in says this is more
serious than just $70 or $80 billion (sic) more. Instantaneous rate
increase needed or the consequences could be dire, compares to energy
crisis impact a decade ago. Alpert questions whether the transfer would
make the transfer to general fund impossible. Freeman says he’d have to
meet his financial obligations to meet bond rating. Board members says
we get nothing for the extra bond cost.

Peltola says utility’s
ability to get rate hikes is what gives credibility with bond raters.

2:45
p.m. Peltola says DWP has scaled back renewable energy purchase to
reach 20 percent this year when they had planned to go as high as 24
percent. Cost pressure led to cutback. Freeman says without ECAF, they
won’t be able to make spot market purchases to reach the 20 percent
figure.

Aram Benyamin, head of power division, says 3.5 percent
of renewable energy coming on spot market, the most expensive. Lack
funding to move ahead on wind/solar projects without ECAF. Freeman says
we’ll only be at 15 percent by 2014 without ECAF. Board is supportive.

Peltola
says fuel costs rising from !.3 billion to $1.85 billion, mainly
because of renewables.  Coal up $83 million. Commissioner Forescee
Hogan-Rowles fully supports proposal, saying we need to get rid of coal.
Nobody notes DWP plan does nothing about that. Benyamin talks about
coal prices rising. Freeman says DWP getting rid of Navajo plant.

Peltola
says costs for various energy sources vary from $29m/wh for coal to $59
to gas to $110 for solar. He adds the plan is to get rid of gas
production in coming year.to partially defray cost of renewables.

If
ECAF kept in place at .1 undercollection will reach $800 million in a
couple of years. It will be $6 million over same time with .8 ECAF. 

3
p.m. Peltola brings up how cheap nuclear power from Palo Verde in
Arizona is and how if it went down, costs would rise. It’s capacity down
from 90 percent to 70 percent now..

Freeman wants cap on ECAF
totally eliminated for the “things that are beyond are control.”
Alpert
says we wouldn’t have this problem if no cap. Freeman says he’s trying
to be kind about past policy. Alpert gets a laugh, “You were part of the
past.”

Peltola says renewable rate hike will be put into a trust
fund and and not touched unless “stress factors” occur, something PA
noted has happened only twice.He says .3 of the .8 ECAF increase will go
to trust fund. That’s the budgeted case unless problems arise. Freeman
again says the ECAF needs to be uncapped and automatic.

Trust
fund limited to renewable, energy efficiency and similar, Peltola says.
Freeman says a lot of public input will come with integrated services
plan in summer. Peltola says DWP has become more transparent and worked
with NCs. Freeman mocks critics, saying some people are “slow learners.”

Peltola
says big increase up to 2.7 cents won’t happen without meeting 90-day
timeframe for NCs to review if rate hikes need Council approval. They
repeat that statement and City Attorney agrees that’s the MOU
requirement.

3:30 p.m. Peltola says killiing Salton Sea and Green
Path and low “projected” labor costs because of new five-year contract
with IBEW have freed up money for renewable investments to reduce
reliance on natural gas.

Residential rates being restructured to
protect low users, small commericial about even with Burbank and
Glendale with expected increases. Generally will be on part with most
other utilities but LA’s large commercial will remain lower. Edison and
PG&E charge more for third tier use than DWP proposes.

Commissioner
Jonathan Parfrey, the environmentalist, applauds rate hikes and
renewable purchases, talking at length of unaccounted for health costs
due to mining, air pollution and other energy related problems.

Peltola
says 2 cent kw/h increase plus trust fund of .7 cents equals overall
2.7 increase for most businesses, offers a comparison to current rates
for cold storage now at 12 cents so it’s a 22 percent increase,.
Residential will be higher, up to 40 percent, for many because of new
tier charges.

Motion on Item 22 is modified to make trust fund
subject to audit by City Controller Wendy Greuel, a major beneficiary of
IBEW campaign cash.

Alpert acknowledges San Fernando Valley
residents will be hit hard during hot summer months but responsibility
is to the DWP and ratepayers. He supports mayor’s plan and support .8
increase because failure to do so would cause harm, automatic
downgrading.

He brings up transfer to city and franchise fees are
not unusual. Without rate hike, transfer to general fund might not
affordable which would harm city.

Unanimously approved.

4
p.m. Item 24.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief
Financial Officer)
(Approved
by Interim General Manager)

Resolution approving the estimated
expenditures for fuel, purchased
power, demand-side management, and
renewable portfolio standard
expenditures to be included in the
Energy Cost Adjustment Factor for
the 12-month period commencing
April 1, 2010 ($0.0080/kWh Cap

Tony Wilkinson of MOU Committee
says the fuel costs need to be separated out so costs and benefis can be
clear and full public debate allowed.

Steve Twining quotes PA
Consulting strong recommendation to create specific items outside ECAF
for all elements with only fuel price fluctuations in ECAF.

Dr.
Clyde Williams brings up putting trust fund in ECAF only obscures what
goes into it even more and limits public scrutiny and awareness. Snow
job, shell game are the metaphors that come to mind.

Humphreville
says public has no information about Item 24, no links, no documents,
absolutely nothing.

Peltola says it’s just consistent with Item
11. Unanimous Approved.

Item 23: Residential Rates:
23.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer)
(Approved

by Interim General Manager)

Resolution recommending amendment of
Electric Rate Ordinance
No. 180127, to restructure the residential
tiered electric rate
to encourage energy conservation during peak
power usage, effective
July 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011.

Council
approval by ordinance is required.

Dr. Williams says top 10 or
25 percent of users should pay even more than this proposal to encourage
conservation and reduce use less energy from coal.

Steve Twining
says middle class, single family homeowners taking it in the shorts.
This is “social engineering” since rich can afford and poor not getting
significant rate hikes.

Tony Wilkinson suggest smart meters. Jack
Humphreville says again “we don’t know what we are talking about.” No
financial info available, not even the resolution.

Jeff Peltola
says Tier 1 rates will be reduced. He says 93 percent of customers never
leave Tier 1 or Tier 2 in cooler zones of city. In warmer zone, 95
percent are in Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Restructuring of lighest users
will raise bills 8.5 percent from $28 to $31. Tier 2 users will go up
$14, Tier will rise with ECAF to $37 but with Tier 3 rates will go to
$66. Amazingly, in summer, residents in cooler areas use one-third more
energy than in the warmer zone.

Unanimously Approved.

Monica
Harmon says majority of Council dubious, LA Times called it a “whiff of
dection” and DWP workers getting huge salaries and pay raises when cops
and other city workers are not and just about everybody having trouble
paying their bills. Sharply criticizes the board. “You’re not fooling
us…how do you sleep at night.”

4:30 p.m. Item 25. Motion
regarding the creation of a Ratepayer Advocate Function and
Position

within the Office of the City Controller.

