Results tagged “DWP” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Four months into into his reign as the ninth DWP General Manager in 10 years, Austin Beutner -- despite working part-time and on a temporary basis -- this week quietly carried out a major reorganization of the utility in part to focus on his goal of using its resources to create jobs and drive economic development.

He has dramatically restructured financial operations and made the key appointment of Kelli Bernard as director of economic development (DWP-changes.pdf) (DWP-financechanges.pdf).

She is a graduate of then Mayor Richard Riordan's Business Team, a former vice president of Genesis LA now led by DWP Commission President Lee Alpert and most recently worked in a non-staff position as Council President Eric Garcetti's planning and economic development director.

Whether those changes are for the common good likely will not be debated or examined by the City Council which is busy trying to protect itself from the wrath of the public enraged by endless rate hikes, failed and contradictory practices and long-time mismanagement of their most valuable and vital asset.

What Beutner has done nothing about are the villains who bear so much responsiblity for what is wrong at the DWP.

On Day One of his term at DWP, Beutner made peace with union bully Brian D'Arcy whose use abusive tactics and threats of strikes that amount to nothing but blackmail have won him a long series of spectacularly lucrative contracts.

"People have made labor the issue and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency," Beutner said back in April, making it clear that peace at any price would be his policy no matter what the "people" think.

The price of that peace was to leave Raman Raj, D'Aarcy's lackey, in place running the day-to-day operations as chief operating officer, the No.2 position that is more important than ever because most of Beutner's time is spent on his duties as First Deputy Mayor and jobs czar.

D'Arcy and Raj -- what a team to rely on!

Nothing good has ever come, can ever come, with those two in power. Reforms being pushed by the Council like the Rate Payer Advocate, changing the composition of the Board of Commissioners and requiring a timely and public budget are meaningless as long as the people in charge have utterly no respect for the public or the public interest.

D'Arcy's outrageous excesses and destructive behavior were well documented in a "for your eyes only" report to then Mayor James Hahn by DWP Assistant General Manager Mahmud Chaudhry which eventually leaked to the LA Weekly in 2005.

Chaudhry exposed how D"Arcy controls the management, threatens their careers as well as those of city politicians and warns he will turn off the city's water and power if he doesn't get what he wants.

"The DWP has become a fox-run henhouse of epic proportion," Chaudhry wriote. "The union now runs the department. They blur the line between . . . bargaining and criminal extortion.

"By choosing union peace at any price, DWP leadership finds itself paying an exorbitant price. Anxious to avoid conflict, management finally relinquished the duty -- and with it the power -- to exert control. With no one minding the store, it may be a matter of time before the union's extreme bargaining advantage begins to impact the annual [revenue] transfer to the city."

A few months after his report surfaced, Mayor and Antonio Villaraigosa and the Council approved the richest contract in city history with raises of up to 6 percent a year to IBEW Local 18 workers whose salaries already were 30 to 40 percent higher than other city workers in the same jobs or those of private utility workers.

It wasn't long before Villaraigosa brought Raj back to the DWP and foisted him as chief operating officer on David Nahai when he took over as General Manager. He did this in the full knowledge that Raj's previous short stint at the DWP under David Freeman ended disastrously with lawsuits and his dismissal in 2001.

To say the least, there is nothing in Raj's career that suggests he is at all qualified for such a high position -- except for his slavish loyalty to D'Arcy.

Let's start with Raj's personal financial management.

On Feb. 24, 1992, Raj and his wife Mrinalini, then living in Laguna Niguel, filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in the Central District of California, Santa Ana. 

That was done just six days after a judgment of $2,275.31 was entered against him for breach of contract in the North Pomona Courthouse in a case filed by Wells Fargo Bank.

Five years later, on Feb. 20, 1997, Raj encountered another financial problem. The IRS filed a tax lien against him for $16,503. It took him until 2000 when he was working for the DWP to be released from the lien.

Then, there's his rather undistinguished career as a business executive, bouncing from job to job without making the kind of noteworthy successes that ought to be necessary to be the man running the DWP.

He worked as a mid-level executive at Kaiser Permanente, Flying Tigers and the Southland Corp. before a stint as managing director at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority where he was anything but a success. His main task involved labor negotiations and he reportedly was forced to resign after running afoul of upper management.

