Every story needs a villain, and DWP General Manager David Nahai has achieved that status in the political story of L.A. in record time.
At least that’s what many members of neighborhood councils, community activists, DWP managers and media mavens who have encountered Nahai’s arrogance and glib glossing over of the truth are saying.
But that’s only the half full glass of water view of the millionaire real estate lawyer turned environmentalist.
Every story also needs a hero and David Nahai is definitely that if you read the hagiographic puff piece in L.A. magazine‘s July issue by Kevin Roderick, the expert in all things media in L.A., defender of the L.A. Times’ hack pack and public relations consultant.
Normally, I’d hold my nose and look the other way but given my passion for exposing the waste, inefficiency and corruption at the City Hall’s most powerful and insulated institution and Roderick’s holding himself as up the ultimate arbiter of all things journalistic, I cannot let this article headlined “Troubled Waters” go unnoticed.
Let’s start with the fact that the closest there is to a critical voice comes from a group out in Mojave worried about power lines. The rest is quotes that glorify and turns of phrase that befit a man who walks on water.
To Owens Valley victims of DWP’s pillage, Nahai is “the one Angeleno the locals trust” as “they are laughing easily with a natty figure who
is sporting a black turtleneck and an English boarding school accent
and hovering at the mayor’s shoulder.”
Nahai’s sermons are “persuasive stuff,” he’s “uncommonly engaged” in the details, he’s called “a Middle Eastern James Bond,” he scored “one of his early victories” by misusing (my word) the accidental death of a firefighter to justify rate hikes while he “deftly handled an unexpected media storm” and “stared down the critics…For Nahai, turning the agency into one of the environmental good guys is the fun part.”
And what fun it is. He has “broken ground” and “taken steps” to implement what he boasts is his
“bold and visionary plan” .for “making history” and “changing the direction of the city.”
Nahai is “enjoying his new life as a public figure…become a regular
on TV and radio, willing to play the part of the city’s environmental
conscience…All this makes him, at 55, the most watchable new player on
L.A.’s political scene.”
I
could go on with the uncritically observed telling of how Nahai’s
political flip-flops and opportunism and his ability to raise lots of
money from the wealthy Iranian Jewish committee brought him to
prominence but why belabor the obvious.
Better to mention
Roderick’s invoking the names of Jackson Browne and such literary icons
as Gore Vidal, Sartre and Camus but, amazingly, the name of the man who
actually runs the DWP, Brian D’Arcy, never appears.
D’Arcy is
the head of the DWP union, the IBEW, and 95 percent of the utility’s
workers take their orders from him, including most of the managers — a
source of political cash and campaign workers that he uses ruthlessly
to further his members’ interests and buy obedience from those who he
helps get elected.
That’s why DWP salaries are so outlandish and
rise 5 or 6 percent a year and why little happens at the utility
without his approval.
That is especially true of the
appointment of Nahai — a man without any experience as a manager or
expertise in the field — to the $310,000 a year post. He’s pals with
the boss, D’Arcy.
The closest Roderick comes to engaging D’Arcy
is this sentence: “When Nahai arrived, the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers
Local 18 sent out 30,000 DVDs that portrayed the agency as being in
crisis.”
In fact, it was a public relations effort by D’Arcy
to set the stage and the agenda for Nahai to hire 1,000 new IBEW members, ending efforts to hire contractors who work
cheaper and faster.
And public relations is what it’s all about,
especially when it comes to selling toilet-to-tap water for home use –
not just irrigation — in the San Fernando Valley .
“Betting on enlightenment, however, is seldom rewarded,” Roderick concludes. “Just in case,
Nahai has set aside $1.5 million for a public relations campaign…He opposes putting the recycling
question to a public vote, preferring to let elected officials–many of
whom are allies of the mayor–decide. He may be a purist, but he’s no
fool.”
No
fool indeed. Nahai is smart, smart enough to hire pals of City Council
members on his payroll at six-figure salaries and to make recycled
water that has been repeatedly treated with chemicals sound like God’s
own rainwater.
