Today is a big day for Department of Water and Power GM David Nahai. He's going to firmly establish himself as a top front man for L.A.'s corrupt political culture and a lightning rod for community activists.
On his agenda are getting the DWP board to sign off of another batch of contracts for well-connected firms and announcing that two favored ladies of the political insiders -- Cindy Montanez and Kathy Irish -- are getting high-paying jobs for services rendered to the system.
Montanez will get to be Nahai's own special advisor, a richly deserved post for her willingness to walk away from her City Council campaign and let the North Valley political machine take whatever elected offices they want without having to actually hold a serious election. You can't be more deserving than that.
And Irish who has helped out so many at City Hall in so many ways will follow in her boss Tom LaBonge's footsteps at the DWP in a patronage post that couldn't be more necessary. She'll work on economic development, which surely is vital to keeping the lights on and the water flowing.
Her boss will be none another than the always controversial Raj Raman, who was given a golden handshake several years ago when he was fired by the DWP, lived as a consultant off his contacts and now is back as Nahai's chief operating officer.
Hard as it may be to believe, the DWP board is again going to award contracts to Raman's former clients today.
Is it too soon after just five months to ask whether Nahai has achieved the distinction of restoring the DWP's reputation as a bottomless pit of political slush money and the repository of L.A.'s greatest scandals?
Nice work, David.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the Naitonal Enquirer.
Nice work, David or nice piece of work, David and all his cohorts...mayor, councilmen, et al?
Holy crap! Can I say that?
Time to fight back or crawl into a hole?
On April 29, the Daily News published an op-ed of mine titled: Trash Talk is Becoming Far Too Costly."
http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_9089322?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
I received more emails in response to this op-ed than any other I've written. All were in agreement and most asked what we can do to change things?
My response was pretty much the same to all of them: Continue writing our elected officials, all of them, even if they're not you're councilman or supervisor, because they represent all of us, as well as their own districts.
Get active, join a neighborhood group and above all -- vote! Vote them all out of office and vote against them when they get termed out and try to move on to greener poltical pastures.
My vote them out, got this response from one writer: Voting them out is a great catch phrase but the way the system works, the culprits feel pretty secure in their bulletproof positions or they would conduct themselves more to our liking and the good of the city.
"Vote them out" might be a catch phrase, but you know what? I'm out of ideas. Right now burying my head in the sand looks as good as moving away.
But what I can't stop thinking about is Ron's colorful discription of Chicago politicians: Corrupt pols who at least give back to the tax payers some of what they skim off, extort and steal from them.
All we get from our city representatives is screwed without even being kissed.
We're obviously not going to become an angry crowd storming the ramparts of City Hall bearing flaming torches, which won't work and will just get us all arrested, only to have the charges dropped after we've paid out hefty sums to attorneys.
So the solution might be to elect scammers, skimmers and crooks who will at least give us back enough to keep us happy and quiet.
Excellent reporting.
You are verbalizing what many City and DWP
employees are thinking.
the city announced layoffs of approximately 740 people. The DWP has job openings of approximately 740 positions. Did city employees and council members staff take tests for those jobs? I think so, because these jobs are not opening for the public to apply. So what jobs did the city really cut?