October 2009 Archives

"They've been having a Mardi Gras (in City Hall) over the past three years." -- DWP union boss Brian D'Arcy on why IBEW members deserve a 3.25 % cash payment and raises up to 4 p% for the next few years while other city workers are losing money or getting nothing.

"Unlike us, they have the ability to strike. No. 2, when they go to management, management has the option of increasing the utility bills." -- Police union leader Paul Weber on why cops get no raises and lose overtime pay while IBEW workers get a lucrative new deal after getting  5.9 % raises the last two years.

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Your elected leaders from the mayor on down stood up and saluted the city's workers Friday as they approved a series of deals that fall $100 million short of balancing the budget four months into the fiscal year and leaves a $400 million deficit next year.

In the name of "shared sacrifice," the civilian workforce gave up raises in this year of 1.7 % deflation and agreed to temporary cuts that total a 4.4 percent lost of income.

The cops also gave up raises this year as well as agreeing to take time off instead of getting paid for overtime, a step that will cost thousands of officers a big chunk of their income.

The engineers union is being hit with the loss of a day's pay every two weeks through furloughs and the firefighters are at an impasses in their negotiations.

It's a different story at the Department of Water and Power.

D'Arcy hardly even had to raise the specter of a strike or threaten to retaliate against his bosses at every level to give him what he wants. He is no better than a hoodlum on the street putting a gun in your face and robbing you blind.

Not so, says the mayor. The lucrative agreement for D'Arcy "provides the shared sacrifice that the mayor has asked for," says his spokesman Matt Szabo.

Vital city services are being slashed and your utility bills will soon reflect what it costs to pay blackmail to D'Arcy and the DWP.

Rate hikes of 10 percent a year for the next five years already are planned but even that won't generate enough money.

The City Council will vote unanimously today to give final approval to deals with most of its work force that leave the future of the city seriously in doubt.

The pacts with the 22,000-member Coalition of City Unions and the 10,000-member Police Protective League at best put off for a year or two the day of reckoning in hopes that there will be an Obama economic miracle will get consumers spending freely again and fill the city coffers with dollars.

Leave it to Bill Bratton to put what is going on in clear perspective:

"The toughest issue will be the budget  We can survive for a couple years on lean budgets without really stalling the momentum, but if it goes on for more than two or three years, the challenge for the chief will be how to deal with morale, how to deal with aging equipment, how you deal with facilities that aren't as maintained as well as they have been."

What he's saying applies to all of city government, not just the LAPD.

City Hall's strategy, such as it is, involved deferring payments of hundreds of millions of dollars,  borrowing every cent it can and spreading out debt repayment, putting off raises to employees, robbing one fund to pay bills in another, time off in lieu of overtime, furloughs instead of pay cuts and selling off revenue-producing assets like parking structures.

It all adds up one gamble compounded by another and there's no certainty the strategy, such as it is, will even provide enough cash to get through the last eight months of this fiscal year let alone next year when the looming shortfall is twice the size of the $400 million currently facing the city.

"Yes, we are kicking that can down the road. We're saving the money now and hoping we'll have the money to pay it off in the future," Maritta Aspen, the city's senior labor relations specialist, told the Times.in an article laying out to the public for the first time terms of the deal with the police union.

The two-year contract is supposed to save $72 million next fiscal year by cutting overtime to just $15 million -- equivalent to more than 1 million hours, according to a confidential report obtained by The Times.

For the 25 percent of officers, mainly patrol and homicide detectives, who work more than 400 hours of overtime a year -- expanding their income by a quarter -- that is a big hit. Expectations are rampant in the LAPD that many trained officers will jump to other police agencies to maintain their incomes.

What is amazing is that City Hall doesn't have a clue even now what impact this deal or the one with the coalition for the early retirement of 2,400 workers to be named later will have on services to the public

They are merely buying time and hoping for an economic miracle no economist believes is going to happen.

They have lacked the political will to deal firmly with the problem that city government costs too much and delivers too little. They have soft-pedaled the truth to the public and city workers so when the bills come due, the repercussions will be severe.

For all the mayor's happy talk about green jobs in the future, LA is losing more jobs than anywhere else in the country and our 14 percent unemployment is near the top. Storefronts and offices are empty, incomes are down, house are worth a third or more less than they were a few years ago.

None of that gives any reason for hope for years to come.

Yet, City Hall keeps on expanding social welfare programs and investing public money in luxury hotels, developments and entertainments.

Leaders of other cities are made of tougher stuff. They have imposed back-to-basics austerity budgets, protected vital services and put the public interest first instead of special interests. They have taken painful and often unpopular steps and jeopardized their political careers.

Only in LA would we tolerate leaders who take the easy way out for themselves no matter what the consequences to the city as a whole.

My only advice, like the wooden plaque with clasped hands on my office well says, is this: Pray for LA.

Pray that business and labor and the civic elite stand up one of these days with the rising tide of grassroots activism and we take back our city, hold those who have failed us accountable and bring some balance to our competing interests in the name of the common good.

Pray that we don't see a breakdown in law and order as the lack of cops and the demoralization of the LAPD and the city work force sets in.

Pray there's going to be an Obama economic miracle that makes us all prosperous and happy again.

Back in the spring, LAPD Chief Bill Bratton took Chief of Detectives Charlie Beck with him on a trip halfway around the world to check out what he wants as the next generation of patrol car: The Australian-made Holden Commodore.

Beck, now a near certainty to be named Bratton's successor on Monday, has been the point man in pushing the Commodore as the replacement for the US-made Ford Crown Victoria that has been that standard police vehicle for years.

It's a curious case why the head of detectives would be in charge of steering this deal while the motor transport experts within the LAPD would be left out in the cold, not even given the chance to test the car's performance.

Yet, the Commodore was put on display Saturday at the grand opening of the LAPD's lavish but unnamed new Police Headquarters (although it was moved to the back of the building instead of being part of the ceremonies despite Bratton's wishes).

So at 11 a.m. today, the chief will formally unveil the foreign-made car of his choice - a strange choice indeed when America's car industry has collapsed even though Holden, based in Melbourne, is owned by GM.

Back in March, the Commodore with LAPD decals on it created a stir at the Australian auto show in Sydney with rampant speculation that a deal with LAPD would legitimize the car for police uses and lead to exports of as many as 40,000 vehicles a year to US law enforcement agencies.

Beck's role in the car deal, his appearances in place of the chief at budget hearings and Bratton's favoritism toward him has made it clear to nearly everyone involved that he will get the chief's job on Monday over lesser Bratton favorites Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and Valley Deputy Chief Michel Moore.

Editor's Note: The City Council, after a lengthy debate about Google vs. Microsoft email products, unanimously approved both the water and power bond plans of DWP without debate, setting the stage for further rate increases. Google email won unanimous approval to be City Hall's email.

I'm not very careful about money but I have become quite observant about what's going on at the Department of Water and Power which regards OPM (other people's money) as so much water over the aqueduct.

But I took an interest when my wife pointed out that the DWP bill that arrived last week was huge even though we cut our water use in half. The problem was on the electricity side of the bill where I was startled to see that there was a 10 percent utility tax for power. Who knew?

That means that the city is getting the utility tax plus sweeping 8 percent more (up from 5 percent in 2005 when this mayor took office) out of the power side and using it in the general fund to pay its bills -- 80 percent of which goes for salaries and benefits.

That's a pretty heavy tax on electricity -- 18 percent -- and comes with a 7 percent sweep of water revenue.

Today, the council is set to approve measure that will insure my DWP bills -- and yours -- go even higher.

The DWP is seeking approval to borrow $980 million to fund $1.17 billion in upgrades to the water system and $1.57 billion this year and next to help fund a five-year, $5.8 billion capital improvements program for the power system. Together, they will cost more than $150 million dollars for 30 years to pay off.

The power system bonds are the more controversial.

"The Department intends to pay the costs of the distribution system projects, transmission system projects, and generation system projects with internally generated funds and through the issuance of revenue bonds," according to the ordinance documents.

Projections for the five-year period show the DWP expects to increase power evenue by 50 percent from $2.9 billion this year to $4.4 billion in 2014. I can only assume that most of that increase is supposed to come by raising rates by roughly the same 50 percent which will make my DWP bill about equal to my mortgage payment.

Here's the numbers in millions of dollars:
                          2009            2010            2011            2012           2013        2014
Revenue            $ 2.900         $3.242        $3.591          $3.873        $4.143       $4,405
Net Income        $ 407            $ 405          $ 428           $ 512           $ 593        $ 744
  
The revenue increase of $1.5 billion a year will also provide a bonanza to the general fund because of the 10 percent utility tax and the 8 percent donation of power funds.