He did get to connect with labor leaders and ultra-liberals like Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg who helped him land a job at the DWP in 1999 as chief administration officer overseeing labor relations and human resources where he cemented his relationship with D'Arcy and eventually became a supporter of Villaraigosa's in his first mayoral campaign in 2001.

In his job, Raj quickly became embroiled in one of the darkest chapters in DWP history, a long pattern of discriminatory treatment of minorities and women.

The LA Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson wrote a devastating story in 2005 tracing the long sordid history of discrimination and millions of dollars in secret settlements with employees.

Some of the incidents involved misconduct by Raj and led to a 2003 lawsuit

LA Superior Court Case Number BC 290779: Brenda Barr, et al v. City of Los Angeles and DWP and Raman Raj, et al. 

The heart of the allegation was that the working environment at DWP was permeated with discriminatory animus" against women and blacks, specifically that "the individual Defendants schemed to and did create a system which resulted in promotions and pay upgrades to men, while preventing women from advancing."

In 2008 when Raj was brought as COO, far higher than any position he had ever held before, the LA Times reported the Barr cass was settled for $3.3 million 

The article cited a report by DWP's outside consultant,the Texas law firm of Kemp Smith, that concluded Raj moved the utility's anti-discrimination office from a satellite building -- valued for providing a level of anonymity -- into DWP headquarters to discourage complaints, since anyone who entered would have to do so in public view.

The report said Raj manipulated severance packages to remove managers who disagreed with him. And it warned that Raj had given "too much influence in management of the organization" to D'Arcy and shielded union employees from disciplinary action

Recommending he should be let go for the good of the agency, it said Raj could not be trusted to "act in the department's interests when they may conflict with his own agenda."

 

Today, managerial insiders still don't trust Raj, regarding him as devious and duplicitous.

In part, the shadow hanging over Raj derives from what he did for a living between stints at the DWP.

He formed a consultant company, Resources Roundtable, and used his access to  DWP officials to help win contracts for energy-related companies like Itron, Smartsynch and Enspiria that had won nearly $60 million in DWP contracts without the Board of Commissioners knowing of the connection to Raj.

Every decision, every contract that Raj is involved in sparks suspicion about insider dealing, about the inordinate influence of D'Arcy yet Beutner relies on him to run the DWP and talks admiringly of the knowledge and intelligence of the union boss.

How can anyone wonder why it has proven impossible for years to hire a capable and experienced general manager, why rates keep going up and up, why the water and power systems are deteriorating, why the DWP has lost all credibility with its customers, why it is the center of endless controversy.

What is impossible to understand is how Austin Beutner and the mayor can possibly think the DWP is going to be the engine of development and job creation that restores the city's economy.

Structural reforms and political spin are useless unless there is a massive shakeup in the management of the DWP and the city's elected officials find the courage to put D'Arcy in his place.

ACTION ALERT: The first public hearing on creating an independent Rate Payer Advocate and other reforms of the DWP will be held at 6 p.m. tonight at LAPD's Devonshire Youth Center, Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street, in Northridge.

Fortress DWP -- after decades of mismanagement, discrimination and secrecy -- has come under siege from the public and even the City Council.

 

The battle for control of the DWP started as a small insurrection by Neighborhood Council activists who won a Memorandum of Understanding with then General Manager Ron Deaton that gave them for the first time a measure of access to what had become a private company accountable to no one.

 

Flagrant racial and gender discrimination had led to millions of dollars of secret settlements with employees even as their union, the IBEW, was getting sweetheart contracts that drove up wages far beyond industry standards.

 

Tens of millions of dollars were squandered on green energy promotions without actually building any. Billions in private contracts were awarded in back room deals that squandered fortunes even as rates soared and the water and power systems deteriorated from lack of investment.The DWP even quietly sued the city's residents so it could treat their money like play dough.

 

Then, last spring, the small insurrection that had produced folk heroes like NC activist Soledad Garcia and DWP Commissioner Nick Patsaouras turned into an all-out war when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed for yet another rate increase, this one for as much as 28 percent.

 

Fearful as always on the impact on their own political futures, the City Council led by Jan Perry balked at approving the phony Energy Cost Adjustment Factor rate hike.

 

In what has become known as the "ECAF Fiasco," the DWP under the discredited green energy apostle David Freeman and his second-in-command thug Raman Raj resorted to extortion of $73 million promised to the city general fund.