Of course, even a man like Roderick’s Nahai can’t
do everything all at once. Parts of the city were still without water
and power during the recent heat wave and the actual rebuilding of the
utility’s infrastructure will take a long time and depend on just how
much higher he can drive the rates.
But know your place and don’t go around raising hard questions like that. They get in the way of a good story.
It’s high time that Roderick got a little of his own judgmental medicine.
Ron –
Your blog is my new favorite newspaper.
Keep up the great work.
You’re providing information we members of the mob of angry taxpayers need to know, and cannot find elsewhere.
Walter Moore
Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles
http://WalterMooreForMayor.com
I’m too angry to post an intelligent comment and anything I say will sound like the ravings of a loon.
Every single day it’s one, two or five affronts-to-us stories in the two dailies.
Today it was the Nahai story in the DN about his over-watering just like his pal Villaraigosa was caught doing a few months back.
And since he was quoted as saying he requested the water/power audit, he probably over-watered deliberately so he could make himself look good by saying, ‘oh what a bad boy am I; I’ll set an example and do gooder.’
Bull!
In the LAT it’s the story about gang members rioting at a City pool, tossing the manager in the pool, roughing up other employees and terrifying the kids.
The police were delayed in arriving, because they were busy answering a ‘man with a gun’ call at another City-operated pool.
Well, gang members my be evil, but no one ever said they were stupid. They’ve got the entire political establishment kissing their asses, allowing them to call the shots [good pun], and even putting them and their moms on City-run anti-gang payrolls.
We have what amounts to a catastrophe of earthquake proportions on our hands, which merits calling out the National Guard…except they’re all getting killed in Iraq.
Subject: America finally wins against the
unelected but politically effective phonies, we are finally to get a border fence to protect the vast American population from opinionated groups of minorities who dream up “reasons” to gain power over the rest of us. Yes, they are “phonies” because they don’t care about tiny salamanders, they want POWER to destroy the only place on earth where the people rule, not anarchists and despots.
Salamanders? What about Jamiel Shaw? What about the 100′s of people who have been murdered because of gang wars? Yes, the border must be closed to cocaine, slavery and all other abuses. There are legal ways to enter if a person is peaceful and legitimate.
My congratulations to the people of Zimbabwe who are seeking democracy for running their so-called leader out of town along with his entourage. That is the way Mexico, Argentina, etc., etc., must go. The people need to do it not depend on
America. 225 or so years ago, the people here fought for their own freedoms. It is a “do-it-yourself” project.
My personal thanks to President Bush who heard us and to the Supreme Court who recognized how dangerous it is to give the anarchists their way!!!!!
Don’t know what I am talking abouit? Today’s announcement comes from Dave Montgomery of McClatchey Newspapers and appears on page A10 of today’s Daily News.
I do not get the LATIMES anymore – denied them entry to my home way back in the seventies when they photographed and printed how to free-base cocaine at the top of the page, six inches high, in View. It wasn’t long after that that one of Hollywood’s stars ran up Nordhoff, set on fire by the process. I am sure many of you will remember that incident.
We still have to act on our own behalf, don’t we? We got rid of Gray Davis and Arnold will be termed out as Governor. Today, we have El Rey de Los Angeles and his crowd! Let us again unite and rid ourselves of royalty right here. One way is to vote in November, locally and nationally. Another way is to attend the July 14th Rally on the steps of the City Hall against the illegal fees including $36.32 a month for trash collection, effective July 1, 2008.
If you can possibly be there, do not stay home.
This is MY UNELECTED OPINION!!! We all have a right to our opinions. This is America.
Theodora Howell
Ron, great post. I’m fonder of Kevin than it sounds like you are, but this is a very one-sided piece on a very powerful man in Los Angeles.
The city deserves the complete story.
LA Department of Water and Power Play in the Desert Continues to pit urban against rural, and two environmental groups against each other. Will Nahai succeed? stay tuned… http://desertvalleystar.com/cdc-yucca-valley-04-19-08.html
Nahai is a joke and should be dethroned. Los Angeles boasts the dirtiest power company in America. How green is that?
Ron, I like this post. KR definitely plays favorites so I’m glad you called him out. But what do we do about the DWP? What can any of us do?
Great post!