Where that money goes is an even greater concern.

Thanks to the clout of union bully boy Brian D'Arcy, DWP workers got 5.9 percent pay raises in recent years and is set to do well in the next few years with terms of a new contract being finalized and expected to take effect this week.

Although there's deflation in LA of nearly 2 percent, DWP workers are looking at 2 percent raises this year and from 2 to 4 percent raises the following three years depending on inflation plus some sort of cash payment for renegotiating the 3.25 raises due them this under the final year of the contract the mayor rewarded them with for the D'Arcy's help in getting elected.

At the same time, the DWP payroll is being padded with what I presume is hundreds of workers being transferred from other city jobs as part of the plan to fill the general fund's $400 million hole.

Additionally, tens of millions of dollars of city costs -- like $3 million for new irrigation systems in parks -- are being paid by the DWP. And political retreads like Wally Knox -- the former Assembly member, DWP commissioner and Harbor consultant --  are being put on the payroll for something like $200,000 a year to work with community groups where he has zero credibility.

But I digress from the issue of borrowing the $1.57 billion that goes before the council today.

The DWP wants to negotiate privately for the sale of those bonds at a cost of $12 million to underwriters rather than throwing it open to competition for the best rates. This allows them to channel the bonds to favored private investment banks and to provide "meaningful opportunities for local and regional Minority/Women/Small Business Enterprises" -- a noble if not cost-conscious goal. The same private sale is being used for the water bonds.

According to the documents, the $5.8 billion capital improvement program breaks down this way:

» Infrastructure and Power Reliability - $2.568 Billion
o Temporary Circuits Restoration
o Power Pole Replacement
o Cable Replacement; and
o Various Generating Station Improvements
» Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) - $0.954 Billion
o Major Transmission Systems (Pine Tree; Barren Ridge-Castaic; Green Path North;
and the Southern Transmission System Upgrade)
o Existing Resources (aqueduct; Hyperion digestion; Lopez Canyon microturbines;
solar rooftops; landfill gas projects; and the Wyoming Wind project)
o Planned Resources (Wind, Geothermal; Biomass; and Large Scale Solar projects);
and,
o Various Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) projects
» Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) - $1.084 Billion
o Generating Station Repowering projects (Haynes; Scattergood; and Castaic
modernization)
» Generation and Infrastructure Improvements - $543 Million
o Repair as well as replacement of aging and inefficient equipment

In other words, $5 billion of the nearly $6 billion goes to fixing the infrastructure that the DWP has allowed to deteriorate or become obsolete because it really has been running a jobs program offering spectacular salaries and benefits and not operating as a municipal utility providing power and water.

That's why LA has the least clean energy in the state and the most electricity from dirty coal-burning power plants.

Some projects in the renewable energy list are already online like Pine Tree windmill farm and some like Green Path North are already abandoned.

So the list of projects has no meaning at all. It simply represents a blank check for clean energy without any ability of the public to make sure it's getting what it wants at the best price.

This goes to why so many activists are demanding creation of an independent Rate Payer Advocate's office.

It's why Neighborhood Councils should be able to name one of the five DWP commissioners.

And most of all it's why the bond sale should not be approved, why no rate increases should be approved, until there is a full accounting of where DWP's billions of dollars in revenue has gone and how its rate increases and tiered-rate structures are impacting homeowners, apartment dwellers, different businesses, government agencies and various regions of the city.

The problem with the DWP is there is no transparency, no accountability and thus no credibility.

Fix those things and we can talk about how to fix the rotting infrastructure and actually pay for and get clean power.

City Attorney Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich took a beating last week in the press and at City Council for trying to solve the billboard mess created by City Hall over seven years.

It's a good thing he's a tough guy from San Pedro and takes pride in being a pig-headed  bull in a china shop. He broke a lot of dishes again last week and hopefully his repeated references to the commission of crimes will soon be backed up with the evidence to produce indictments.

In the 10 weeks he has been in office, Nuch has demonstrated he has no more respect for the exquisite sensibilities of the Council than for the power of AEG's Tim Leiweke, developers or anyone else.

Poor Ed Reyes' trust is shaken by the breakdown in unanimous acquiescence , Richard Alarcon is saddened at seeing department heads told to obey the law, Greig Smith is outraged at the prospect the law might override sweetheart deals and Jan Perry, her voice quivering with emotion, is out for revenge.

Good work, Nuch. We've waited a long time for this, a city official who doesn't give a damn about the niceties of the fine art of political corruption, whether misfeasance or malfeasance, and just wants to see an effective law in place to end the runaway proliferation of digital billboards that blight our landscape.

They call him a bully for standing up to the people's interest. They say he is abusing his authority for trying to bring control to billboards and marijuana shops, and end giveaways of public money without public benefit.

Maybe the Neighborhood Councils and homeowner groups can learn something from Nuch and stop saying thank you every time a city official talks nice to them while picking their pocket.

It's been 17 years since Rodney King, of all people, asked the question that is at the heart of what's wrong with LA: "Why can't we all just get along?"

King's his plaintive plea came at the height of the 1992 riots that followed acquittal of the officers who beat him half to death a year earlier.

This time it's not the poor who are looting stores, burning down buildings and firing guns into the night. It's the middle class that is angry, people who vent their grievances without engaging in mayhem in the streets.

They are fed up with being treated like feudal peasants, of being squeezed for every dollar they have without getting anything in return, of seeing their neighborhoods wrecked by developments that turn the law on its head, of services being cut, their futures being mortgaged and theircity lurching toward bankruptcy.

They want to know how come City Hall gave hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to AEG so the company could reap billions in profits with arenas, luxury hotels and condos and expensive restaurants 90 percent of the people can't afford.

They want to know how come homeowners' trash fees were tripled to hire more cops and most of the money was used for other purposes and now we've stopped hiring cops altogether.

They want to know how come they are being slugged with one water and power rate  increase after another and we've got water mains bursting all over town and the dirtiest power plants in California.

There's a thousand other questions people have about what's going on at City Hall so if anybody asks today why we can't just get along, the answer is: City Hall is at war with its people, engaging in one dirty back room deal and bureaucratic dirty trick after another.

It's clear nothing will change without a fight that brings City Hall back under the control of the people.
 
So give 'em Hell, Nuch! It's about time somebody stood up to the power structure and starting getting answers.

.Editor's Note: Please observe how the two-minute warning clock doesn't run when Tim Leiweke is speaking but it does when John Walsh is mocking him and the the City Council.

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Unable to get on with the job of fixing the city they have broken, the LA City Council kowtowed Friday to AEG's Tim Leiweke's bullying, repudiated the elected City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for his efforts to clean up the billboard mess they created over seven years, and then repudiated him for being a bully.

What a day it was! Only regular viewers can fully appreciate the ironies and absurdities:

* Leiweke who's made billions off of the city subsidies of Staples Center and LA Live threatening to sue LA for hundreds of millions of dollars if he had to wait a week for a judge to rule on whether giving him six more giant billboards at the new Regal Cinema complex on top of the 16 already up would make the 2-month-old billboard ban illegal;

* The Central City Assn. and Chamber of Commerce lined up with ironworkers and IBEW electricians to demand the Council live up to their commitments to make AEG even richer because nobody else is creating jobs, union and living wage, and Leiweke gives generously to politicians and their favorite charities;

* One Council member after another, even best pal Dennis Zine, taking off the kid gloves and punching Trutanich's chief deputy Bill Carter, accusing Nuch of violating their bond of trust by fighting for what's right and legal;

* After spending most of three hours crucifying Trutanich before voting unanimously -- a foregone conclusion -- to reject Carter's entreaties to let the federal court decide whether giving AEG all those billboards would make the ban unconstitutional, the council needed 10 minutes to agree to stop hiring cops, temporaily unless it becomes permanent;

* And finally for something entirely different, the agreed to throw a crumb to the populace by letting a couple of Westside farmer's markets off the hook for newly imposed fees for two more weeks because the Chief Legislative Analyst couldn't get around to sorting out the details of how the onerous new system is supposed to work before the law takes effect Monday.

There's a lot of ways to look at this but the one of my choice is Trutanich is a dangerous man and must be stopped.

At least that's the view of the City Hall power structure which is not used to anybody having power not being owned by those who have power and money.