 

Out of that skirmish came Council proposals to reform the DWP by creating an independent office of the Rate Payer Advocate, to change how the Board is appointed and to open up the budget process.

 

Under interim General Manager Austin Beutner, who doubles as the mayor's economic development czar, the DWP is trying to water down all these proposals and resist major reforms.

 

Tonight, the stage is set for the next phase in this escalating war with Perry, Eric Garcetti and Greig Smith holding the first in a series of public meetings on their Charter reform proposals to rein in the DWP.

 

It's being held at 6 p.m. at the LAPD Devonshire Youth Center, Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street in Northridge.

 

Beutner, a part-time GM who has defended the DWP's extortion attempt and left day-to-day operations in the hands of Raj, questions the need for major reforms as he did Tuesday in a KPCC interview with Patt Morrison.

He has set up his own team of advisers who met privately last week to talk about more modest changes, such as putting the Rate Payer Advocate in the City Administrative Office under the mayor's control.

 

Who is on the team says a lot more about Beutner's commitment to reform than his talk of transparency and strategic plans: Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate Projects, Natural Resources Defense Council; Chuck Ray, Vice-Chair, Neighborhood Councils - LADWP Memorandum of Understanding Oversight Committee; Carol E. Schatz, President & Chief Executive Officer, Central City Association of Los Angeles, and Stuart Waldman, President, Valley Industry & Commerce Association (VICA.)

 

This is not a broad-based group and even the DWP's own press release on its first meeting shows just how manipulated it is when promises already have been made to the business community of reduced rates even as residents face higher rates.

 

"We will carefully consider the scope of this office and how it can best fit into the current oversight structure that already exists within the City of Los Angeles," VICA's Waldman is quoted as saying.

In an email report on the panel's meeting, the NC's Ray said: "It was suggested that the name of the entity be "Customer Advocate." It was agreed that the panel would interview and select the Customer Advocate and his key staff."

For her part, Perry has started to assert Council jurisdiction over the opaque contracting practices of the DWP that channel deals to favored firms under ambiguous rules that allow officials to do whatever they want without regard to value, efficiency or the public interest.

 

This is no small matter.

 

It is the time first that the Council has shown any backbone in fighting for the public.

 

It is only because the public is standing up for itself as outrage has built over the endless DWP scandals from workers drinking and going to strip clubs to bursting water mains, from soaring rates that disappear into DWP paychecks, from corrupt contracting to gross mismanagement.

 

This is the fight of every resident and business of the city and will only be won if public pressure is great enough.

 

Fear of the wrath of the people is the only thing City Hall understands.

Nearly 40 years ago in a historic turning point, Tom Bradley was elected mayor of Los Angeles.

 

The narrow-minded bigots who had wielded so much power for so long were toppled and a new liberal leadership took over with values and a vision that was far different on many levels.

 

Instead of a city sprawling far beyond its boundaries into the deserts to the north and east and along the coast and satellite centers like Century City and Warner Center, they rebuilt downtown with towering skyscrapers that were heavily subsidized public money and took the city's wealth and poured it in a subway and train system to nowhere but downtown.

 

Then, they did the same thing for Hollywood as if the rest of the city didn't exist. And it might just as well have not existed for the billions of dollars in Community Redevelopment Agency subsidies was money drained from property tax revenues that could have been used to hire cops, pave streets, revive dying neighborhoods.

 

LA had become less a city than a scheme to enrich developers by lining the thoroughfares of suburbia in the San Fernando Valley with cheap apartment buildings even as the defense industry collapsed and banks and major corporations fled the city and with them middle-class jobs and families.

 

The schools became overwhelmed with poor and needy students. Gangs took over whole neighborhoods. The tax base eroded even as the cost of city government soared out of control because of sweetheart contracts with public employee unions that along with developers supplied the cash to elect nearly every official in City Hall.

 

None of this was an accident.

 

The state of Los Angeles today with high unemployment and soaring poverty rates is the direct consequence of the vision that has guided - misguided actually - the city for decades.

 

What has been lost along the way is respect for the city's four million residents and why they are here.

 

It was the perfect climate and the unlimited freedom and the lifestyle that brought people from all over the world to LA, that turned the Valley into the largest enclave of middle class life in history, a place where barbers and mechanics could own homes and parlay their growing equity into real wealth and security.

