Like the name of God that must remain unspoken, Austin Beutner’s name never was uttered during the lengthy City Council debate Wednesday on why the Department of Water and Power’s Board of Commissioners unilaterally cut the utility’ss ties to the City of Los Angeles on Sept. 7.
Yet Beutner’s presence could be felt in everything that was said as DWP pension officials futilely tried to defend the decision to end a 30-year-old policy of reciprocity that allowed workers to transfer easily between utility and other city jobs.
Their pension contributions moved with them but the city’s and the DWP’s matching contributions stayed in place — a policy that caused little friction as long as the numbers of transfers were few and more or less balanced.
But as the city budget crisis has deepened in recent years, the mayor and Council have been using the bottomless pit of ratepayer money at the DWP to create jobs for city workers facing layoffs and furloughs.
The result is 1,700 workers with an average of seven years time on the city payroll found themselves fortunate to be moved to the DWP while only 270 moved from the DWP to the city payroll.
Since DWP jobs pay as much as 50 percent more than city jobs for the same work, the transfers have added $183 million to the DWP pension plan’s unfunded liability — a lot of money to most of us but a drop in the bucket compared to the billions and billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities in the three city pension systems.
The DWP’s solution was to put a gun to the city’s head: Give us the money or no more transfers.
On Sept. 7, the DWP Board terminated the reciprocity agreement and slammed the door on transfers — no small matter since revenue to the city general fund keeps declining and plans were in the works to hide even more city workers on the DWP payroll in the months ahead.
Beutner is both the DWP Board’s master and its servant so the responsibility for this action is clearly his. Yet his unspeakable name was never spoke.
As first deputy mayor, he oversees all things DWP. He decides on who sits on the commission and defines mayoral policies for the DWP.
As interim DWP general manager, he makes sure his orders are carried out by the commissioners and the staff.
It is as clear a conflict of interest and total undermining of process as there ever could be.
Yet the name Austin Beutner was unspoken as Councilwoman Jan Perry, in her continuing challenge of DWP policies, and her colleagues grilled DWP officials about what they had done before unanimously voting to veto the Board of Commissioners’ action.
Perhaps the name Beutner is not only unspoken but unspeakable. And for good reason.
To take on the one and only person responsible for this unilateral severing of ties to the city would mean all-out war between the mayor’s office and the Council.
The Council would rather pick at the edges of the DWP, overruling rate hikes, canceling contracts and advocating for a Rate Payer Advocate than to face the truth that their problem is with Beutner.
The conflict began with the power rate hike fiasco in the spring just before Beutner took over the DWP and has escalated since then as he has defended the DWP past actions even as he has reversed many of its policies and shuffled the management
This really isn’t about rates or pension policies. It’s about power and accountability — or the lack of it at City Hall.
By its failure to confront Beutner head-on, the Council is doing what it always does: Ducking the real issue.
That’s why problems never get solved and nearly everything the city does is fraught with waste and inefficiency. In a word, failure.
DAMN COWARDS, INCOMEPTENT IDIOTS AND IRRESPONSIBLE IMMATURE ADULTS. We all need to get involved and make sure none of these clowns ever get re elected or elected to higher office. And this argument Ron has posted and all the lies by DWP, rate hikes etc. is only one of the reasons
In a word — or four, kick ‘em all out.
As long as the ins are “in,” we’ll be on the outs.
We can stop the cycle of recycled politicians.
We can run for office with support and guidance from L.A.CleanSweep, which most of us can’t do, or we can do the easiest thing of all: Get off our butts and vote!
I guess if DWP can’t afford City transfered employees retirement pensions, they also can’t afford to pay Austin’s retirement, who transfered from the City Mayor’s Office to DWP. BTW, he is probably due to receive the highest pension, since his pay tops all at DWP.