They accused him of threatening them with prosecution if they committed crimes, of failing to tell them the total ban on new billboards might queer their endless commitments to AEG, of engaging unprotected legal advice, of contradicting theadvice of his predecessor in the City Attorney's office who went along with anything they wanted.

It was a feeding frenzy and many of the Council members were foaming at the mouth.

But no one rose to the occasion more than Leiweke himself  who strode to the public comment lectern without being called like ordinary citizens as if he owned not just the Council Chamber but the whole of City Hall and laid down the law as if God, him or herself, was speaking through him

You made commitments, you will honor those commitments, you will cost me hundreds of millions of dollars and ruin my financing based on all the corporations paying fortunes to advertise on LA Live's digital billboard, you will pay dearly.

There was no doubt who was boss in this town.

Yet, Leiweke didn't merit a mention in the LA Times online story headlined "L.A. Council ignores Trutanich warning, backs signs for theater at L.A. Live."

Instead, the focuse was on Building and Safety interim general manager Raymond Chan saying he plans to issue the permits despite Trutanich's warning in great part because he believes the ban passed in August does not cover projects already approved and substantially underway, including the AEG's theater at L.A. Live.
.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also supports issuing the permits, said Jeff Carr, the mayor's chief of staff.

The Times said that once it receives the permits, AEG will put up four giant movie posters, including at least one for the Michael Jackson documentary "This Is It,'' which premieres Tuesday, which Carter repeatedly said already were legal as onsite signs, and signs for two of L.A. Live's sponsors, Coca-Cola and Toyota. Even the Coke ad would be legal since it's sold on premises.

Christine Pelisek at the LA Weekly's blog picked up on Councilwoman Jan Perry saying had  been threatened with criminal charges by Trutanich and arguing that AEG has had exclusive developments agreements with members of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District, including AEG, since 2001.

"I am not comfortable about being represented by a guy who might get me turfed over to the District Attorney's Office. I am doing my job."

She also quoted Trutanich's interview in the Daily News where he said:

"I'm just enforcing the laws. Right now there is a ban on digital off-site billboards. Where I grew up (San Pedro), when you said 'no more,' it means 'no more.' Up here in the central city, I guess it means something else."

For the last 18 months I tracked how the city dealt with the illegal conversion of a single-family home into a three-apartment tenement and wrote it as a 16-part mystery called "Whodunit: Who's Killing My Neighborhood?"

Now, I learn from a second-hand viral email with the subject line "Accessory Dwelling Units" that it isn't a mystery at all.

The City of Los Angeles is killing my neighborhood of single-family homes -- and yours, too.

The email originated from Sylvia Lacy, senior deputy in Councilman Herb Wesson's 10th District Field Office.

There's something about Greig Smith that never ceases to amaze me and makes me worry that his chief of staff Mitch Englander will be more of the same when he succeeds him in 18 months, much as Smith was more of the same when he took over for his boss. Hal Bernson.

They never saw a development in their Northwest Valley they didn't like as long as there was some juice in it of one sort of another.

Smith represents the city's more conservative district, one with as high a ratio of home ownership as any in LA, yet when it comes to soaking the middle class for more money to feed the city treasury, he's the No. 1 tax-and-spend liberal.

To Smith, any services the city provides to homeowners are subsidies so he leads the charge to triple the trash fee on single-family homes with a promise to use the money solely to hire more cops for the LAPD, which by necessity puts most of its resources into providing services to areas with low percentages of homeowners. But police services are a legitimate expense, not a subsidy.

On Wednesday, he put his full weight behind increases of up to 2,000 percent in the fees charged homeowners and community groups to appeal planning-related actions, arguing that the city shouldn't be subsidizing such things because they are so widely abused to stop development projects.

Besides, he said, the under-funded and under-achieving Planning Department needs the money since its staff has shrunk from 400 to 290 and half its workers are being furloughed once every two weeks and it could drop below 250 when the early retirement deal is finalized.

It's as if Smith wasn't a power on the Budget Committee that slashed planning funding, wasn't a Council member who put planning officials on furloughs and engineered the early retirement deal.

Only one Council member, Richard Alarcon, stop up and pointedly showed that Smith was talking nonsense, if not a hypocrite.

As expected, the Council lost its nerve in the face of a public outrcy and backed down Wednesday on increasing the appeals fees -- for now.

But you can be sure these people will be back in due course with a new plan to raise the fees and find other ways to squeeze money out of the middle class. They are desperate for cash and too weak to confront the simple truth that City Hall costs too much and delivers too little.
 

I thought I'd seen just about everything from this City Council but my eyes were opened by Tuesday's debate over a plan to raise fees for homeowners and neighborhood and community groups to appeal Planning and Building Safety decisions by 200 to 2,000 percent.

This is a City Council that isn't worth the $180,000 a year they are paid. They aren't even worth half that as community activists are proposing to put on the ballot next year. They aren't worth 10 cents.

What was before the council was an urgent ordinance to fix "typos" and backed off somewhat from the astronomical appeals fees approved unanimously Aug. 12. It also was supposed to fix the open meeting law violation that was used to sneak it through -- something that was sure to lead to a lawsuit that could nullify the ordinance months or years from now.

What it didn't fix was the blatant constitutional violations represented by onerous fees intended to stifle the due process rights of ordinary citizens to challenge city decisions that ruin their neighborhoods and destroy the quality of their lives.

When Richard Alarcon is the people's hero, nailing the illegal anti-democratic nature of this measure, and when Tom LaBonge is the voice of reason, saying he doesn't think anyone is "comfortable" with it so put it for another day -- you know this was as ill-informed and muddled a debate as you've ever seen. 

For 90 minutes, the Council circled around what this was about in a confused and pointless discussion that left them even more dumbfounded than usual, if that's possible.

In the end, they agreed, unanimously, to revisit the issue Wednesday and seemed to agree to keep citizen appeal fees to the $75 to $300 level they have been instead of up to the $6,188 level that was proposed.

But that's only a temporary decision. The intent is to come back with a new fee schedule that moves toward "full cost recovery" -- City Hall's policy of making the shrinking middle class and homeowners pay the bulk of taxes and pay again for everything they get in services from the city.

There ought to be a law, maybe there is if the nation's civil rights laws apply to ordinary law-abiding people. 

A dozen or so community activists spoke out against the measure at the outset of the debate, people from the wealthy hillside communities to the Eastside, from Neighborhood Councils and environmental justice groups.

When people from all classes and backgrounds come together like this, as you're seeing so often these days, you know the winds of change are blowing and the discontent with City Hall's failure is growing.

Not everybody sees that, of course. Some are oblivious.

Ed Reyes, the Council's point man for developers, and Bernard Parks, the Council's point man on fiscal irresponsibility, for instance, argued the proposal dates back three years, that a consultant was paid $100,000 to come up with the fee schedule and public hearings have been held since April.

So everyone should know about this measure. Only everyone didn't know about it, not the Council or the public.

That's because the language on agendas hid the appeals fee issue from the public and Neighborhood Councils and other community groups were never actively brought into the process.

The best the Planning Department could do was say that information was posted on its website and emails sent out to NCs. Developers, in contrast, were brought into discussions about the increased fees they face and how they would get better and faster service for their money while the community would for the most part be silenced by the high appeals fees.

You can be sure developers, their lobbyists, lawyers, consultants and PR advisers were given all the access they wanted during the three years, five months and 68 days that have gone into the process of killing democracy in LA.

It is a sign of the times that the Council has once again back down in the face of public opposition. They are afraid of the people and the growing cohesion of activists that is rapidly building into a full-scale revolt.

They have good reason to be afraid. Their neglect and incompetence has allowed the budget deficit to threaten the city's future, billboards and marijuana stores to flourish without regulation, the DWP to gouge the public to put into the pockets of a union that is out of control.

The list of their failures goes on and on and so does their list of attacks on the rights of ordinary people to be treated fairly and to get a government that serves them.

There are only so many grievances the public will bear before they awaken and do something about what's wrong, even in LA.

For years, the policies of City Hall have chased away middle class jobs and residents to the suburbs and neighboring states.

Home ownership has fallen from more than 60 percent to barely 40 percent. The living wage  has replaced the good wage. Major banks have run away along with movie and TV production.

The San Fernando Valley saw a 50 percent rise in poverty rates in the '90s and the numbers will be worse across the city in the next census.

Crime is down but gangs still control whole neighborhoods.

Subsidized downtown development and soaring public sector payrolls have sucked the wealth of the city while traffic congestion and air quality remain the nation's worst, the schools remain among the state's worst and the infrastructure -- water and power systems, streets and sidewalks -- are decaying from lack of investment.

