The news about L.A. just gets worse and worse.
Gangsters are running wild in the San Fernando Valley and so are racists and anti-Semites; the political wannabes have so corrupted the electoral process, a Republican might even stand a chance; the city budget is so phony it almost certainly will have to be revised before it takes effect July 1 — which may explain why the City Council hardly bothered to discuss it.
But if you’re looking for a reason to get so mad you might actually do something, nothing quite tops Scandal Central: The Department of Water and Power, now or at any time during the last 100 years.
This is a saga of how ratepayers’ money is squandered, why rates keep soaring, why service stinks, how insiders get rich, why the DWP union gets lucrative sweetheart contracts and virtually runs the show and how Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has put the wolves in charge of the henhouse.
The latest chapter involves the notorious DWP figure Raman Raj, who was booted out of the utility a few years back after serving as onetime DWP head David Freeman’s right-hand man. He might just as easily have been described as the right-hand man of Brian D’Arcy, the head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which represents nearly all 8,000 DWP workers including most managers.
Don’t feel sorry about Raj After being dumped, he started representing a long list of companies that contract with the DWP and just like magic he’s back six years later in a top job at the DWP being paid the handsome sum of a quarter of a million dollars.
An article by David Zahniser in the Times Saturday raises serious questions about just what Raj is up to in his new role.
On Friday, the council rejected one contract for a firm Raj represented last year, mainly because they weren’t told about the connection. Another firm Raj represented is facing a possible lawsuit for its role in a 2005 outage that cut power to half the city.
DWP Commission President Nick Patsaouras says the evidence shows the company shares in the blame and he expressed dismay that its link to Raj, now chief operating officer, was not disclosed to the board.
But not to worry. You can take DWP General Manager David Nahai’s word for it that there’s a “Chinese wall” around Raj to prevent any conflict of interest or collusion. You can also take Nahai’s word for it that his plan to turn toilet water into drinking water in Valley and East L.A. is good for you, and that sharply higher water and power rates will really get spent to make your life better.
You can believe anything you want. It’s a free country. But what I believe is that we’re being ripped off and that if we don’t do something about it now, it’s going to get completely out of control in the years ahead.
The Times focused its story on the “revolving door between city government and businesses that seek lucrative public contracts.”
But a little research would have shown just how much deeper and broader the connections are to the mayor and L.A’s insider culture that flourishes in a sea of corruption protected by its control of all the power from the city to state government.
Googling would have shown what was going on just a few years back when Raj was still inside the DWP pulling strings for the IBEW. That’s something Jeffrey Anderson at the L.A. Weekly did in 2005 and 2006j. He reported how Raj and his boss David Freeman had ceded management authority to D’Arcy and the union back in the late 1990s and provided the union with $12 million without any accountability.
Knowing a good thing when they saw one, Freeman and Raj played important roles in supporting and fund-raising for Villaraigosa to help him get elected. So did David Nahai.
Their rewards were substantial.
Freeman is now the president of the Harbor Commission, which like the DWP and the airports are proprietary agencies that operate with a great deal of independence and award billions of dollars in contracts a year. They are the mother’s milk of city politics for politicians, bureaucrats and commissioners because they are awash in money from contractors and lobbyists.
Raj is back on the job at DWP and Nahai, a lawyer without any experience for the job, is in charge of the utility. Their mission in part is to mend the relationship with D’Arcy and the union which became contentious during the Hahn Administration, a healing that was no doubt aided by Villaraigosa at the start of his term as mayor when he went along with a massive pay raise for DWP workers.
You can see what a small world it is. Politicians, bureaucrats, private companies, lucrative contracts, political contributions. One hand stroking the other. Millions of dollars disappearing without public benefit. Legal and ethical problems arising and disappearing with the help near total political control.
It’s all one big happy family. They all come out winners even when they lose their jobs. Everybody’s a winner – except we the people who pay the bills and get the kind of services you’d expect after so much money is skimmed from the top.
We all know that the Assembly Districts are rigged for one party or another; but AD 40 is probably going to slip from solid Dem into “competitive” for the GOP after June.
Beyond that, never has a spoils system in LA been perpetrated as such a farce as under Villaraigosa. At least Bradley used to compartmentalize his spoils to certain departments that didn’t have to too much impact on the entire City; but Mayor Tony and his friends have used the entire City apparatus to stroke their power base, dictating to weak, over-their-heads managers who gets stroked and who doesn’t. Planning is run by someone totally beholden to Tony’s special list of donor developers, Cultural Affairs beholden to an Al Nodal/Latin culture crone again, fools like Jeffs and Boks beholden to the Mayor’s office completely, and Nahai is the biggest atrocity of all, because his appointment and non-engineering background has put public safety itself at risk.
I’ve said it before, this city is so incestuous that it has a thousand heads and many tentacles
instead of arms.
Thanks, Ron. Your version was much clearer and easier to follow than the one I read in la Times this morning.
My own island or a shack on a small lake somewhere is lookin’ better and better all the time.
Ron, thank you for another piece of great reporting and insight into the den of iniquity and corruption known as City Hall!
As a lifelong resident (65 years) of L.A., I never worried too much about the state of the city…until Villar came on scene in the 90′s…starting with the march of the janitors with Jesse Jackson and the illegals down Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. I knew we were headed for trouble way back then. His lust for power was evident then…but, never in my wildest dreams did I think he would end up in the mayor’s office. I was wrong…so wrong!