 

It was the ultimate fulfillment of the American dream, a paradise for the common man and woman who yearned for nothing more than a place in the sun to call home.

 

The vision that has driven public policy for so long ignored what it was that attracted ambitious people and good businesses to LA. Instead of capitalizing on the virtues of Southern California, our leaders have tried to turn the city into New York West and damaged the quality of life in the neighborhoods almost beyond repair and turned LA into a dense and aging city with a 100-year backlog for infrastructure repairs.

 

The principal instruments for carrying out this destruction are the DWP and the CRA and nothing will change into their huge resources are channeled into rejuvenating the neighborhoods and restoring the quality of life for the citizenry.

 

It will take a new vision for an LA that works for its people and businesses and that will only happen when the professional politicians and government functionaries who hold public office are replaced by people who have achieved something in their lives and preserved their honesty, integrity and independence.

 

Staying the course, accelerating the densification of the city, will not turn LA around. A revolution in our thinking and in our political culture is needed and it's needed now because what is going on at City Hall is only making matters worse.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The City Council's first action Tuesday was to put off for at least a week the two items approving the CRA deal with Pacifica Ventures.

With the complicity of our elected, appointed and hired officials, the jackals are feasting on the carcass of Los Angeles as if there were no tomorrow.

At the rate they are going, there will be no tomorrow.

This is a city littered with foreclosed houses and empty storefronts that is slashing core services like libraries and parks and yet they are finding hundreds of million of dollars for pet projects and giveaways in a desperate effort to buy jobs.

Last week, they declared a "tax holiday" for new businesses and soon they will offer tax breaks to old business with DWP rate cuts thrown in for good measure even as they take every last dollar out of the pockets of residents struggling to make ends meet.

Why would any business locate here or expand if the customers don't have any money to spend?

They -- the DWP and Community Redevelopment Agency -- paid more than $11 million last month for five industrial properties near downtown for their fantasy of a "clean tech corridor." But there are no firms that have shown any interest in locating there so they are offering $11,000 in prize money for innovative ideas of what could be done with it..

Today, the Council will roll over for developer Hal Katersky's Pacifica Ventures and approve the CRA selling him a property at 1601 N. Vine St. in Hollywood for $825,000 -- the same property Katersky he flipped to the CRA in 2006 for $5.45 million a month after he bought it.

Don't expect your Council members to do the background research or ask the tough questions that community activists like Bob Blue are asking about this deal and making their research available to the Council before they vote on this sweetheart deal.

This is a deal that stinks like so many others that are going on now.

Katersky bought the Vine Street property from Ullman Investments for the same price the CRA paid him a month later, presumably because Ullman was the target of a 2000 audit by the City Controller for a highly questionable deal involving CRA acquisition of a parking lot in Hollywood for an inflated price.

As for Katersky, a subsidiary of Santa Monica-based Pacifica Ventures, Pacifica Mesa, filed documents in bankruptcy court in Albuquerque just two weeks ago showing it has $105 million in debt on a studio project that flopped in recent years, a filing that came just days before the property was to be sold at auction in a foreclosure sale.

The state-of-the-art studio was built with union pension fund money and strong backing from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson who offered huge tax breaks for any movies made there.

Bankruptcy notwithstanding, Katersky and partner Dana Arnold have found a friendly environment in LA for heavy subsidies to build a  $57-million, eight-story, glass office building on Vine between Hollywood and Sunset.

Under the CRA deal, the tenants for the building are supposed to be entertainment companies and is needed, the CRA says, because "we're trying to revitalize Hollywood."

Katersky's own view is more sanguine: "Every project we do has government involvement or it doesn't take place...We are opportunistic developers."

Think about this:

Every dollar the CRA gives away comes from property taxes that could be used to keep libraries open and provide other services, could even be used to revitalize the city's vast expanse of deteriorating neighborhoods, not just downtown and Hollywood.

Every dollar the DWP gives away could be used to replace rotting water mains or upgrading the aging power grid or even keep rates low so residents had money to spend in local stores.

It's no accident that LA is broke and broken. It's not an act of God or the fault of the recession.

The waste, the mismanagement has been going on a long time because of misguided policies that neglect the interests of the public. What's shocking is that even as the bills are coming due, the city's leadership is throwing away even more money, hastening the day of reckoning. 

Austin Beutner got a pound of the City Council's flesh Wednesday but it cost DWP ratepayers $600,000.