It's not a pretty picture but it's going to get worse and fast.

On Tuesday, the City Council intends -- having bungled its first attempt two months ago -- to take another stab at stripping ordinary citizens of their constitutional right to petition for redress of grievances, specifically planning decisions.

Under the ordinance adopted unanimously, of course, on Aug. 12, fees to appeal planning decisions and Building and Safety actions were supposed to skyrocket from nominal amounts to thousands of dollars except for developers of major projects. They would get a reduction on many of the appeals they file.

What was wrong with the ordinance, apart from many of the fees -- apart from various typos and fees being supposedly being incorrectly listed -- is that the public wasn't given proper notice that the fee schedule affected appeals. Most of the public discussion and the agenda notice only referred to application fees which were raised to guarantee developers speedy processing.

Attorney Robert Silverstein objected strongly to this Brown Act violation and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's office, which conceding nothing, agreed the measure should be fixed and reconsidered.

So it comes back before the Council as Item 23 on Tuesday, with changes like "full cost recovery" is now replaced with only charging applicants and abutting property owners 20 percent of the cost and other "aggrieved parties" 50 percent.

"The draft ordinance was initiated in response to a complaint that the appeal fees were
not properly described on the City Council agenda... it is our belief that appeal fees
should be reasonable to allow for broad community input," explained Planning Director Gail Goldberg.

How does raising appeal fees from $1,000 to $3,000 or from $400 to more than $5,000 when a nearby property owner objects to a development "allow for broad community input?"

In fact, it squelches community input -- and that argues the Green LA Coalition is "contrary to the City's commitment to environmental justice," according to a letter to the Council sent by school board member Nury Martinez and environmentalist Bill Gallegos.

"These excessive fees will unfairly exclude low-income residents and non-profit organizations from the planning and land use decision-making process...With the approval of the 1999 City Charter, the people of Los Angeles codified their right to appeal City land use decisions. 

"The appeal process serves as an important point of resident involvement in planning and land use decision-making, and has a long history of preserving the quality of life in Los Angeles and protecting the health and safety of its residents.  The appeal fee hikes deny low-income residents and non-profits their fundamental rights to appeal."

Arguing the fees violate the state and US constitutions, Attorney Richard MacNaughton formally protested to the Council (Planning-MacNaughton.doc)as the lawyer representing  various residents in Hollywood as well as community based organizations such a Hollywoodians Encouraging Logical Planning (H.E.L.P.), Friends of the Hollywood Grove HPOZ, Friends of The Oaks ICO among others.

MacNaughton says the ordinance infringes on the right of people to protest and is unconstitionally vague, noting there is "no rational" reason a property owner two doors away from a development faces triple the fees as one next door.

"When citizens object to the City's actions, they are exercising their constitutional right to petition the government," he writes. "The City has the burden to prove that any and all limitations on the right to petition the City serve a compelling 'state interest."'This tiered fee system has no legitimate governmental purpose...

"The proposed ordinance is unconstitutional in that it cannot survive the strict scrutiny test due to its infringement on the people's right to petition the government and its vagueness. To pass a measure that is unconstitutional on its face invites litigation and wastes the City's resources.

"This unconstitutional proposal should be defeated."

You can write your Council member at the email addresses below to try to stop this or you can join the lawsuit afterward if it passes:

councilmember.reyes@lacity.org, councilmember.zine@lacity.org, councilmember.labonge@lacity.org, councilmember.koretz@lacity.org, councilmember.cardenas@lacity.org, councilmember.alarcon@lacity.org, councilmember.parks@lacity.org, councilmember.perry@lacity.org, councilmember.wesson@lacity.org, councilmember.smith@lacity.org, councilmember.garcetti@lacity.org, councilmember.huizar@lacity.org, councilmember.hahn@lacity.org, councilmember.rosendahl@lacity.org

FACT: It is City Hall's official policy to transfer civilian employees to the DWP to avoid layoffs.

FACT: The Mayor and City Council have agreed to halt police hiring -- temporarily they say -- as soon as Tuesday.

FACT: The DWP is pushing forward for a rate increase on Tuesday with other rate hikes planned.

FACT: The DWP is in the final stages of cutting a deal with union boss Brian D'Arcy to raise wages for its 8,500 by as much as 4 percent over the inflation rate.

FACT: The cops are mad as hell about losing a big chunk of their take home pay when the DWP is getting fatter.

FACT: The actions of City Hall have stopped making sense.

It is a sign of the desperation of our city's leaders that everything they do only makes things worse.

We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the reputation of the LAPD and the morale of the officers and now we're going to undo what we have achieved.

Public safety is the public's No.1 priority but it's the DWP cash cow that is City Hall's.

Why else would City Hall be giving fat raises to the nation's highest pay utility workers and no raises to the cops?

Why would City Hall be hiring more DWP office workers and reducing the number of cops on the streets?

Why would City Hall guarantee DWP workers 10 percent in overtime and require cops to take time off in lieu overtime and unused sick pay, time off from their jobs protecting us?

You know the answers as well as anyone: Because they can and they live in fear that D'Arcy will break them if they get in his way.

It is nothing but political blackmail. And it's the public who pays.

The DWP Board of Commissioners will meet Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. to consider some important matters such as once again raising water rates and yet again giving union boss Brian D'Arcy's IBEW 8,000-plus members another sweetheart deal.

But you won't find out anything about those things by going to LADWP.com   (.com not .org as if it is a corporation, not a publicly-owned utility) and clicking on current agenda but it doesn't work.

Some things like the ripping off of the public for the benefit of the few like D'Arcy are best kept private. And that includes socking ratepayers to pay for handsome paydays for the nation's best paid utility workers even when the inflation rate is MINUS 1.7 percent and other city workers are deferring raises and taking time off without pay.

But secrets are hard to keep when you got a city of 4 million people enraged about the way things are going, particularly when it comes to paying more for less just to make some people richer. Here's the two items you can't find at LADWP.com

(23) Recommended by Chief Operating Officer and Chief Finanacial Officer
 (Approved by Acting General Manager)
Resolution recommending approval of Water Rates Ordinance
No.. 170435 to modify General Provision T Adjustment Factor
Limitations to increase the cap from $.50 per billing unit (one billing
union equals 748 gallons) to $1.00 per billing unit beginning April 1, 2010.
Council Approval by ordinance is required.
(24) c. Conference with Labor Negotiators.
Pursuant to California Government Code Section 54957.6, the Board
will meet in closed session with its labor negotiators (the Department's
Interim General Manager) with the following labor negotiations with the
following union representatives:
Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
(Local 18, IBEW)

Local 18, of course, is the union D'Arcy runs with the same sense of self-service he runs the DWP and chooses most city elected officials from the mayor and city controller on down.

His clout is so great that he deserves the lion's share of credit for finally ridding us of David Nahai as DWP general manager and bringing back his own favorite, David Freeman, as interim general manager -- the man who is doing the negotiating on the latest deal to pad the paychecks of the 95 percent of the workforce that are members of his union.

The agenda for Tuesday's board meeting also included initially measures to spike the pension of Chief Operating Officer Raman Raj -- another of D'Arcy's close allies -- and to funnel more than $1 million to a Sacramento lobbying firm that, like so many in the political arena, is trying to help out former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez in his time of need. 

I can't swear those two items made it from the tentative agenda to the final one since my sources are less concerned about a million here or there than the tens of millions represented by the rate hike and payoff to D'Arcy.

This is a watershed moment, so to speak, for the city.

If IBEW workers get raises when other city workers, including cops and firefighters, are giving up money, the labor unrest that will follow will bankrupt the city.

If water rates are increased even as power rates are sure to soar, tens of thousand of people soon will be paying more to the DWP than to their landlords or mortgage holders. And that will put them in the same bankrupt position as the city.

Costly in time and money as it is, it's my suggestion that we show up at the DWP shortly after noon on Tuesday and let them know the days of ripping off the public and letting the vital infrastructure of our water and power systems rot are over.

City Hall has used the DWP as a cash cow for too long. It has declared its intention to pack our utility with other city workers who's jobs are dispensable in these tough economic times, transfers that will actually mean they will get pay raises since the DWP pays 20 to 40 percent more for the same jobs than other city departments.

You can sit on your duff or feign ignorance but you will have nobody to blame but yourselves for letting them get away with these grand thefts.