Speaker after speaker
question how effective the RPA would be if is under the Controller, who
is beholden to the IBEW.

Nick Patsaouras says “we don’t need a
stooge in Brian D’Arcy (IBEW boss)” in the Controller’s Office. He tells
them they need to reject this to erase the board’s image as a rubber
stamp.” Jack Humphrevile says it’s a conflict of interest for the
Controller to oversee the RPA.

Alpert acknowledges his past
opposition to RPA but now feels it’s time to do something, disputes
criticism with Greuel, so he wants to get it started in an “appropriate”
manner.

He argues the RPA would be independent, moves GM should
coordinate with Controller’s Office to create RPA. DWP would pay costs
with report back in 60 days. “If that’s what everybody is crying
for…let’s do it.” Never seen any compromise by Controller’s Office.

Alpert
defends DWP Board’s openness and integrity. Sayles wonders if 60 days
long enough.

Freeman defends his position that he’s the ratepayer
advocate and expects the RPA will agree with him most of the time on
rate hikes. Thinks 60 days not long enough. Alpert agrees to his
suggestion of 90 days.

Forescee Hogan-Rowles chastises Freeman
for using the word “H-E-L-L.” and says she opposes RPA.  Parfrey and
Alpret reserve the right to reject the proposal when it’s brought back.
Sayles said he’s concerned about putting it in the controller’s office
without looking at alternatives.

Approved with Hogan-Rowles
objecting.

5 p.m. Item 26.(Recommended by Chief Operating
Officer, Chief
Financial Officer,
and Senior Assistant General Manager – Water
System)
(Approved by Interim General Manager)

Resolution
recommending amendment of the Water Rates Ordinance to
modify
General Provision R, Shortage Year Rates, and the Second Tier
water
rates specified in the Ordinance to fully include water
procurement
costs in the rates to encourage conservation on a
year-round basis,
and to reflect the actual costs of water to LADWP.
Council approval
by ordinance is required.

Peltola says only Tier 2 users will get
higher rates, poorer customers will get slight reductions.

Unanimously
approved.

End of Coverage

From Walter Moore
Dear Commissioners:

The mayor is so desperate to steal your money through outrageous and unjustified DWP rate hikes he has illegally coerced DWP Commissioners and resorted to an illegal “Special Meeting” at 12:30 p.m. today at 111 N. Hope St. to avoid giving 72 hours notice.

There is absolutely no basis for the
DWP Board
to throw everything including recognition of employee service onto a
Special Meeting notice with only 24 hours notice.

The Special Meeting notice is being
used for one purpose: to defeat the intent of the Legislature that
normally a public agency must give 72 hours notice of items it will
consider.  The use of the Special Meeting is intended by City Hall to
SUPPRESS public participation on one of the largest rate increases in
history of the City.

Here’s how Jack Humphreville, head of the DWP Advocacy Committee, recommends how to protest if you can’t get to the DWP by sending this email:

TO: Forescee Hogan-Rowles
<[email protected]>,  Jonathan Parfrey
<[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected]

Commissioners:

Without any meaningful review, without adequate hearings, without abiding by the MOU, without any input from or outreach to the Neighborhood Councils, without reducing the amount of coal used, you have sold out the Rate Payers, all for your own self interest.  After all, you wouldn’t want to offend our ethically challenged Mayor.

Your Name

HERE IS A STRATEGY RECOMMENDED BY A LAWYER IF YOU ARE GOING TO THE “SPECIAL MEETING”:

Every person should submit a speaker’s card to speak on every single
item on the agenda including the recognition of service of long time
employees. Why?  Under the Brown Act, in a special meeting — unlike a
regular meeting — the public body must allow members of the public to
speak on all items listed on a special meeting agenda.  Here is the
language from the Brown Act:

HERE IS THE LIST OF RATE HIKE ITEMS:

22.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer)
(Approved by Interim General Manager)

Resolution authorizing modification of the Energy Cost Adjustment
Factor Cap of the Electric Rate Ordinance, General Provision G.7,
from 0.1 cent per kilowatt hour to 0.8 cent per kilowatt hour,
effective April 1, 2010.

23.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer)
(Approved by Interim General Manager)

Resolution recommending amendment of Electric Rate Ordinance
No. 180127, to restructure the residential tiered electric rate
to encourage energy conservation during peak power usage, effective
July 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011.

Council approval by ordinance is required.

24.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer)
(Approved by Interim General Manager)

Resolution approving the estimated expenditures for fuel, purchased
power, demand-side management, and renewable portfolio standard
expenditures to be included in the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor for
the 12-month period commencing April 1, 2010 ($0.0080/kWh Cap)

25. Motion regarding the creation of a Ratepayer Advocate Function and
Position within the Office of the City Controller.

Note: Te largest contributor to the Controller’s recent campaign was
the IBEW! $250,000.  The IBEW contributed almost $1,000,000 to Yes
on Measure B.
 
26.(Recommended by Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer,
and Senior Assistant General Manager – Water System)
(Approved by Interim General Manager)

Resolution recommending amendment of the Water Rates Ordinance to
modify General Provision R, Shortage Year Rates, and the Second Tier
water rates specified in the Ordinance to fully include water
procurement costs in the rates to encourage conservation on a
year-round basis, and to reflect the actual costs of water to LADWP.

Council approval by ordinance is required.

Catch Brian D’Arcy and a Hard-hitting DWP Story on KCET’s SoCal Connected, 8 p.m. Thursday, Channel 28

SoCal Connected with Val Zavala tackles the DWP story at 8 p.m.
Thursday on Channel 28 at a time the mayor is seeking massive rate hikes.

LA
City employees are facing layoffs, furloughs and pay-cuts. But at the
city-owned Dept of Water and Power, workers are getting raises.
Meanwhile, the mayor wants to add a big surcharge to your power bill.
What’s up at the DWP?

DWP’s controversial union boss Brian D’Arcy plays a leading role.

Click here for the link to the promo.

What you won’t see on TV on Thursday is the DWP special meeting on rate hikes. Cityview Ch. 35 officials say they don’t intend to broadcast the meeting live and don’t know when they will run it, if ever.

It will be on Cityfone 213-621-2489 at 12:30 p.m. though it would be great if you could go in person to 111 North Hope St. and give them an earful.

Click here for the agenda, which went up Tuesday, not 72 hours in advance as required. The commission canceled its last two meetings but is using the ruse that since it’s a special meeting, they only need 24 hours notice.

Such is the respect for the rule of law and the spirit of the law you might expect from the DWP and City Hall.

Crime sells — that’s the verdict of a new analysis of local TV newscasts that lead their broadcasts one-third of the time with hyped-up reports of rape, murder and mayhem of one sort or another.