The night he was elected 3 years ago, I actually went into a depression…fearing the worst. My fears became a reality!
His self-ordained coronation was indicative of things to come. He wasted no time (one week)before rushing to Mexico City to accept the accolades from his amigo, Vicente Fox. He told El Universal newspaper that he “would work closely with Mexico in shaping his policies”! He wasn’t kidding! Upon his triumphant return to L.A., he said: “I feel like a kid in a candy store”!!! Truer words were never spoken! To the victor…belong the spoils! And he has been pillaging and plundering the candy store for the past 3 years, along with his posse of merry thieves!
We, the People, are under siege! Our very existence is being threatened! We are being taxed into oblivion! Our rights are disappearing almost daily! City Hall has morphed into King Antonio’s Castle… surrounded by a moat with sharks swimming around the periphery! There is a sign posted in front…”Taxpayers and citizens…KEEP OUT”! NO TRESPASSING! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
I have a constant visceral and palpable fear that we are becoming El Norte…a third world kleptocracy! The gangs are not only on the streets…they are in City Hall! They are running our city..into the ground! It’s happening so fast…my head is spinning!
I honestly think there is no solution short of marching into City Hall, en masse, and physically removing them ALL from their oak panelled offices! We the People MUST revolt before the damage is irreversible! We do not have one second to waste..it’s a matter of life or death! We are already on life-support!
“But if you’re looking for a reason to get so mad you might actually do something, nothing quite tops Scandal Central: The Department of Water and Power, now or at any time during the last 100 years.”
If you wish to find “a reason to get so mad” then re-read the chart of exorbitant salaries for L.A. workers. Then, re-read the city leadership’s dismissal of the extent of L.A. violent crime. Then, re-read the city leadership’s dismissal of Jamiel’s Law. Then, re-read the city leadership’s agreement with CALTRANS’ intention for toll lanes on L.A. freeways. Then, think back on all the overly dense residential development that occurred in your neighborhood. Then, remember the failed City Attorney prosecutions of celebrities and absurd payouts for “dog food” discrimination cases. Then, ponder the city slide into the gutter with “toilet to tap” water sources. Then, consider the extent of LAUSD’s incompetence and corruption in regard to their failed LAUSD payroll system, LAUSD department’s inappropriate and illegal use of credit cards, LAUSD’s decline in student safety, enrollment, and performance (LAUSD has falsely claimed increased student performance).
There are two stories in the L A Times local section which pretty much indicate which way our city has gone, how far it’s sunk to Third-World status: in both South L A which has become much more Mexican and Central American than African- American in recent years, and in Koreatown, barnyard fowl like roosters, chickens, turkeys, even pigs and goats, have become common. The person writing about South L A quotes a number of angry neighbors upset by the 24/7 noise (doesn’t even mention the potential to spread diseases which happen in areas which people live next to chickens) but the P C writer of the Koreatown article, says it’s just charming and adds a wonderful diversity. These things have long been common in areas like Boyle Heights and El Sereno, but now they’re spreading out across the city.
Sure, it makes these immigrants feel “at home” (it’s unclear if the animals in Koreatown are kept by Koreans, or Hispanics moving in there) but this is an appalling disgrace. Animal Services doesn’t have the manpower to pursue these illegal barnyards, and usually don’t even try unless they get a lot of complaints.
If Sr. Reyes and his troops have their way, they’ll be moving these barrios all over the city from the hills to valleys, barnyards and all. He keeps telling us that’s his plan, but no one on the Council or the media has taken him seriously.
Suddenly this Friday, Wendy Greuel learned of an Assembly bill that has already passed the House and is going before the Senate for approval soon, which will take away ALL say communities AND THEIR COUNCILMEMBERS have to oppose “affordable housing” projects of any size, kind or scale, and will totally override/ make irrelevant all existing community plans, zoning, etc. The bill applies ONLY to L A, to add insult.
Wendy wondered in Council why Sr. Fuentes proposed this, and why it was presented “with urgency” to get immediate approval without community hearings; the Daily News had an article yesterday which quoted Fuentes as confirming my worst fears: he wanted developers of high-density affordable housing to be able to shove their projects into ANY community ANYWHERE, over the objections of community members.
Alarcon and Cardenas wanted to stall Wendy’s motion, until after Fuentes’ reps could go to the Council to explain what they had in mind, and was condescending about whether her opinion would have any sway in Sacramento anyway, but luckily she was able to pass her motion to oppose it.
Ed Reyes was not in Council that day, but Fuentes sounds like his blood brother, maybe he had known about it all along.
This is unbelievable, all in the name of destroying what’s left of our decent neighborhoods to make way for the illegal invasion, the constituency the movers behind this bill and their supporters represent.
Amazingly, this is one atom bomb the Times hasn’t covered: I HOPE they’re researching it and getting on the ball. This is so bad, it makes the AB1818 bill people are worried about look almost sane, when anyone sane knows it’s not.
…a healing that was no doubt aided by Villaraigosa at the start of his term as mayor when he went along with a massive pay raise for DWP workers.
One might think that the IBEW’s $307,000 donation to the Mayor’s election campaign at the time, plus the union’s support at the polls, could have affected the Mayor’s acquiescence. Nah, perish the thought.