When Bill Bratton abruptly resigned in early August as LA police chief, questions were raised about a possible conflict of interest over his relationship with federal monitor Michael Cherkasky and whether it influenced the decision to end the LAPD's federal court consent decree.

Bratton announced he was joining Altegrity Security Consulting, a huge global security firm that had recently appointed Cherkasky as CEO, a disclosure that came just three weeks after the 9-year-old consent decree was lifted on the recommendation of Cherkasky.

The LA Weekly, KPCC and the LA Times all questioned the timing and whether Bratton and Cherkasky talked about the job prior to the June 15 end of the monitor's contract and whether there was a conflict of interest.

"The manner and timing of Bratton's departure is almost breathtakingly irresponsible," wrote Tim Rutten in the Times.

"It also raises troubling questions about his relationship with Michael Cherkasky, the court-appointed monitor who evaluated the LAPD's compliance with the federal consent decree, and about Cherkasky's role in convincing the federal judge to terminate oversight of the department ... In other words, the monitor gave the court advice that helped cement Bratton's reputation as the country's leading police chief, then just weeks later the two enter into a lucrative business arrangement built on that very reputation."

There were denials all around and the matter dropped without anyone taking notice that just three weeks after Bratton's announcement another top police official -- Savannah Chief Michael Berkow -- with long-time ties to Bratton and Cherkasky announced he too was resigning to join Altegrity after discussions he said started in April.

That would push Cherkasky's recruiting efforts back two months before his contract as federal monitor of the LAPD ended and raises new questions about when his talks with Bratton actually began.

"Under L.A. ethics laws, officials cannot directly or indirectly negotiate future employment with anyone who has something pending before that official's agency," Jill Stewart wrote in the LA Weekly on mid-August.

The ties between Bratton, Berkow and Cherkasky run deep and revolve around the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a foundation now headed by Miami Police Chief John Timoney.

PERF wields enormous influence in law enforcement circles and provides a revolving door for top cops like Bratton to move in and out of highly-paid consulting jobs as they hop between roles in police agencies.

Poor David Freeman, here he is rich enough to enjoy a luxurious retirement at the ripe old age of 83, and renowned enough to bask in the glow of his achievements.

Yet he's taken on the dirtiest job in town as general manager of  the Department of Water and Power at a time when the nation's largest municipal utility is under siege from all directions.

And he's off to a terrible start that calls into question his ability to do the job even on the six-month interim basis he says he is committed to serve.

He stood up the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council for a scheduled appearance one night, perhaps because he couldn't catch a ride since he doesn't drive. Then, he got stood down by the City Council over proposed water rate increases and pressure for an independent Ratepayer Advocate's Office.

It is only going to get worse.

In his first appearance before the City Council as interim DWP General Manager, David Freeman rebuffed demands for an independent Ratepayer Advocate\e and said the utility needs to raise water rates because the public is exceeding conservation goals.

Councilwoman Jan Perrry blocked the current proposal for higher water rates and put forward a long list of questions about rate structures and signaled her intent to force the utility to be transparent in the future.

Being a hell of a guy, Ron installed cable in my dog house.  But given the fact Time Warner is our provider, sometimes we have glitches.

This past weekend all I could get was "Mad Men," "Californication" and reruns of the Los Angeles City Council. I had to read about the Dodgers in The Dog Trainer.

Bruno, being of a certain age in dog years, what you people call Boomers, and having been "fixed"long ago, looks at the antics of hotshot ad exec Don Draper on "Mad Men" and hedonistic writer Hank Moody on "Californication" with a certain degree of envy.

From what I see, most of the city leaders are no different than this mutt. They not only envy Draper and Moody, they do their best to ape them.

Don and Hank have their way with just about any woman they want. The people who run LA, who thank God don't wear hats like Don, never met a taxpayer they didn't want to screw.

"Mad Men" and "Californication" are just TV shows and I can't see the producers gelding Don's or Hank's behavior to please the more moralistic among us. How amusing would it be if they were as faithful to their mistresses and Bruno is to his masters?

The same cannot be said of our city leaders.

Bruno, being the LA Watchdog, keeps a close eye on these matters and thinks it would be most amusing to see what would happen if our city leaders were "fixed," too.

Hopefully, they would be led around on leashed and sit and heel and walk the walk whenever the taxpayers commanded.

I'm sure the ratings on Channel 35 would go off the charts if that happened. Who wouldn't be delighted to see the mayor and council members obeying the people instead of screwing them?

Woof! Woof!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's the mayor's email blast on police hiring (mayorletter.rtf)

We are now well into the second quarter of the city's financial year and spending still exceeds revenue by more than $400 million.

That's nearly 10 percent of the annual operating budget but with less than nine months left in the financial year, it's creeping closer to 15 percent.

In other words, the money troubles that started with the housing bubble bursting more than two years ago and became a crisis more than a year ago with the collapse of Wall Street is now on track to become a catastrophe as the hole in the city budget gets deeper by the day, at least $1 million deeper by Controller Wendy Greuel's estimate.

Yet, the nation's highest paid municipal officials, lavished with endless perks and servile staff, flip and flop, waffle and debate, conspire in back rooms or palaces of fine dining and drinking, and continue to do nothing.

Today will be no different.

Item No. 7 on the City Council agenda is supposed to deal with the tricky issue of how to reduce LAPD spending by $129 million this year. That was supposed to take place over 12 months so it's now the equivalent of $160 million on an annualized basis and it will reach the $200 million mark by January.

Actually, it will be more than $200 million because the mayor and Council plan to put off making a hard decision on LAPD funding, as they have all the other hard decisions on city spending, until mid-January when they return from their lavish vacations to faraway places.

On Monday, the mayor, Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilman Dennis Zine, backed by LAPD brass wanting to be the next chief, announced they had reached an agreement that will put off further discussion until next year.

David Zahniser in the LA Times wrote they "have forged an agreement to keep the number of police officers from shrinking in the middle of a budget crisis...'There are no fights right now" between the city's elected officials, said Garcetti."

Rick Orlov in the Daily News was less charitable, reporting: "Villaraigosa had previously denounced the idea of a freeze at the Los Angeles Police Department, adamant that the size of the force be maintained at 10,000 officers. In an abrupt reversal, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday appeared to back a plan to freeze hiring at the Police Academy at least throughout the rest of this year."

Whatever your interpretation, the facts are the same and in line with the separate proposals of the Council Budget Committee and Public Safety Committee, both of which support a temporary halt in hiring new officers and a meeting "in mid-January 2010 to assess future LAPD hiring and recruitment."
.
At that time, they expect to look at their options with regard to the nearly 1,200 LAPD officers who are missing in action:
*. 65 sworn personnel currently working in civilian administrative positions
* 16 sworn personnel assigned to the Los Angeles International Airport
*.518 permanent light duty sworn personnel
* 634 temporary light duty sworn personnel

By then, Bill Bratton will be long gone to a place he loves far more than this collection of neighborhoods without a sense of being a city, a city called New York where leaders face up to their problems, where there's 30,000 cops, not less than 10,000.

Instead of tough-guy Bratton, the only political figure in LA that more people love than hate, Villaraigosa and the Council will have anointed someone more flexible about meeting their needs.

If this were a movie, it would definitely be played for laughs with Will Farrell, Jack Black, George Lopez and other comics in the cast.

But the consequences of City Hall's paralysis are real and serious.

The Coalition of City Unions is putting on a hard-sell campaign to win support for the Early Retirement Incentive Program, barely mentioning that come spring when the city runs out of money they will face layoffs, furloughs and other drastic measures that nullify most of the promises made to them.

A lot of city workers are already angered that the first E-RIPoff was withdrawn so how do you think they will react when they find out, this one is full of holes and the promises to pay them off handsomely within five years are hollow?

This is like watching a plane spiraling out of control with the pilot and crew merrily acting like nothing is wrong as the ground looms larger.

All I can figure is they think a miracle is about to happen, n economic miracle of historic proportions that will replenish the city treasury with tax revenue and save them -- and us.

And that's the point: This isn't about them, it's about us, our city, our lives, our jobs, our neighborhoods, our parks and libraries, our safety.

Read the item below on today's Council agenda and see how little they are offering with their hair-splitting motions and realize, I hope, that they are incapable of solving this crisis. Nothing will be done until it's too late unless we rise up as one and force them to come to terms with reality.