The bills were for consultants the Council used last spring to fight the mayor's effort to impose electricity rate hikes of up to 28 percent. but the spending was never authorized until long after the fact and tasks performed were at best "vague and generic," the First Deputy Mayor and interim DWP General Manager wrote his Board of Commissioners (ladwp--paconsult.pdf).

Beutner's six-page letter supported by 246 pages of documents amounts to a scathing indictment of how the Council operates from a political agenda without regard to the public's money, legal requirements and good business practices.

It is a window into how come City Hall with nearly $7 billion in revenue annually has dug itself into a financial hole so drastuc that only deep cuts in services and staffing -- or bankruptcy -- can ever save it.

Clearly, the buck-a-year de facto mayor has not been wasting his time. What's not clear is whether the Council has learned just how dangerous someone is who is smart, independent and an expert in financial matters. 

Back in January, the DWP agreed to pay PA Consulting $250,000 for past and current services in support of increasing the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor, the utility's back door way of raising power rates without seeking Council approval.

Within a month, the Council started assigning tasks to the consultants without authority or proper financial controls. When war broke out between the Council and DWP in March, the bills started soaring with individual consultants getting up to $535 an hour and teams of consultants billing up to $1,700 an hour.

But it wasn't until late May that the Council got around to passing a motion for PA Consulting to be paid $600,000 extra for its services with DWP paying the bills, an action that the Council has no authority to impost.

"The $600,000 was for services PA Consulting had already performed, before any contract amendment authorizing the services above the $250,000 cap was authorized by City Council...That amendment increased the amount allocated for the ECAF report from $86,500 to $493,000 and the amount allocated for the presentation and responses to government officials from $22,000 to $272,000 - a more than ten-fold increase," Beutner said in his letter.

Even after that, the Council spending spree continued.

""This additional work increases the total bills from PA Consulting to over $1 million -- a 400 percent increase above the amount authorized by the Board,"

When times are tough and the challenges great, real leaders sometimes step forward and rise to the occasion with bold steps that bring people together.

This is such a time in the history of Los Angeles, a time that cries out for a great and courageous leader. Yet, it's business as usual at City Hall with more back room deals and a greater disparity between the public and private stories than ever.

Commissioners and bureaucrats are brow-beaten into obedience by an increasingly desperate administration. The City Council is rudderless and confused, lacking the talent and integrity to fill the void.

As the public wakes up to the dangers that confront their hopes for a better future, the leaking political machine that rules the city offers small tokens to appease the anger.

Controller Wendy Greuel took a baby step -- not a giant leap forward -- on Monday by announcing she will post online in a searchable database the jobs and salaries of all city employees, well almost all.

"By this time, I am sure you are all aware of the recent controversy in the City of Bell where the City Manager, City staff and Councilmembers were paid exorbitant salaries with little to no public accountability," she wrote the mayor, Council and all department heads.

"In light of these developments and heightened public interest, I am taking steps to ensure openness and transparency in our own City salary system...During these tough economic times, I take my responsibility as the City's chief financial watchdog very seriously, putting a high priority on ensuring that our finances and payroll are properly managed and reported."

There's one big problem with Greuel's commitment to open and transparent government: No names, which makes the list almost meaningless.

Several years ago, the Daily News did put the full list of city employees, their salaries, names and positions in a now outdated searchable database.

The DWP did its best to keep from turning over the list and its union, the IBEW, organized a campaign of phone calls threatening lawsuits because disclosure would endanger lives and people who cheat on spousal support would be exposed.

It was ridiculous but California law requiring full disclosure prevailed without the sky falling in.

Yet Greuel is omitting the names out of concern for the safety of employees who have had threats made against them, as well as those who work in sensitive positions such as jobs within the Los Angeles Police Department. DWP employees are also exempt because the utility has its own payroll system outside the control and scrutiny of Greuel's office.

"We wanted to get the information up as quickly as possible so that the public could see without compromising any security concerns, and posting city positions and salaries is the best way to do that," Greuel aide Ben Golombek said.

This isn't good enough.

Greuel should show courage and go all the way and not just post salary levels but all overtime and bonuses as well with updates at least annually if not more often.

The mayor and the DWP Board of Commissioners should follow suit immediately.

Semi-open and semi-transparent have no more meaning than being a little bit pregnant. City Hall will either open up all its records to the public or remain a closed system protecting itself from public knowledge and scrutiny. Halfway measures do not serve the public interest..

