The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s acting general manager Wednesday urged the utility’s board to reject the City Council’s proposed rate hike, saying it would not protect the agency’s finances.<\/p>\n
Raman Raj, who is running the DWP while General Manager S. David Freeman is on vacation, said the board should also refuse to send $73 million to the city’s struggling general fund. <\/p>\n
\nRaj said the DWP needed the increase to last longer than three months, which is the current plan backed by the council. <\/p>\n
\nIf the board agrees with Raj in a vote expected Wednesday evening, it would set up a protracted fight over rates in the middle of a budget crisis — one where 4,000 city jobs are already at risk. <\/p>\n
\nChief Deputy Mayor Jay Carson, who sat in the audience as Raj spoke, would not say whether Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa agreed with the recommendation. <\/p>\n
Raj made his remarks after several business leaders said they would need to lay off workers or move out of the city if the mayor’s planned increases go into effect. <\/p>\n
— David Zahniser at DWP headquarters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s acting general manager Wednesday urged the utility’s board to reject the City Council’s proposed rate hike, saying it would not protect the agency’s finances. Raman Raj, who is running the DWP while General Manager S. David Freeman is on vacation, said the board should also refuse to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4566,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}