 

UPDATE: Tweets from the mayor:
12:27pm: Just stood with Councilman Zine to oppose cuts in our police force. There are fiscally responsible ways to maintain current force levels.
12:29pm: Today's record lows in crime would have been unthinkable15 years ago. Violent crime is down 20 %. Homicides are at a 40-year low.
12:32pm: The reason for such good stats? Crime is at a record low in Los Angeles becauseour police force is at a record high: http://bit.ly/47auNW
1:14pm: To see what cutting police would really mean for you, take a look at how police hiring has affected your part of the city: http://bit.ly/3YOzul.


As he packs up and prepares to leave town a hero -- his name to be emblazoned on the new Police Headquarters building -- Chief Bill Bratton only needed 12 seconds to drive the stake of truth into the heart of what's wrong with City Hall (bratton1.mp3).

Bratton was being polite in this interview last week with KPCC's Frank Stoltze by saying LA is a city that "almost" doesn't work. Or perhaps he qualified his statement only because the LAPD which he has led for the last seven years is City Hall's only success story. Crime is down sharply, officer morale is up and the department's reputation restored.

Not bad at a time when the city teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, when water mains are bursting, services being cut and the public growing increasingly restless with a government that is as corrupt as it is incompetent.

Bratton was brought to town by the lethargic Jimmy Hahn but it's the current mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who has draped himself in the chief's laurels.

Saturday's engagement with some 400 activists at the Congress of Neighborhood Empowerment was no exception.

Villaraigosa did his slide presentation showing how crime is down all over the city and insisted he won't back down on hiring cops just because he's got a $400 million hole in his budget and it's getting worse by a million dollars a day.

What the mayor didn't say -- what he hasn't said in all these months of a worsening financial crisis -- is how to pay for the cops, or for that matter,  how to pay any of the city's bills.

Under the circumstances, you can hardly blame him for dashing out of the City Council Chamber without taking any questions.

The task of figuring out how to pay for the cops and still reduce spending is left to the Council, paralyzed by panic as it is. It's hard to see them screwing up the courage Tuesday to halt police hiring since it would make them responsible if crime goes up in the months ahead -- and taking responsibility is not the strong card of anyone at City Hall.

The mayor is escalating the stakes at 11 a.m. this morning by bringing ex-motorcycle cop Dennis Zine into his fold at a news conference in Canoga Park at the Topanga Community Police Station. He's bringing along other top brass, including Jim McDonnell, Earl Paysinger, Sharon Papa, Charlie Beck, Michael Moore and members of Topanga Community Police Advisory Board Other Community and several local civic leaders.

The email blast from one of those leaders, Neighborhood Empowerment Commissioner Al Abrams, is headlined LET ME KNOW IF YOU CAN JOIN WITH ME AND MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA AND COUNCILMAN ZINE TO VOICE SUPPORT TO MAINTAIN CURRENT NUMBER OF LOS ANGELES POLICE OFFICERS.

Dear Fellow NC Board Member,
The Mayor has asked me to invite you to join us tomorrow morning at a press
conference in Canoga Park to show support to maintain the current number of
LAPD officers.  See the details below.
Please let me know by e-mail if you can make it.  The Mayor would like a
list of names of community leaders who will be attending and be a part of
the press conference.
Many thanks,
Al

The use of commissioners appointed by the mayor to promote his political agenda touches on another point Bratton made last week: "Unfortunately, I think it's an unnecessary layer of government ...(an) extra layer of government and oversight."

It's not supposed to be that way. The commission system was supposed to provide independent oversight but the process has been so corrupted over time that the appointees are little more the ciphers for the politicians and pn those rare occasions when they do show independence like Jane Usher and Nick Patsaouras, they get the boot.

The new city budget year began July 1 with a $500 million hole in it and the promise that payroll cuts, parking structure sales and other measures would close the gap with temporary borrowing of a sum equal to the deficit.

A hundred days have passed since then and the city still has a $500 million budget gap, and it's increasing by $1 million a day because spending exceeds revenue.

The early retirement deal with half the city work force will do little to solve the problem before the fiscal year ends June 30 because the costs come close to equal the savings which only will start to trickle in about Christmas.

I'm tired of invoking the fiddling and eating cake or naked emperor images but it's hard to avoid them.

Call it arrogance, indifference or panic but the fact is City Hall is paralyzed, incapable of doing anything about anything.

Have you heard even one intelligible word from the mayor about the budget crisis that serious and informed people believe can only be solved through bankruptcy?

Far be it from me to suggest the nation's highest paid municipal officials are wasting our time and money but they did spend almost the entire session Tuesday debating how many dogs a dog walker should walk at a dog park.

Oops, there's goes another million bucks down the drain without any effort to stop the budget bleeding.

And Wednesday's abbreviated session was entirely devoted to the umpteenth plan to subsidize Hollywood to stop runaway production as if studio executives will change their ways anymore than all the other business people who find LA less than desirable.

Oops, there goes another million bucks plus millions more in a headline grabbing stunt that will have little or no impact.

Today, the Council will undoubtedly find other distractions. I can't tell you what they are since the City Hall website is down again, probably because the check bounced.

Bankruptcy is serious business.

A lot of people think it's the only way out since it could lead to labor contracts being rewritten to affordable levels and elimination of wasteful programs and costly political gimmicks.

But if city workers are so spoiled that they are angry over paying 1 percent more for pensions and ready to strike over deferring raises for a year or two, what do you think will happen when they face actual reductions in pay of 10 percent or more?

What do you think will happen when grossly overpaid DWP workers turn off the lights and shut off the water or the cops take a few days off to show who's boss?

Personally, I like chaotic situations for their creative possibilities but outright anarchy with murder and mayhem on the streets is not up my alley, common as they have been in LA's history.

For my money, there's only one solution and it should have been taken a year ago. It's the same solution that will inevitably have to be taken because sooner or later the bills will have to be paid for all the city's borrowing and deferrals.

The mayor -- whose silence on the budget is the ultimate in irresponsible leadership -- and the rest of the city's elected leadership need to sit down with the unions and lay out a plan for salary and benefit cuts, elimination of non-basic services and a temporary two-year tax hike that truly brings city spending in line with revenue.

The real crime for which our officials should be thrown out of office isn't their incompetence, which is well documented. It's their cowardice, which is unforgivable.

The LA Chamber of Commerce has put together an interesting program on Oct. 22 for its Access LA City Hall series, "Get Down to Business." Click here for the full program.

UPDATE: LA County Supervisor Don Knabe, the board chairman,  reports agreement was reached Wednesday with all labor unions on a two-year, no-change extension of their current contracts. The extensions include no cost-of-living increases or salary increases. Nearly represent nearly 90-percent of the approximately 101,000 County employees. "Our union partners stepped up and recognized the shared sacrifice we are all in right now," said Knabe. "Los Angeles County is in difficult financial times, between diminishing tax revenue from the local economy and round after round of funding hits from the State of California. We are all in this together as we weather this economic storm."

A lot is wrong with the way LA County is run, health care to the poor and foster children services come to mind, but fiscal irresponsibility is not its failing.

In the downturn in the 1990s, workers went a couple years without raises to keep their jobs and services to the public flowing as well as possible.

Now, after intense negotiations, 55,000 workers -- nurses, park employees,  social service workers, librarians and others who work directly with the public represented by SEIU Local 721 -- have agreed to terms with the county on a new two-year contract.

No raises.No layoffs. No sweetened early retirements. No furloughs. No nonsense.

"We took a totally new approach and we are proud of it because it worked," Linda Dent, an intermediate clerk in the Treasurer-Tax Collector's office and vice president of the SEIU 721 executive board, said in the announcement. "We were honest about the state of the economy and the demand for services, so we found efficiencies in the system and we protected services. I believe LA will come out of these tough times even stronger than before."

Imagine that: Living within your means makes a difference.

With the cost of living down 1.7 percent, county workers can live without a raise. With revenues down, the county can survive without drastic service cuts or draconian measures. They aren't giving raises like DWP workers are getting, they aren't deferring raises for another day like the city, they aren't slashing services like the city.

Times are tough but the county isn't hurtling to the precipice of bankruptcy as the city is.

The difference is leadership and the political will to make fiscally responsible decisions.

Ask yourself if County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky would be silent about the budget crisis if he were mayor of LA, if he would simply roll over to union demands if they were unaffordable and lead to catastrophe?

The county has a lot of problems and the supervisors are hardly saints. But there is a world of difference between the way the county is run and the way the city is being run into the ground.

David Nahai resigned abruptly Friday as CEO of the DWP, as he liked to call himself.