News about local government tops the news 2.5 percent of the time, according to USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s Norman Lear Center

Actually, it’s not crime they are selling but fear. Crime goes up and crime goes down, but fear of crime stays nearly constant.

It’s why a guy like Antonio Villaraigosa can triple the trash fee with the promise the money will go in a lockbox to hire more cops and then use two-thirds of the money for other things.

It’s why a street cop like LAPD Chief Charlie Beck can dismantle Bill Bratton’s crime-stopping strategy to pull hundreds of cops out of specialized details like Metropolitan Division.Gang and Narcotics Division and Crime Reduction and Enforcement of Warrants Task Force and put them on routine patrol duty. .

It’s why a guy like Paul Koretz in all seriousness in these times of dire financial troubles can put a priority on calling for Starbucks to ban customers from carrying guns even when allowed by local laws.

“Allowing handguns to be carried into places where guns are not now found has potentially deadly implications,” Koretz told Rick Orlov. “Nothing has happened in Los Angeles yet, but I’m concerned about what could happen. “It is a frightening thought in terms of public safety of having people walking around armed.”

It’s all about fear and our belief we can somehow live in a world without risk.

It’s why we spend trillions on wars and missile defense systems that achieve nothing. It’s why we put public safety as the one and only priority and let our schools, parks and libraries go to hell.

What are we afraid of? Do we really think we can live forever, that we can put a prophylactic armed force around us and be immune from all intrusion?

Healthy societies don’t spawn terrorists or gangs that take control of whole neighborhoods or violent drug wars or so much criminality that the prisons are overflowing to the point that dangerous felons are thrown onto the streets without parole supervision.

We are at the point of no return in LA where we have to decide what kind of society we are, what kind we will be years from now.

Where the leadership of our city is taking us with there decisions in this crisis is to a city of rich and poor, a “Blade Runner City” where police have no choice but to suppress and oppress the poor while the rich live in guarded enclaves

That’s a vision that ought to cause a shudder of fear in everyone. A city without a healthy middle class and real opportunities to reach the middle class is a city like Detroit and Cleveland, empty shells of urban life with luxury entertainment zones surrounded by poverty.

Savage DWP rate hikes on homeowners combined with a wide array of other “tax” increases and sharp cuts in public services, the slashing of school budgets, expanding policies of buying jobs and developments with massive subsidies and cuts in taxes at DWP rates — all assault the middle class and inevitably will speed up the long-term flight of people that can afford to leave town.

There is another way as I have repeatedly argued. But it will take an uprising of the community and an awakening of the labor and business communities to where the long-term self-interest lies.

What the mayor and City Council are doing will created conflict and controversy continuously in the weeks and months and even years ahead.

It is clear they are incapable of change. So we must change them, replacing them people who represent the interests of their communities and the city as a whole — and not just the special interests who finance their campaigns.

Seven seats in the even-numbered districts are up for election a year from now and credible candidates who can raise enough money to mount serious challenges. In 2013, eight seats are up with seven Council members termed out.

Think about: Soaring charges to residents, shrinking services, failure of leadership, growing grassroots organization –sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.

So don’t let the media or the politicians play to your fears. The tide of history, the story of LA, is driving real change. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Bullshit.

I don’t know how to put it more delicately than that. But that’s the only word that comes to mind when the mayor parades forth with union boss Maria Elena Durazo and some environmentalists and announces massive rate hikes for electricity of up to 28 percent targeted at single family homes. And that’s just this year. Next year will be worse and the years following even worse.

It’s a con job, a snow job, all hot air. It’s a fantasy story built around one lie after another.

The issue he should be addressing isn’t the rising cost of fossil fuels and the even higher cost of green energy. Those are real and must be addressed and they undoubtedly require somewhat higher rates both to reflect costs and to pressure us all to use less electricity.

The issue is the Department of Water and Power, its long-term mismanagement, its failure to plan for the future, its decade-long resistance to going green, its total lack of transparency, its outrageous payroll costs, its giveaways of fortunes of ratepayer money and its sloppy contracting processes.

That’s just for openers.

Let’s start at the top.

Rubber-stamping of poorly conceived policies and plans by the DWP Commission must end and a new commission put into place that has independence and expertise and the authority to create a Rate Payer Advocate to protect the public and penetrate the wall of obfuscations and deceits used by management to hide the truth.

No one bears greater responsibility for what’s wrong with the DWP today than interim General Manager David Freeman.

A decade ago he was fired as GM by then Mayor Richard Riordan for good cause, not the least of which was his initiating the largest solar energy program in U.S. history, a program that produced negligible power while squandering tens of millions of dollars.

He is a man who will say and do anything at this point in his life without regard to the truth, the reason no doubt Antonio Villaraigosa resurrected him as his energy chief and now head of the DWP. He has been tied financially to the Villaraigosa’s eminence noir and fund-raiser Ari Swiller among other green energy profiteers that surround the mayor.

Freeman makes deposed GM David Nahai, now a legal consultant on energy, look good. His promised six months is up and he must be replaced by someone of stature, integrity and independence before any significant rate increases are contemplated.

Whatever happened to “shared sacrifice,” does it not apply to the DWP? Why should the public pay more when the mayor has given raises up to nearly 6 percent to overpaid DWP employees and even in these deflationary times of economic hardship are still getting raises of up to 4 percent a year for the next four years?

Let’s see union bully boy Brian D’Arcy match every dollar ratepayers have to pay with equal dollars in union givebacks.

Of course that’s unthinkable since he has most everyone at City Hall scared to death of him and his threats of retaliation and strikes.

The blackmailed contracts D’Arcy has gotten along with the annual transfers of so-called “surplus” electricity revenue is why the DWP is in financial straits. The transfer, raised by Villaraigosa from 5 to 8 percent, comes on top of the 10 percent electricity tax and amounts to more than $200 million a year.

The report on DWP by PA Consulting(IEA-summary.doc)(IEA-excerpts.doc) that was suppressed more than a year ago provided a detailed indictment of the utility’s management. The new report by PA Consulting that is being used to justify this new round of rate hikes is even more damning.

You will see just how damning if you read the Conclusions and Findings
(PA-ECAF-Findings.rtf). Jack Humphreville, head of the DWP Advocacy (and Watchdog) Committee, has provided a series of articles at CityWatchLA on the report.

The gist of the report is the DWP lacks a coherent long-term plan to meet artificial green energy targets that are immensely costly and are using the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor to hide the real costs to the public.

The report says DWP is desperate for more money immediately, mainly to avoid embarrassing the mayor for failing to meet the 20 percent renewable goal he set to make himself look good politically. To do that, the DWP has incurred huge costs paying premium prices to buy wind and solar on the open market wherever it can.

The 40 percent goal the mayor set for 2020 is even more costly and unrealistic.