Oops, There Goes Another $1.3 Million Thanks to DWP's Bungling and Indifference to the Public

The State Court of Appeals flat-out rejected the specious arguments put forth by the DWP in a case involving a $1.3 million jury award to a motorist nearly killed because utility workers didn't give a damn about public safety or the waste of water from a leaking water main..

Despite numerous complaints from citizens and police, DWP officials allowed the water main to leak down the streets in Woodland Hills for two months without doing anything about until on a cold night in January the water turned to ice and a motorist skidded on it and then got hit by another skidding vehicle.

The DWP's Defense is that its officials didn't know water freezes at 32 degrees or that it could get the cold in winter. Read the full opinion of the court and have a laugh -- or a cry.

Yikes, Does LaBonge Have a Clue to What's Going On?

Read the Councilman's Full Newsletter and Ask Yourself If This Is Leadership?
Bicyclists Look Toward the Future with LaBonge
On Saturday, Councilmember LaBonge and the Los Angeles Bicycling Coalition spoke to an audience of over 60 cyclists about the future of bicycling sharrows, lanes and boulevards in Los Angeles. The day kicked of with a ride down the 4^th Street Sharrow. Read more here.

Councilmember Emcees Ceremony as ADA turns 20
Tom was the master of ceremonies for the 20^th anniversary of Americans with Disabilities Act (Act) on Monday. The celebration included special performances and speeches by actress and comedian best known for her role on 1980s hit television series "Facts of Life," Geri Jewel, and from AMC's "Breaking Bad," R.J. Mitte. Read more here.

Nothing - absolutely nothing! - pisses people off more in LA than traffic. 

 

It's our collective hate.

 

Traffic makes us late for work.  It prevents us to picking up our kids from school on time.  It boosts our heart rate, takes years off our lives and often locks us behind a steering wheel when we have to pee.

 

We hate it so much that we passed Measure R to boost transit spending even though we clearly don't trust Antonio and our other leaders to spend it on the right projects.  (Bill "I Love NY" Bratton fronted the campaign and it squeaked by.  Then he took off for a city where you can take a train to a Yankees game.)

 

Because we loathe traffic, we understand when we're delayed by improvements - like the project at Sunset Boulevard and the San Diego Freeway.  Those guys are working hard to replace that incredibly busy overpass in the middle of the night to reduce the chance of grid locking all of Southern California and most of Tijuana.

 

What we don't appreciate is when two government agencies don't talk and their lack of coordination makes a situation worse.

 

Guess what agency is doing work in the same area and making matters worse?  Yep! It's the DWP!

 

Buried in a Dog Trainer story this morning by Westside correspondent Martha Groves about the work at the Sunset and 405 is the following paragraph:

 

"Complicating matters, Church Lane, which runs parallel to the freeway just to the west, has been closed to all but local traffic because of a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power project."

 

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

 

I'm not sure what interim DWP GM and Master City Hall Multi-tasker Austin Beutner is doing today, but Groves might want to track him down and ask why the DWP needed to rip up Church Lane at the same time Caltrans was ripping up Sunset Boulevard?

 

Or better yet, find the guy who is supposed to be running LA.  It shouldn't be hard.  As Ronnie pointed out this morning, Antonio's at a news conference celebrating the 20^th anniversary of Metro Rail - the trains that don't come near the intersection of Church Lane and the 405 - or Dodger Stadium, for that matter.

 

Woof!

In the city of Bell, residents finally rose up and threw out the bums who were ripping them off.

In Venice and Eagle Rock, residents mutter about what so many in the San Fernando Valley still yearn for: Seceding from LA and forming their own cities.

The CRA keeps on looting property taxes that could be used to keep libraries and parks open and giving it away to bring sweatshops to town and subsidize well-connected developers to build projects that nobody wants.

The DWP quietly goes about buying up land near downtown, as Joseph Mailander reports in the LA Weekly, on speculation to serve the mayor's fantasy of a clean tech corridor, whatever that means, in a city with half a million unemployed or unemployable low-skilled workers.

But today we celebrate the triumph of our political leadership: The far-flung subway and light rail system that isn't a system at all.

It was plagued with corruption and catastrophe during its construction, cost $8 billion and has failed to get more people to use public transit.