Beutner`s middle name is RASPUTIN
Your article makes no sense. The Board, the DWP GM, and anyone who has the meaningless title of Deputy Mayor are all appointed by the Mayor so if you use your logic of determining accountability by going up the hierachy of power, it stops at the Mayor, not Beutner. As far as leverage, Beutner has no power to fire Commissioners on the board – only Antonio does. So Beutner can’t “make sure his orders are carried out by the commissioners and the staff.” If you ever sat in on a board meeting with Nahai and watched him yell at Patsaouras and later Wally Knox, you’d know the GM and the Board do not get along. The fact that Beutner is interim GM and will be gone soon also gives the Commissioners a political reason to ignore him.
Jeff, Beutner’s salary is $1 and since he’s interim GM, he doesn’t qualify for a pension. He also came from private industry so even if he did qualify he wouldn’t have the years of service to make his pension exceed 3 cents. You need to do your homework
October 14, 2010 9:42 AM – Readers of this blog don’t care about doing homework. Just a platform to huff and puff. Don’t take away Jeff’s only pleasure in life. Standing up and shouting some shallow and meaningless exhortation.
New harbor commission members confirmed by L.A. council
Daily Breeze
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_16328764?IADID=Search-www.dailybreeze.com-www.dailybreeze.com
Former Chief of Staff Robin Kramer to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and David Arian confirmed to Harbor Commission.
New harbor commission members confirmed by L.A. council
Daily Breeze
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_16328764?IADID=Search-www.dailybreeze.com-www.dailybreeze.com
David Freeman said that the pension liability was $572 million. Now it is $183 million.
In any case, Ratepayers will be footing the bill. But that does not seem to bother Zorro.
Bruno ate my homework
We had already established earlier that Beutner is superman if not God. How many departments does he manage, about half a dozen or more, and may I add, badly. Our Council who are in awe and servitude of monied people, will never question the man or others like Lieweke. The sole reason they are on the Council is after all to make money, certainly not for public service. The cowards, however, have no problem beating up on hapless city staff as we have seen on countless occasions.
Perhaps I don’t understand the issue here; but, here goes.
I think stopping the transfer of city workers to DWP was a good move (albeit, a failed attempt). While I am not thrilled about laying off employees, the city’s transferring to DWP was a way of circumventing the elephant in the living room–pensions and inflated packages for workers, salaries for upper management and politicians, at at a significant cost to rate/tax payers. As long as they all stay on the payroll the way it is now, the only answer (without reform) is to raise rates and reduce services in other departments. The alternative way around the elephant is to lay off. Or, change zoning so developers can continue to rape the city as a temporary fix on some jobs (provided they hire union workers-which they do). None of these are desired. That leaves us with the much needed reform (pensions, salaries, etc) that no politician seems to touch (at least to a point where it helps).
Someone out there had to say “no more musical chairs.”
With other departments lacking the resources to provide services we (the rate/tax payers) deserve, such transfers to DWP still costs us without the benefit of those disappearing services. DWP didn’t need more workers–the departments that they left did.
Don’t get me wrong, I have concerns about Beutner and I am no fan of DWP’s. I’m a tax and rate paying victim of the City’s mismanagement and DWP’s corruption. DWP has been, rightfully, called on the ridiculous hikes. However, “rightfully” will no longer be the appropriate word if these transfers continue.
At some point someone in power had to say “enough is enough.” This was probably the only good move DWP did in the last…jeez, I can’t even think of any time they did a good move in the past.
Isn’t Mayor Tony Villar the TOOTH FAIRY for the Public Unions? He cow tows to them. Hands their non-profits City grant money from the Stimulus. Negotiates labor agreements the taxpayers cannot afford. Yep. Tony is the Tooth, Fairy.
I see Wendy Greuesome is still finding stuff to audit and coming out with press conf. My problem with that is SHE was on city council for years the incompetent clowns were voting on bullshit and SHE was one of the ones who voted. Since she’s auditing everything under the sun why hasn’t SHE AUDITED CITY COUNCIL OFFICES????? The Daily News informed us about the council staffers and $$$ but Wendy refuses to audit the clowns she worked with and she knows where the bodies are buried. Perception is everything and it looks as if she deflecting from the obvious.
Wendy is a political whore.