LADWP does not currently have a plan to go beyond this 20% level,” the report says.
“However, using a project build plan based on a budget issued by the Department in May 2009, the cost of reaching a 25% level was estimated at an additional $124 million per year, or 0.5 cents/kWh in rates. This would have an additional $2.50 impact on the average residential customer bill. Moving from 25% to 40% introduces even more uncertainty. Extrapolating these cost impacts to the 40% RPS level, PA has estimated a potential additional cost impact of $400 million per year.”

The costs just keep piling up and show why all the mayor is talking about now is the next 12 months. In fact, it is a certainty that rates will be doubling and tripling and DWP salaries will keep on soaring.

And you won’t have a clue about who’s paying and who’s profiteering unless there are dramatic changes in the way DWP is run.

That means a complete overhaul of management, rate structures and policies.

What the mayor is proposing is a continuation of failure and deceit. That’s why I say bullshit to his plan. What do you say? What do you think the DWP Commission and the City Council will say?

For the past two years, I have been documenting from every direction that Los Angeles is “Crossing of the Rubicon,” its point of no return at which we have become an old dying city divided between the rich and the poor with a diminishing middle class.

I use the phrase crossing the Rubicon advisedly because it refers to Caesar’s 49 BC crossing of the river on his way to conquering Rome and ending its democratic traditions. The writer-philosopher Cicero, a senator who fled Rome for his life, spoke truth to power as few have ever done.

“Freedom,” he said, “is the participation in power… a possession of inestimable value.”

In endless articles on my blog, at my citizen journalism/community networking site OurLA.org, on radio and TV and at many community meetings, I have tried to convey the vision I developed of our city as a newspaperman for 30 years in Los Angeles.

It is a struggle for democracy against a narrow network of powerbrokers and special interests that served themselves even as they sharply raises taxes, rates and fees, chased away good jobs and let the streets, sidewalks, water and power systems deteriorate.  

Along the way, they resisted every effort at reform, only embracing the most modest progressive changes in the face of the most overwhelming evidence of police brutality against the poor and minorities and the threat of secession by the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and San Pedro.

What we learned from that secession debate is that the City of Los Angeles is a corporation under the law. It owns everything: Streets, lights, every part of the DWP, all the parks, libraries and city buildings.

The city is no more owned by the residents and businesses, the taxpayers, than the customers of General Motors or any other corporation is owned by its customers who supply the money that feeds their executives, staffs and shareholders.

Many people are upset at the recent Supreme Court ruling that lifted the
ban on direct contributions to political campaigns by companies and
unions because they don’t understand that we have given them the same
rights under the Constitution as people.

We have personified
corporations and unions and we have personified the City of Los Angeles
as if it was made of flesh, a living human being.

We find
ourselves now in this time of crisis bestowing personhood onto the
unitary actor we call “City of LA”.  It is an easy metaphor, an easy
prosthetic for an entity whose head and tail are hard to find.  

In
our discussions it is very easy to attribute properties we associate
first with human beings – rationality, identities, interests, beliefs,
and so on.  Many of us have assumed that the idea of personhood is
meaningful at some fundamental level and makes sense.   

Where
did this idea come from?  

Alexander Wendt, an international
relations theorist, confers that the idea of corporate ‘personality’ is
of medieval origin, its application was not routine in the West until
the 18th century – further proof, if any were needed, that LA has
behaved in very medieval tendencies from its Council members’ fiefdoms
to its archaic bookkeeping systems.

“Almost anything can be a
person by social convention, but only some can be a person by nature,”
he said.

If the city is a person under the law, it raises the
question of just what does it mean to be a person?   

To be a
person one must have the capacity of first person subjective experience
and a clear identity. That is to say, it has to be more than
Villaraigosa’s ego, or the Council’s pompous attitude, more than “I love
LA… I really love LA,” as the mayor put it.

Personhood means
LA must have a desire that motivates it, and the ability to make choices
on a rational basis —  a test we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
City Hall has failed miserably.

If LA were truly to be a person
it would need be a psychological, legal and moral constituent.  It would
need to possess certain mental or cognitive attributes, to be an
organism of some sort that functions just like an individual.  

LA
can barely meet its rights and obligations under the law let alone
operate in a moral manner as proven by its stream of sweetheart deals
and giveaways to special interests.

Individual persons have
internal authority, sovereignty, over themselves as well as external
sovereignty as a member of society. City Hall has displayed its internal
authority with early retirement and layoffs plan but the chaos that has
ensued and the ballooning budget deficit have cost it the confidence of
the public and its workers

LA has failed the tests of its
personhood as surely as it has failed to provide the leadership the city
desperately needs.

Yet, we see it wield its power on the lives
of workers, taxpayers, and stakeholders as if its legitimacy were
unchallenged. We see the mayor wield it against the neighborhood
councils and completely disenfranchise them as if they were not created
by the same Charter that creates the city government as a whole.

City
Hall today is nothing more than an artificial power, its legitimacy,
its personhood, undermined by its failures.

The collective
actions and intentions of those we elected must be judged and those
responsible held accountable.

 We, as constituents and
constituted members of this society, must not allow them to wash their
liability behind the political agency that comes from their election to
office. Those election themselves are of dubious legitimacy because of
the overwhelming role of the campaign money supplied to the favored
candidates by the same special interests that benefit from the city’s
actions.

There may be better forms of governance to restore
legitimacy to the personhood of the city government, such as a system of
boroughs that devolves authority to the local level and allows for the
diversity necessary in a city so complex and sprawling.

But no
system of governance will change things much, as we have seen with the
endless and ineffective structural changes in our schools. We need an
uprising from the persons who make up the body politic of Los Angeles,
new leadership and most of all, a new vision and a new spirit of LA that
redefines us and the city we call home.

A picture can say a lot and that’s what we meant to do at OurLA.org to illustrate a story by writer Vic Rothman on how the decisions the mayor and City Council are dealing with the budget crisis. Their action are leaving the city in the same position as any homeowner burdened with debt who is seeing the mortgage under water and upside down. Go to OurLA.org to read this revealing analysis of how the city’s budget crisis is being handled.

For LA, it’s a Race to the Bottom.

The mayor cancelled his scheduled news conference where he was to announce electricity rate increases, saying the proposal needed to be reviewed. He plans to try again Monday. Here’s what he might say if he wanted public support instead of the fight he faces:
 
Ladies and gentlemen of the press:

I had planned to meet with you on Friday to discuss my plan to raise electricity rates and how we will use your money to bring solar and wind power to our city to clean our air and bring good-paying green technology jobs to Los Angeles.

But I found out neither I nor my staff understood what we were talking about with regard to rates and that the DWP really didn’t have a detailed and comprehensive plan to deliver on our environmental commitment.

I was angry about the misinformation we were putting out, angry at others and at myself. I had a tough time sleeping Friday night and decided to shed my bodyguards Saturday morning and look at our city through fresh eyes.