He didn't give the usual two weeks notice, which was understandable since he was fired by the unanimous agreement of the people who worked for him, the people who supervised him and the people who pay the bills, namely you and me, the ratepayers.

Yet, there he was Saturday afternoon about 4:30 tooling around Bel Air in his city car, a black Nissan Altima Hybrid, getting coffee at Starbuck's on Beverly Glen Circle. You can see his profile in the passenger side mirror of this snapshot taken while his wife was buying coffee. It wouldn't surprise me if Nahai walked off with his DWP Blackberry and a box of DWP pens and a case of DWP bottled water.

The one thing for sure is he's walking away from a $326,000 job with a golden handshake worth nearly twice the median income of the people patronizingly called his customers.

Just who gave him a $6,300-a-week contract -- his salary when he was employed -- is far from clear.

Lee Alpert, the president of the DWP Commission, says he gave Nahai the deal, dismissing criticism in an interview with David Zahniser of the TImes this way: "There's nothing nefarious about it, nothing complex about it. This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that, David's resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months."

The trouble with that is Alpert doesn't have the authority to award contracts.

Raman Raj, DWP's chief operating officer who is acting general manager, does have the authority but says he had nothing to do with it

So did Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa give the order when he bit the bullet and dumped Nahai after reading the scathing report about his pal by a management consultant hired to look at the dysfunction at high levels of the nation's largest municipal utility?

No way. The mayor is no more responsible for his general managers than he is for the budget catastrophe. "These are all decisions that will be made by the DWP commission, and the mayor has full confidence in the commission and its president," Villaraigosa spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said in a written statement.

It's surprising Hamilton's computer didn't crash as she wrote such a bald-faced lie when the mayor has robbed the commission system of any semblance of independence or credibility.

The persistent Zahniser captures the sense of that in the concluding paragraphs of his article:

"Alpert gave differing answers, however, on how the consulting contract was developed. At one point, he said he personally asked Nahai to be a consultant. At another, he said he could not say who came up with the idea, calling such information ;'irrelevant.'
"I concurred with the decision that was made," he (Alpert) said. "I was part of it. I concurred with it. It's something I think the commission would think was a good idea."

So we don't really know who and by what authority Nahai will be paid $81,000 for his "institutional memory" over the next three months.

To his credit, Alpert put the deal on today's DWP agenda even though it's not a commission matter when he could have hid it. It will be interesting to see who actually will sign the contract for the DWP and what it actually says.

OK I'm not obtuse as to see what happened. Nahai didn't take the news that he was out kindly whether the mayor actually screwed up the courage to talk to him or left the dirty work  to someone else.

So he made a lot of threats and demands and got this deal so he will keep his mouth shut and not queer things for the mayor by going public with all the dirty back room deals that he has been part of.

It's just business and the beauty of the public sector is that the money they are giving away is just play dough.

Anyway, the payoff for failure to Nahai is a pittance compared to the millions of dollars the DWP commission will soon be giving away to its 8,500 workers.

They are about to get a 2 percent cost-of-;Living raise although the cost of living in LA actually fell 1.7 percent in the last year. Throw in the likelihood of a lump sum payment as well and guarantees of 2 to 4 percent raises for the next four years and you're talking big money.

Then, there's the cost of fixing all the leaky water pipes and exploding electrical boxes and the billions for solar energy and your DWP bills will soon be doubling and tripling.

Since the 40 percent of the city households living in single-family homes bear the brunt of DWP rate hikes, bimonthly bills of $1,000 and even $2,000.will become common. Maybe, the DWP can use its excellent credit rating to provide second mortgages so its customers can pay them.

There's nothing funny about this City Hall comedy.

What? You don't think dogs like rock 'n roll?

As most of you know by know, Antonio offered DWP GM David Nahai a blindfold and cigarette last week and pointed him toward the firing squad.

But before anyone starts playing taps, Ron revealed Sunday that rather than shooting Nahai and putting him a body bag, the executioners - also known as the mayoral-appointed DWP Commission - plan to hand him a bag of money as a kiss goodbye.

That's the way it works in The City of Angels.

"No hard feelings, David.  You screwed up Measure B, raised rates, stubbornly stuck to a plan to lace the desert with high-voltage wires, over-watered your own massive lawn, failed to control the PR crisis of daily water main breaks and - most importantly -- pissed off DWP union boss Brian D'Arcy, but we wish you well and would love you to be a consultant."

Hey, he's owed the money.  Remember who appointed him in the first place. Although he wore great ties, he neither had the experience nor the temperament to run the DWP, without doubt the most screwed up, problem-plagued department in the city. 

But instead of finding new blood to run the DWP, Antonio has chosen some of the oldest blood among his inner circle - former DWP GM David Freeman, who's been killing time as a deputy mayor for environmental affairs waiting for the opening he's coveted since Dick Riordan canned him.

"Meet the new boss; same as the old boss ..."

Freeman, 83, who began working in the power industry in 1949 as an engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority and has held a series of high-level utility jobs in the subsequent decades, ran the DWP from 1997-2001.

It wasn't pretty. Riordan hates the guy. (http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/02/local/me-10703).

In case anybody forgets, Freeman, who has a love affair with the local media, flaunted LA's abundance of power -- when other parts of the state were dark. He hired Fleishman-Hillard for $5 million a year so he could work with his pal, former Deputy Mayor Steve Sugerman -- then had the firm funnel nearly half the money to one of his chief deputies who wasted it on an unsuccessful green power program, which eventually drew Laura Chick's ire.

And don't think for a second these department heads are independent.  The mayor's office, and D'Arcy call the shots, when it comes to the DWP.  (Just ask Nahai.) Remember, Freeman was the author - the author! - of Measure B and campaigned for the off-the-wall, union-driven plan alongside Nahai and D'Arcy.

The cowboy hat and corn pone shtick can be charming, but Freeman's not the guy they want. They want somebody who can fool the people all the time, not make a fool of himself most of the time.

Editor's Note: I wrote two versions of my views on the special election in CD2, the first for Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter, the second for Wayne Adelstein's North Valley Community News.

Snatching Victory from Defeat
(Republished from Norvth Valley Reporter)

The Community vs. The Carpetbaggers -- not much of a contest, not given the state of politics in L.A.

Paul Krekorian and Chris Essel were a dual entry, handed half a million dollars to buy the Council District 2 special election by the mayor and the union-developercontractor political machine which he heads.

Public apathy, ignorance and defeatism, too many community candidates without money, lack of organization, all contributed to an election that made a mockery of democracy and dealt a blow to the growing movement to take back City Hall from special interests. 

The election was only Round One of a much longer battle. Round Two comes in the runoff election in December -- a ten-week campaign that gives community activists the opportunity to achieve some of what they failed to do in the last three months. 

If community and business leaders from Sunland-Tujunga to Sherman Oaks come together now, they can sit down with Krekorian and Essel and demand hard commitments to the issues and values they care about. Put them on the record and decide which of the two will best represent the sprawling East San Fernando Valley district and its 270,000 residents.

Unified support will determine whether Krekorian or Essel wins and at the least give the community leverage when the new Council member takes office. It also will provide a core organization that can serve as a watchdog on the new member, providing daily updates on their votes, their actions, their services to the community, transparency and their responsiveness.
Letter to Unions 111309.pdf

 I don't know about you but this is the last straw for me.

The guy who oversaw the highest water and power rate hikes in DWP history, who talked big about environmental concerns but kowtowed to his political and union bosses, who tried to bilk the public out of billions for a solar energy boondoggle, who dismissed the breakdowns in the power and water supply as routine, who alienated his underlings as much as the public he saw as nothing but cash cows -- that man who was paid well over $300,000 a year is going to get even more money from a consultant's contract?

Give me a break.

They fired David Nahai and left him the dignity of saying he resigned. Fair enough. But he was forced out by the mayor and no one more so than the back-stabbing David Freeman who not long ago declared Nahai the "white knight" who the people could trust to do the right thing.

If the people of this city don't rise up and demand a blue-ribbon commission that includes citizen activists who have worked long and hard to end the corruption in the DWP, then they deserve to see their rates double and triple and insiders make fortunes by profiteering.

If the people of this city don't rise up and demand a seat on the DWP commission for someone of their own choosing and an independent Ratepayer Advocate to protect their interests, they deserve what's coming.

Billions of ratepayer dollars have gone into the pockets of contractors, consultants and the  overpaid DWP workers while the water and power infrastructure has been allowed to rot, while LA has become the least green big city in California.

