Efforts to strike back at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — at the center of a budget battle between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council — were not limited to City Hall on Wednesday.
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<\/br>Hours after council members said they wanted more control over the city utility, one former Villaraigosa appointee filed a ratepayer lawsuit, saying the DWP has an obligation to follow through on its promise to transfer $73.5 million to the city\u2019s general fund.
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<\/br>Former DWP commission President Nick Patsaouras said in his lawsuit that the utility already has an 8% surplus, enough to provide the money. \u201cAs a taxpayer, I want to compel them, compel the DWP, to honor their commitment,\u201d said Patsaouras, who stepped down from the commission in October 2008.
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<\/br>Meanwhile, school board member Tamar Galatzan said she would introduce a motion next week calling for the DWP to create a new rate classification for the Los Angeles Unified School District, one that would prevent it from paying the same rate as a large business.
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<\/br>Galatzan, who won her seat in 2007 with $2.2 million in support from the mayor, warned that Villaraigosa\u2019s 12-month rate hike plan opposed by the council would cause the school district \u2013 which she described as the DWP\u2019s largest customer \u2013 to pay an extra $11.7 million a year. That would lead to a loss of hundreds of jobs at a time when the DWP is failing to make a case for more rate hikes, she said.
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<\/br>\u201cI\u2019m wondering, like many people, how they can simultaneously need a rate increase and … transfer excess money into the general fund,\u201d\u00a0 she said.
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<\/br>— David Zahniser at Los Angeles City Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Efforts to strike back at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — at the center of a budget battle between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council — were not limited to City Hall on Wednesday.Hours after council members said they wanted more control over the city utility, one former Villaraigosa appointee filed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4678,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519981","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\/4678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}