As I drove through neighborhood and after neighborhood, I saw groups of three and four men standing in front of gas stations and liquor stores and hardware stores hoping for a day’s work as a laborer. I saw dozens of houses with signs saying “Foreclosure Auction” and a multitude of storefronts with “For Lease” signs.

From the Eastside to the Valley, to the Westside and South LA, the signs of hard times were visible everywhere.

I reflected on how easy it is to forget what’s going on in the city you love when you live in a mansion and are surrounded all day by people looking after you, when so many of the people you engage are rich and influential.

Scenes of encounters I had in Washington last week on my lobbying trip for money for the subway-to-the sea project flashed across my mind, conversations with Senators and House members and their staffs that had little to do with the substance of our transportation plan and a lot to do with manipulating the levers of power for advantage.

It all seemed so empty and pointless, so disconnected from the reality of the lives of the people who live and work here or are looking for work. I thought how much easier it is to spin the truth than to engage it honestly and forthrightly.

When I got home, I canceled all my activities for the weekend and sat alone in the backyard listening to the sounds of the city, enjoying the beauty of a perfect sunny Southern California afternoon.

I thought about my childhood and how I had gotten to this place as your mayor and realized that somewhere along the way, my ideals had become distorted and confused.

“Oh my God,” I thought, “it’s all come to nothing. I’ve lost my way.”

Today, I’m going to make a new beginning as your mayor. I have asked my staff to reach out to business, labor, Neighborhood Councils, environmentalists and many other sectors of our community, to people from every part of LA, to meet with me in small groups over the next two weeks to talk about how we face our problems together, how we put aside our differences, how we balance our private interests with the public interest so we can work together for the greater good of the city.

Out of these meetings, I will create a Mayoral Council of Advisers who will have full access to all the resources of City Hall and all departments. They will bring their intelligence, skill, expertise and their devotion to LA to helping create a new vision that unites us in our purpose and resolve.

Our problems are great, time is of the essence. We cannot go on as we have. We must change the way City Hall does business.

Toward that end, I signed an executive order for the City Planning Department to only approve new developments that have clear economic benefits to the city and enhance the quality of lives in our neighborhoods. This will require close coordination with the community and developers to find solutions that achieve these goals.

I also am directing the Department of Water and Power to come back within a week with a new power rate structure that will encourage conservation while we develop longer term strategies to replace fossil fuels with clean technologies that provide renewable energy. I want it be perfectly clear to everyone how these rates will work, who will pay and how much. Electricity rates need to go up sharply over time to encourage conservation, to achieve our environmental goals and to develop green jobs for the future.

The price point is critical to conservation as we have seen with our achievements at reducing our water usage and you have a right to expect value for your money and the goals are being met.

Later today, I will be meeting with the heads of all city unions to lay out the plain truth. We need them to reduce our payroll and benefits costs dramatically to preserve city services and bring our spending in line with our revenue.

To achieve this, taxpayers are going to have to meet them halfway.

We cannot mortgage our future through borrowing or simply sell our assets at a fire sale, laying off workers and cutting services that we all depend on.

A year ago, I talked about the need for shared sacrifice. Then, it was a slogan. Today, it is the operating policy of my administration. I am reducing my salary and staff by 25 percent immediately and calling on the City Council to do the same

These are only the first steps along the road to balancing the city budget, restoring confidence in our city government and making sure that the future of Los Angeles is even greater than its past.

To my fellow Angelenos, I want to say this: I am asking for a second chance from you. I need your help if we are to achieve great things for the city we love.

I’ll take you questions now, if you have any.

DWP Report Calls for Massive Power Rate Hikes
Friday, 26 February 2010

The long-awaited consulting report on pass-through electricity charges was released Friday, calling for an immediate 800 percent increase in the energy cost adjustment factor and increases every quarter that will raise overall power rates by more than 20 percent within a year.
The massive increases are being sought as DWP officials face intense pressure to have a revenue stream to be able to close at least four deals to buy solar and wind energy to meet the stand-mandated goal of 20 percent renewable energy by the end of this calendar year.

BOARD OF WATER AND POWER COMMISSIONERS’ MEETING OF TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2010, CANCELLED

Los Angeles Electric Rate Linked to Solar Power

By JENNIFER
STEINHAUER, New York Times

Published: March 10, 2010

Now, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the United States, is poised to pass a roughly 5 percent rate increase on electricity use.

The commission that governs the utility, which is losing about $6 million a week or an estimated $500 million by the end of the 2011 fiscal year,

This isn’t just Chinatown, Jake, it’s becoming like China itself.

There’s no other way to see what the leftist mayor is doing in finding a roundabout way to pull his quotes from the Reason Foundation and embrace free enterprise capitalism.

No other way to understand what he is doing with the city’s golf courses by setting them up as a semi-independent entity with its own enterprise fund and the goal to become profitable as in making money and being run as a business for profit and the benefit of its customers and employees.

Isn’t that how the commies in China found a way around their doctrinaire past to become a global economic giant? That way they didn’t have to admit communism had failed.

Showing his own political flexibility, Antonio Villaraigosa is using the same strategy to avoid admitting LA’s experiment in municipal socialism is a dismal failure.

He is ready to turn over valuable assets like the Convention Center and the Pershing Square parking structure to private companies, undoubtedly friends and contributors, right when they are starting to turn a profit.

This didn’t just happen overnight.

The mayor made such a mess of the city’s finances with expanded social welfare programs, massive hiring, subsidized developments and sweetheart union contracts that the city seeing is running in the red and can’t pay its bills.

So what else can he do but sell off assets and fire workers?

As luck would have it, there is something else he can do and he took the bait Monday by agreeing to keep the “for sale” sign off the city’s nine golf courses and instead turn them into a business enterprise, the kind the makes money instead of losing it by being burdened with wasteful, and in to a great extent, fictitious costs.

So when his henchman, Chief of Staff Jeff Carr, hauled Recreation and Parks General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri on the carpet Monday the conversation took an unexpected turn. Instead of eliminating huge chunks of his staff, Mukri cut a deal to spin off the nine golf courses into a separate “enterprise fund” rather than seek bids from private companies to run the golf program as the county does profitably despite significantly lower fees than the city.

“Organized labor and organized golf have been working together on this for a long while,” Craig Kessler, executive director of the Public Links Golf Association.

“The budget crisis is an opportunity for a team effort to make the golf enterprise fund succeed. We need to recognize the need for consensus, push for transparency and see what is working and not working.”

There is no guarantee that the mayor or the rest of City Hall actually intends to do anything beyond getting the 165 golf jobs out of the general fund and into a special fund so that a similar numbers of jobs in the Parks Department is saved.

Power sharing is a more threatening concept to City Hall than capitalism is to the commies these days.