Twenty years too late, the LA Times finally gets around today to reporting just what a fiasco it is, quoting transit experts Tom Rubin and James Moore on what they have been telling the world all along: The rail system was built at the expense of the bus system, destroying the critical links that make transit systems effective while driving up fares.

The result is more traffic congestion and lower ridership despite a 20 percent increase in the county's population.

Yet, the mayor in his desperation and delusion is staging a dog-and-pony show for the TV cameras today near Staples Center -- where else? -- to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Blue Line between downtown and Long Beach.

The real reason is to promote himself and his plan to build more rail lines, mostly on the hopelessly congested Westside.

The problem with that is the same problem with the whole rail system: It is making the cost of public transit even more expensive and forcing even more cuts in bus service that are needed to connect passengers from train stations to where they want to go.

The only facts you really need to know are that bus use doubled in the 1980s when fares were cut in half and that the construction cost per passenger of the Orange Line Busway across the Valley was a fraction of the cost of the subway and light rail per passenger. In addition, took only three years from conception to operation, not a decade.

Richard Riordan, when he was mayor, understood that the only reason we were building a rail system instead of a transit system that works was to feed the contractors and unions that funded the political system with campaign cash and gifts. .

Only, the Valley, that poor stepchild of the city, got a busway from his efforts and we're now moving forward on more subways and light rail to feed the contractors and unions instead of going back to the drawing board and figure out how we get more people into public transit because it gets people where they want to go at a cost that gets them out of their cars.

That isn't going to happen until we take a lesson from the residents of the city of Bell and throw the bums out.

JOIN THE LA CLEAN SWEEP CAMPAIGN (lacleansweep.com) TO ELECT BETTER PEOPLE FOR A GREATER LA

Set aside for the moment, if you can, the incompetence, venality and indifference of most of our elected officials and focus on the citizen oversight that the commissions are supposed to provide to protect the public interest.

Commissioners are in charge of every department and their job -- in theory -- is to insulate the bureaucrats from improper political influence and set policy for them.

In reality, they have become part of the problem, nothing but political appointees of the mayor, serving at his pleasure, doing his bid and taking their marching orders from the mayor and his staff who work board meetings making sure they obey orders.

There is no independent civilian oversight as evidenced by the fact that only two  notable commissioners have resigned in protest in recent years.

Jane Usher, who has turned around the civil law unit in the City Attorney's office in the last year, quit as president of the Planning Commission over the failed billboard policies of the mayor and City Council. Nick Patsaouras quit as president of the DWP Board in a policy fight with the mayor and now is leading the charge for creation of a Rate Payer Advocate to protect the public interest.

The DWP rate hike fiasco has prompted some Council members to call for a change in how the commissioners are appointed -- a move that would require a Charter change and opens up a fuller discussion of how all commissioners are appointed.

Today, most appointments are made by the mayor subject to Council approval.

Many people are named to commissions because they are heavy contributors who help keep the leaking City Hall machine running. Many others are made for purely political purposes to bring one segment of the community or another aboard the same machine's self-serving agenda. And some are nothing but nepotism like Richard Alarcon's daughter serving at a six-figure salary on the Board of Public Works.

Rarely is anyone appointed because of their independence, commitment to the public interest and their expertise in their area of responsibility.

The result is a political system that is lopsided, tilted overwhelmingly in favor of the elected officials and beholden to the mayor and Council -- not the voters and taxpayers.

The city is in deep trouble financially. The gross mismanagement of city affairs is being exposed on a daily basis. City Hall has lost its credibility.

Change is now possible for the first time in decades.

One of the highest priorities for those working to reform City Hall should be to change how commissioners are appointed to all the oversight boards, most of which have five members.

The mayor simply has too much power.

A simple solution that would find popular support would be to allow the mayor only one appointment and give the Controller, City Attorney and the Council one each.

The fifth commissioner should be chosen by the Neighborhood Councils.

This would at least create some semblance of balance and actually empower the Neighborhood Councils in a way that City Hall has fought since their inception.

We don't need commissions that are simply going to roll over to the orders of the mayor and Council. We need people who will stand up for what's right, not sign off on what's wrong.

The Council has opened up this discussion. Let's see if they mean by putting on the ballot a sweeping reform that will bring every segment of the community to a seat and the table of power where the competing interests can fight about policies and programs from a position of equality.

Is that too much to ask for in a democracy?