And now David Freeman whose only achievements as General Manager of the overstaffed DWP a decade ago was to squander hundreds of millions of dollars in a sweetened early retirement deal for a few thousand workers and create a series of scandals before he was shown the door -- he's come back to run the DWP again?

And Nahai's going to get a golden handshake and a face-saving appointment as an adviser to Bill Clinton's global climate foundation?

That's the same Bill Cliinton who has his clutches deep into Antonio Vlllaraigosa in LA and the overly ambitious Gavin Newsom in San Francisco. With those two in his pocket, Clinton might as well run for Governor or the Senate and treat us to a real political theater.

Who's kidding who?

All I can tell you is the mayor and City Council have failed you. City Hall has failed you. Moral corruption has so deeply infected City Hall, it defies all logic not to believe it has turned criminal.

I'm just an old guy with a blog and a dream of creating a news and information platform that will help create a more democratic and just society.

I'm probably wrong about a lot of things. But I'm not wrong about this: David Nahai doesn't deserve a DWP consulting contract, not even one for a dollar a year.

About 60 community activists, most of them members of Neighborhood Councils, met Saturday at LA City College in the first NC Action Summit -- an alternative to next week's Congress of Neighborhood Councils sponsored by the city and dominated by the mayor and other officials' agendas.

The theme of Saturday's counter event was "Less Talk, More Action."

A proposed initiative campaign to slash the salaries of the nation's highest paid elected city officials' salaries in half was the first of six items on the Action Summit's agenda. It was supported on a 32-20 vote.

Famed LA journalist Betty Pleasant, "Soulvine" columnist for the Wave Newspapers, moderated the discussion with Doug Epperhart, who is leading the "half-off solution" campaign, and activist Bill Christopher who has misgivings about whether it's the right way to go. Pleasant was interviewed later by Greg Nelson and myself.

Ever since I started this blogging adventure 18 months ago, the DWP and its General Manager David Nahai have been the target of many of my most provocative rants and raves. They are even responsible for first introducing you to my dog Bruno as LA's Watchdog.

One of my first posts called the DWP "LA's Scandal Central." Our public utility that sees itself as independent corporation accountable to no one has lived up to that billing under Nahai's leadership.

More than ever, the DWP is City Hall's cash cow, grossly over-paying its own workers, a haven for others in city government whose jobs are being eliminated, a fountain of taxpayer money for contractors, consultants and insiders profiteering at the public expense.

David Nahai didn't start this, he inherited it and became the public face of it. He was the whipping boy, and in the end, the fall guy for failure -- something made easy because his arrogance is even greater than his intelligence.

He lost the confidence of the public, his top managers the DWP commission and, fatally, IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy.

Here's some of the best headlines and articles I've posted on the subject:

L.A.'s Scandal Central: The Department of Water and Power

.

DWP's latest sucker punch to the public's pockets

Uncritically observed: David Nahai, the man who walks on water -- and power

Bye, Bye Nahai: How Antonio's attempt to politicize the DWP went wrong

City Hall backs down on another dirty DWP deal

Does it cost too much for DWP to hire a ratepayers' advocate?

The DWP Loves You and Cares for You ... That's Why It Gives Away Your Money in Sweetheart Contracts and Backroom Deals

Why We Need City Hall Watchdogs...

Measure B: Lies, Subterfuges and Obfuscations

Measure B, the Aftermath: Nahai's Super Ego and the Role of Fall Guy

Thus Spake Brian D'Arcy: Nahai's Kiss of Death

Real Solar Energy Efforts and the DWP's Dirty Little Deal with the IBEW

Measure B By Any Other Name Is Still a Blank Check for Defrauding the Public

Bye Bye Nahai -- A Symptom of DWP's Power Outage

Threads of Corruption that Tie Together Like a Noose

UPDATE: David Nahai resigns as DWP general manager. Find out more at OurLA.org

Councilman Bernard Parks recently described DWP contract negotiations with the IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy in these terms:

Bully boy D'Arcy hands the DWP officials a list of dozens of demands and gives them five minutes to give him everything he wants or he'll take the 95 percent of the utility's work force -- including most of the managers -- out on strike and throw the city into chaos.

With the city now in the worse financial crisis in its history, D'Arcy's union is due to get a 3.25 percent pay hike this month after successive 5.9 percent increases the last two years and he's playing hardball.

Here's a report to members (it will take some effort to read but it's worth it) on how he's demanded a lump sum payment for this year and a four-year contract extension with a guarantee of 2 percent and a maximum of 4 percent if inflation returns..

That's what D'Arcy calls "shared sacrifice" for IBEW workers who are paid 20 to 40 percent more than city workers or other utility workers who do the same job. I don't know the exact state of the talks but I have every reason to believe this is pretty much what the deal will turn out to be.

It's why your water and power rates are soaring and will double and triple in the coming years, why LA has the least renewable energy of any big city in California, why water mains are bursting all over town and the rest of the DWP infrastructure is old and deterioriating and dangerous.

Frankly, we are all working for the IBEW, only we don't get the same pay and benefits -- just the bill.

UPDATE: City Hall's deal with the Coalition of Unions has changed once again and the terms have become available thanks to email blast from Roy Stone of the City Librarians Guild. You can read all about it at OurLA.org.

As we start the second quarter of the city's new financial year with a hole in the budget large enough to hold all the water wasted from bursting pipes, DWP's overpaid workers are getting another pay raise and the City Council is torn between putting trained police officers on furlough or breaking the 10,000 cops promise.

Of course, the mayor and council already betrayed their promise that the tripled trash collection fee for homeowners would go to hire more cops -- most of it went into the salaries of civilian city workers -- so it should come as no surprise that we will soon have fewer cops on the street and more crime in our neighborhoods.

Watching the Council operate on Channel 35 is an educational experience, one that takes great patience and a strong stomach. Is it any wonder that 9 out of 10 voters don't bother to cast ballots in most city elections?

Apart from the lesson the homeless taught us the other day about how to get the Council to listen (packed the Chamber with supporters and stage a riot), there were several highly instructional moments.

The actuary for the LACERS civilian pension carefully explaining in his fourth revision that even the latest Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP) didn't pencil out without the taxpayers footing part of the bill was among the more informative.

Then, there was each Council member asking the same question about whether the LAPD was still hiring new recruits for the Police Academy.

Yes, they each were told, the monthly hiring letters went out last Friday. No, they can't be rescinded because the recruits were giving notice from their current jobs.

Even better was the moment LAPD officials explained that the Council had created an impossible dilemma for the department.

On the one hand, LAPD was ordered to hire as many officers this year as retire or quit so the "magic" 10,000 cops number was maintained. On the other hand, the LAPD was ordered to cut $129 million from its payroll.

That's when the moment of enlightenment came.

Police union leader Peter Repovich told the Council they are nuts, or at least their policies are. Even the homeless complaining about LAPD's genocide against them on Skid Row cheered.

Hiring hundreds of new recruits makes absolutely no sense, he said, when you are about to take 1,500 experienced officers off duty every day with furloughs.

What is going on at City Hall is crazy.

Two years after the flood of bad economic news began, one year after it became a tsunami, the nation's highest paid city officials have still no coherent policy for how to deal with a crisis they created with a long series of sweetheart union contracts that are unaffordable when revenue has fallen sharply.

Understand that the Council (and mayor) already have gutted the city's ability to enforce Building and Safety codes and plan for developments that actually preserve the quality of our lives, jeopardized the public safety by putting firefighters on furlough and gone to war against the Engineers and Architects Union, thereby robbing many departments of the skills of their most highly-trained workers.

Now it's the cops turn.

Yet, spending on social welfare programs not only goes but is expanding. And they expect the cops and firefighters, working without contracts, to take less than they are giving to the IBEW workers at the DWP.

Every single measure that has been taken does nothing to solve the real problem: City government costs too much and delivers too little.

The mayor had promised to use a scalpel -- not a meat cleaver -- to solve the budget crisis but that was just another broken promise like so many others.

Nearly every measure being taken only temporarily reduces costs, deferring until next year or the year after the moment of truth when the bills come due and there's no money left in the treasury to pay them.

There is only one answer that preserves city services: Cuts in pay and benefits. But not a single city official has mustered the couraage to even bring the subject up.

In fact, the mayor has yet to say an intelligible word about the budget crisis in all these months, yet to provide the leadership a sane and reasonable person might expect from the top official of such a great city. Instead, he goes around town praising himself for his modest successes in a variety of social service programs.

It's all crazy, I tell you, but what would you expect when you let the inmates of the asylum run the place.