But there is real opportunity, as with Neighborhoods Councils and other agencies that are being gutted, for citizen activists, workers and bureaucrats to work collaboratively together and make city government work better at lower costs.

Like the Chinese, the mayor finds the idea of sharing sacrifice and costs more palatable than sharing power. But that’s the heart of the question that ought to inspire those committed to specific areas of city government to work harder and work together for real change.

For years, golf enthusiasts and union leaders have been pushing a plan to run the network of city golf courses into a profit-making business instead of the loser it has become because it’s saddled with millions of dollars in costs that have nothing to do with the facilities.

The city’s budget crisis has created the opportunity to finally implement their proposal and preserve some youth and other programs and avoid closure of many parks because of layoffs.

The challenge is to demonstrate that the golf courses can be run in a business-like manner by scaling their real costs to revenue, reinvesting profits into improvements and even generate income for other parks programs.

That will take real participation from the Golf Advisory Council that too often have been ignored in the past and cooperation from the unions that too often have been inflexible in the past.

“The wolf is at the door. The status quo is not sustainable,” said Kessler. “The Parks Department is a little bit of a fortress and that has to change.”

Whether the mayor and meddling City Council will stand in the way of change, of power sharing, remains to be seen but this is one case where community activists and labor unions are on the same side and have worked together for several years to make it happen.

While much of what the city does fails because of poor political leadership, bad management and work rules that encourage inefficiency, there are examples like the General Services printing shop as fully competitive with private companies on price and quality.

The golf program is not in that category.

The city’s response to the recession-caused decline in the number of rounds played is to sharply raise green fees under the same doctrine of revenue neutrality the mayor has used in running the Department of Water and Power. The less we use of water or power in the name of conservation the higher the rates go. The higher the salaries go the higher the rates go.

Such policies go a long to way towards explaining why the golf courses are in worse condition, why the water and power systems are falling apart, why the streets and sidewalks are crumbling and just about everything provided by the city is getting worse, and the worst is yet to come.

Neighborhood Councils, environmentalists, the disabled and many other segments of the community have tried to step forward as full participants in running the city.

But like the unions who have been promised a full partnership, they mostly get lip service instead of respect.

It would be ironic if it was golfers who teed up the model for a new Los Angeles.

Lights. Camera. Action. Bullshit!

No sooner have our city employees cleared the champagne glasses at Getty House from Antonio’s pre-Oscar party last week, or read of his recent lobbying exploits in far-away Washington (I guess they turned off his phone), then we learn this morning that he’s clamping down on spending — by everyone else.

“Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sent a letter to city departments Wednesday demanding a freeze on much of their spending, from the purchase of new furniture to the use of food and beverages at city events,” the Dog Trainer reported.

That sound you hear is every dog in the neighborhood howling with laughter.

We’re living in a comedy that would probably earn an Oscar — if it weren’t so tragic.

The Trainer’s reporter David Zahniser, as always, has at least some of the story:

“With the city facing a $484-million shortfall in the fiscal year that starts July 1, Villaraigosa also instructed several departments to halt negotiations for leased office space and barred any efforts to remodel city offices.”

DZ, as he is known around City Hall, which is the opposite of ZD, which is short for my pal Zuma Dogg  added the memo does not apply to several city departments, including the Department of Water and Power, the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles World Airports and two agencies that oversee pension funds for retired and civilian city workers.

I guess those guys, who have huge fat-filled budgets, can buy food and beverages, purchase furniture, rent space and, well, party, as Prince (a popular dog name) sung, “like it’s 1999,” which really was a good year.

Problem is it ain’t 1999, which is probably when Dick Riordan should have started working on this budget mess.

Woof! 

If you thought the massive electricity rate hike about to be rubber-stamped next week by the DWP Commission is bad news, think again.

There is even worse news today in the New York Times: The DWP “is losing about $6 million a week or an estimated $500 million by the
end of the 2011 fiscal year.”

Who knew? The DWP losing money? How is that possible?

Of course, it isn’t, The DWP just sent $147 million in “surplus” power revenue to the city general fund, part of its 8 percent annual revenue donation that comes on top of the 10 percent electricity tax. It just gave checks for 3.25 percent of their salaries to its 8,000 employees with some getting back pay raises for two years of up to nearly 6 percent and granted raises of up to 4 percent for each of the next four years.

But Jennifer Steinhauer — the NYT’s Los Angeles Bureau chief who’s heading to Washington to cover Congress — knows all about the DWP losing money along with other facts nobody in this left coast town has heard.

Nobody at least except Chief Deputy Mayor Jay Carson, who appears to the only source for Steinhauer’s exclusive report under the headline “Los Angeles Electric Rate Linked to Solar Power.”

Undoubtedly, Steinhauer and Carson crossed paths when she was covering the 2008 presidential race and he was Hillary Clinton’s spokesman so his word is as good as gold.

She reports that the DWP “is poised to pass a roughly 5 percent rate increase on electricity use…(the DWP Commission)
is expected to vote next week to increase by seven-tenths of 1 cent the
current user rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour.”

That doesn’t sound so bad. But then it isn’t what the DWP is seeking unless Carson has shared with her insider information that none of us know. The 5 percent rate hike hardly would begin to cover the DWP supposed deficit and the provide for “renewable energy purchases and programs, including one that would repay people or businesses that use solar panels to contribute to the power grid.”

To Steinhauer, the rate hike “is equivalent to a carbon tax because all consumers will see rates fall
as the city becomes less reliant on coal-powered energy.”

I get it now: Rate hikes mean lower rates. No wonder she is best known for her obsession with rattlesnakes that are plaguing all of LA and even brings them into this story’s opening with the observation that in LA “environmentalists outnumber rattlesnakes in many parts of the sprawling
city.”

In contrast to Steinhauer’s report, the cost of going green runs into the billions of dollars and a 5 percent rate hike doesn’t come close to paying the bill. The DWP’s own consultant’s report calls for a rate hike of 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour — four times what Steinhauer reports — and Carson’s boss wants an additional surcharge as well with even higher rates coming year after year..

In Steinhauer’s math, the modest 5 percent rate hike will somehow “shore up the (DWP) budget shortfall, in the hope of protecting the utility’s
bond rating … (and) go to renewable energy sources, like wind farms, and to help subsidize a program that would essentially repay
solar-panel users for feeding energy into the power grid.”

Even beyond all those costs to be covered by the rate hike, “Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his staff are billing the increase as a move
that will bring jobs to the city. Los Angeles has never embraced the
idea of solar energy, largely because of the high cost of the programs.”

“There are so few solar panel manufacturing companies in the city,
mayoral aides have had to scramble to find an appropriate place to
announce the new plan later this week.”

“A well-crafted carbon surcharge achieves two goals,” Los Angeles’s
chief deputy mayor, Jay Carson, said. “The first is a drastic reduction
in fossil fuel usage for energy, but the second, and more important for
Los Angeles, is the creation of thousands of green-collar jobs.”

Finally, the dashing Jay Carson appears after having so successfully spun a New York Times star reporter who clearly made no effort to check the “facts” she was being spoon-fed.

The question arises then: What was Carson trying to achieve? A test drive of how the LA press corps and populace are going to be spun? Deluding Wall Street to somehow believe DWP actually has a solar plan so it will lend the utility money without lowering its bond rating?

I don’t know. I just thought you ought to know how the spinmeisters like Carson operate and how even star reporters like Steinhauer and newspapers like the NYT can’t be trusted any more than your ordinary citizen blogger without checking the facts yourself.

You can do that by going to OurLA.org, which broke the rate hike plan story on Feb. 26, and read the DWP report on rate hikes prepared by PA Consulting.

Take a deep breath, Jan, and sock it to me — you’re the LA Legislator of the Year. Here’s the announcement from BreatheLA:

Imagine the scenes at the Pacific Dining Car and in the back rooms of City Hall in the next few days as the nation’s highest paid municipal officials and their armies of staffers, each with their taxpayer-supplied Priuses, back slap and praise each other for all their hard work above and beyond the call of duty.

Job well done.

High fives all around. They have been in combat these last few weeks. They have seen the enemy and it is us, the taxpayers, the businesses, the people. And they have survived through daily sessions, and the pitfalls of posturing and hypocrisy as if they had braved incoming shells and snipers and improvised explosive devices.

No, it hasn’t been easy but they have gotten through and have lived to destroy again another day.

You can understand their need to fly off to the nation’s capital to wine and dine with the men and women at the pinnacle of the political machinery of public deceit, or to spend a few days on the beaches of Maui far from the maddening crowd of ordinary folks begging for crumbs from their table of power.

Such is the burdens of self-importance in an age of transformation when the rules no longer apply, when the center of inertia no longer holds, when the abnormal has become the norm.

These are the people we have anointed to lead us through these times of troubles and they are delighted to have danced and preened, to have shown their heartfelt concerns, to have made it through pretending to have faced the demon of their massive deficits without having done anything at all.

And they are still in place in their high stations to enjoy the privileges and perks they have come to expect as a birthright for their virtue and goodness.

Oh, what a happy day it is, what a well deserved vacation they have coming next week for their public service.

They have confused and fragmented the populace and shown their superiority and put the  grumbling rabble in their place, worried about themselves and their parks and libraries and their petty concerns as they try to preserve the quality of their little lives.

It was brilliant and worth all the sweat of donning their fancy clothes every day though they will have to call in chits from their wealthy friends to cover the inflated dry cleaning bills they have from having to show up at work every day.

Of course, they never all show up at the same time.

That’s one of the wonders of the Council. They arrange their schedules so that they have just enough members — a dirty dozen — to enact everything they and their puppet masters want on unanimous votes on first reading.

By so doing, they reduce the time for the public to figure out what they
are up to and limit the opportunity for public input. And since they
can put their votes on automatic dial for “aye,” they don’t even have to
be in the Council Chamber or even in City Hall for that matter.

It
should be obvious why 99 percent of the public comments come from the
regular gadfly crowd. They really don’t want to waste their time and
don’t care what the public has to say. They do not listen, they do not
hear.

The more I watch what passes for this deliberative body
called the City Council, the more I think maybe we don’t need them at
all.

Right off the top we’d save $25 million or so in salaries
and perks. Then, we’d save tens of millions more that they squander from
their slush funds and hundreds of millions even beyond that from
eliminating all the money that goes into political pandering to keep
them in high office.

Without a Council to muck things up, the
lobbyists, developers, contractors, consultants and union leaders could
come out of the back rooms and gather around the horseshoe and take care
of city business in public and on camera.

We’d at least know
what was really going on that way, and how so much of what city
government does is for the good of the few and harms the interests of
the many.

And as for the office of mayor with its 200 staffers,
We could live better without all of them. It’s little more than a
ceremonial office these days so why not have a mayor for a day, a person
chosen from some kind of reality show by public vote.

The
audience would be huge and the advertising revenues would clean up the
structural deficit. There could be contests for who could cadge the most
money in the area that was supposed to be the Grand Avenue Project or
who could run the fastest around a circuit of massive subsidized
developments or who could sell the most dope out of a street vendor’s
cart.

The possibilities are endless. Think about it, would we
really be any worse off?

The highest paid city workers transferring from general fund
positions to the Department of Water and Power under threat of massive
layoffs have gotten raises of up to 16 percent.

Responding to a
request from OurLA.org, the Personnel Department provided a list
Wednesday of the 11 highest paid employees who have transferred to the
DWP, Harbor and Airport.

Nine have joined the DWP, one the Harbor
and one the Airport.

See the first list of transfers, go to OurLA.org

GO TO OURLA.ORG TO LEARN ABOUT THE DEAL TO SPIN OFF CITY GOLF COURSES AND SAVE JOBS FOR REC & PARKS DEPT. WORKERS

I’m writing this post from my doghouse in Ron’s backyard but I’m not actually in my doghouse. I’m in the kitchen hoping he drops part of his breakfast on the floor as usual so I can get something to eat without lying next to the damn Pavlovian MannersMinder machine that’s supposed to change my personality by dribbling out two  kibble bits at a time.

Yeah, right. Good luck. Guys beat me with sticks when I was a pup and couldn’t break me. They dumped me on the streets and I survived. I am Bruno, LA’s Watchdog, nipping at the heels of all those abusers of pets and even people.

I’ve wished sometimes I could be in two places at once to clean up the mess out there ever faster.

That’s why I got so inspired this morning and decided to prowl the backyard and push the automatic writing button on the computer..

The Dog Trainer’s David Zahniser’s and Maeve Reston’s showed me the light with their exhaustive investigative piece revealing how our City Council members actually vote while eating  sandwiches in the back rooms behind the council chambers and cutting deals with lobbyists who get free parking and free access as if they were Council members too, which they might as well be.

You think fleas are bad?

It seems their presence isn’t even needed in the Council Chamber when votes are taken. They just push a button and the computer automatically votes yes for hungry council members, or those who want to meet with lobbyists and, as the Dog Trainer points out, the members of the mayor’s staff for some mysterious reason.

“The city clerk’s office, which maintains the council’s official record, does not track how often members leave the council floor while still being counted as present,” our own Woodward and Bernstein wrote. “Times reporters (Dave and Maeve, it rhymes) monitored the back rooms repeatedly from August to February, however, and found that at least half of the council used them for private sessions during public meetings.”

Seven months???

Geez, the city’s finances are going down the toilet (where voting members often are hanging out) and the Dog Trainer is firing half its reporters but Dave & Maeve – I really do love that! – are sneaking around to catch Dennis Zine eating a salami sandwich with lobbyist Ben Reznik or spot somebody grabbing a smoke.

Any minute now I expect them in Ron’s backyard sneaking a peek on what he’s up to. I can’t wait, it would be more fun than biting the poolman. .

Every good story deserves a follow-up.

Woof!

If ever there was something to go to war about in the shocking mismanagement of city affairs, it’s the Department of Water & Power.

It’s time to put the public in charge of this renegade agency, the nation’s largest municipally-owned utility.

For a century, the DWP has operated as a law unto itself, unaccountable to no one. From the theft of Owens Valley water, to the land grab of the San Fernando Valley, through back room deals and sweetheart contracts and its refusal to “green” its power supply, the DWP has been run as if it were a privately-owned business beyond the reach of the people or political leaders.

It is the source of the Chinatown story, the darkest chapter in LA’s history that has become a never ending story.

Over more than a decade now, bully boy union leader Brian D’Arcy has taken charge of the DWP as if he were chairman of the board and principal shareholder, blackmailing city officials into approving stupendous contracts under threat of strikes that would shut down the water and power systems, under threat of destroying their careers with the millions of campaign cash at his disposal.

He thrived on the DWP’s reliance on coal-burning power plants because it meant lots of high-salaried jobs for IBEW workers. He insisted that all power sources be DWP-owned power plants because it meant lots of jobs for his union members. He squelched efforts to develop wind and solar energy resources because it meant fewer or no jobs for IBEW workers.

He constructed a system of work rules that guaranteed vast amounts of overtime whether or not there was urgent work to be done. He protected workers loyal to the union and destroyed those with loyalty to the public interest. He has corrupted the Civil Service system by having promotional jobs filled by “bid”, not a competitive examination as is done in the rest of the City. He treated general managers, commissioners and elected officials as if they were his hirelings.

The result is a power grid that has deteriorated and is breaking down, wage structures that are far above the industry average and 40 percent higher than other city workers doing comparable work and the worst renewable energy record of any utility in California.

Measure B for 400 megawatts of rooftop solar was D’Arcy’s creation and it was the union’s money that drove the $1.6 million campaign for it that failed in the face of the push-back by ordinary citizens with virtually no money spent in opposition.

What was wrong with it then is what’s wrong with it now — it requires the DWP to own and maintain all major rooftop solar installations in the city to create even more IBEW jobs even though it dramatically increases costs to the public, stifles the growing private solar industry and slows the achievement of significant amounts of solar since DWP has no substantive experience in the field.

Yet, the mayor and Council are moving forward on virtually the same plan as Measure B because it is the price they are willing to pay to get solar power, or more accurately the price they are willing to let the public pay.

The DWP is desperate for more revenue to close contracts for wind and solar just to meet the 20 percent by 2010 goal mandated by the legislature under AB32 four years ago. That’s right, DWP waited until the last minute to meet the mandate which says a lot about the management and the leadership of the “greenest big city mayor” in America.

Now the mayor wants to start a monthly $2.50 surcharge that will rapidly escalate, supposedly to replace power plants that burn the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal, with plants that burn another fossil fuel, natural gas. The plants are immensely costly, still dirty, if less so than coal and have a life expectancy of 70 years — eliminating the possibility LA will be able to take, advantage of expected major advances in green technology for most of a century.

That’s small change compared to the 20 percent power rate hike the DWP wants to impose by April 1 by eliminating the 4 percent cap on pass-through surcharges for fluctuations in the price of fuel.

Once the cap on the ECAF (Energy Cost Adjustment Factor)  is lifted, you can be certain your rates will soar even more than the 60 percent they will have gone up by 2011 under our current mayor.

The 60 percent is the same percentage the mayor has increased the transfer of DWP’s “surplus” electricity revenue to the general fund. It’s even more than the 30 percent he has increased gross pay at the DWP, if that’s any consolation.

Soaring wages on top of already inflated salaries, soaring rates, soaring revenue to the general fund from the 10 percent electricity tax and 8 percent revenue transfer, lack of renewable energy, deteriorating infrastructure — the costs are spectacular and rates will continue to go up and up, undoubtedly doubling or tripling.

Power rates are going up everywhere. They have to because we must reduce our pollution and we must reduce our dependency on foreign fuel.

The question is value for our money, solid plans that achieve important goals, lower costs, increased efficiency, an end to featherbedding and sweetheart contracts, complete transparency, tough enforcement of breaches of contract by consultants and contractors.

Cleaning up the DWP scandal.has become the battle cry for a better city. We must demand accountability, break the political power of the IBEW, require managerial competence, solid planning and transparency — all these changes are necessary before we move forward and consider how we raise rates.

Rate structures are as much about fairness to all and pressure to conserve as they are the need to modernize our power system.

If you’re not prepared to fight over what’s going on at the DWP, you might as well give up and let them do whatever they want or get out of town as so many have done.

The DWP is the city’s cash cow, the engine that drives its corruption.

The mayor and council are preparing to take huge chunks of DWP revenue to buy jobs and subsidize economic development. It is a utility, not an economic development agency. Ample power does provide for economic development by its nature, not by giveaways of public money to insiders.

This is a fight that residents and the business community cannot afford to lose. It’s one thing to pay more to get something that’s good for us all. It’s another thing to pay more and get nothing at all. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Shortly before 2 p.m., the city website came back up with a rotating picture graphic of city services on top.

Confidence in the city’s leadership and its motives has reached such a low point that the latest breakdown of the city’s website where you can see what the City Council and mayor are up to has triggered a wave of paranoia across the activist community.

I’ve heard some several people who normally see bungling incompetence and greed in City Hall’s action who suspect that the website breakdown as part of a disinformation conspiracy at a time when critical decisions our being made this week on the city budget crisis before the Council takes an unearned vacation next week.

And  it comes at a time when next week the DWP Commission plans to rubber stamp massive rate hikes by April 1 for an undefined green energy plan and to pay worker salaraies inflated by the latest round of pay hikes.

Said one reader: “Don’t you think its odd the city web site is down?  I don’t think they want people reviewing the motions this week.  Too many hot buttons issues.”

At OurLA.org, a reader who believes the city deliberately wants to keep people in the dark tracked the city website’s changing its story over the last 12 hours:

“This page is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on [very old date]”

Much later, they changed the message:

“This page is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Sunday, March 7, 2010”

Today, they changed the message to read:

“This page is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Monday, March 8, 2010”

Today, they changed the message to read:

“This page is temporarily unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Monday, March 8, 2010”

I don’t personally believe much in formal conspiracies, just conspiracies of consciousness achieved by everyone involved understanding marching orders that don’t actually need to be spelled out since that might create evidence of criminality.

In this case, I prefer to think they are just bunglers and not smart enough to plot this. But then as the saying goes, you can’t spell W-R-O-N-G without R-O-N.