Results tagged “David Nahai” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Once upon a time in the city we all love and hate, a man named Antonio stepped forward and inspired us with promises of a better life for everyone, of a new era with a new spirit that brought us all together..

He was going to plant a million trees and beautify our neighborhoods.

He was going to take over our schools and make sure every kid git a good education and graduated.

He was going to end corruption at City Hall after defaming the Hahn Administration as the "most investigated" in LA history.

Most of all, he was going to make us the "greenest city in America" -- something that would restore our pride in the city and create tens of thousands of good jobs.

Fairy tales can come true or they also can turn into nightmares where everyone suffers, well, nearly everyone. Insiders and the well-connected flourish while neighborhoods are destroyed, kids still drop out cause they can't read or write, corruption reaches unprecedented levels.

The man of a thousand broken promises has turned on his friends in the unions and embraced the evils of unbridled capitalism, indulging himself in a life of royal luxury while half a million of his subjects can't even find a minimum wage job.

And now, in the latest chapter of this fairy tale gone awry, comes the ultimate hypocrisy: Antonio wants his pals in Sacramento to make a special exemption from environmental policy for LA so we can keep on destroying the oceans around us for another two decades.

"The city of Los Angeles has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to roll back tough new state regulations meant to limit the environmental damage that power plants inflict on the oceans," the LA Times reports today.

The justification for this is that it will cost $2.3 billion and require increases in the already soaring power rates of at least 6 percent for eight years.

Driving the effort for the exemption is Austin Beutner, first deputy mayor, jobs czar and part-time temporary DWP general manager.

"That's money that will cause jobs to be lost in our economy and money that we can't use to invest in other renewable energy initiatives that we have," he says.

The issue is Assembly Bill 1552, now in the Senate, a measure created through subterfuge at the last minute with help from people like Antonio's cousin, Speaker John Perez, and other phony environmentalist lawmakers.

It would exempt the DWP from tough, new State Water Board regulations that require sharply reducing the amount of seawater used for cooling coastal power plants.

Under AB 1552, every coastal plant in the state -- except the three owned by DWP -- would still be required to pump in seawater for cooling only once and then recycle it or move to air cooling

DWP's three plants, now required to comply between 2015 to 2020, would be given up to 11 years longer, to 2031.

Environmental groups -- long-time friends of the mayor -- are as furious at him as his long-time friends in labor and the voters who elected him.

Heal the Bay has started a phone call and email campaign under the heading: "Your Help is Needed to Protect California's Coast & the Public Process - OPPOSE AB 1552."
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"It completely ignores five years of process and guts the entire policy," said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay.

Adds Sierra Club California lobbyist Jim Metropulos: "Now here is the L.A. DWP coming in at the last second with a special-interest exemption for them."
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What's spectacularly appalling about this is that the DWP under then General Manager David Nahai was working on a rational compromise with the State Water Board long before the regulations were approved.

But like so many others, he ran afoul of the mayor's political priorities -- and in his case the greed of DWP union bully Brian D'Arcy -- and was fired last fall.

His successor, David Freeman, the poet laureate of green energy who never actually built any, dropped the ball on that effort as he did so many others during his two disastrous terms running the city's mos valuable asset.

Freeman preferred to play political hardball with the state board when the regulations were being finalized but struck out.

"It makes the department appear cynical and manipulative," Nahai told the Times.. "I believe it was unnecessary, because the state board has shown a willingness to try, even now, to deal with the department's concerns."

Put your money on the environmentalists winning the fight because they are right that DWP never should have been put in this position. You'll need those winnings to pay your power bill.

So how did so many high hopes end in failure and broken promises? Whatever happened to the Antonio we knew and loved so much to put him in charge of our city at a time when we needed great leadership?

No one could possible have gone so wrong, betrayed so many. The answer can only be that the real Antonio was kidnapped and a replicant was put in his place to turn LA into the vision imagined in "Blade Runner."

What other explanation could there be?

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.

 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.

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

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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

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa "does not discuss his friends' private business matters with them...It's not part of the mayor's agenda to worry about people's private business dealings."

That is one of the most laughable quotes of all time, laughable if it wasn't the best that Deputy Chief of Staff Matt Szabo could do to deflect questions about a dirty deal that stinks so bad all the hot air in City Hall won't be able to blow it away.

In a story that took many weeks of tough reporting to nail down, David Zahniser in the LA Times revealed today how mayoral insider, pal and key adviser Ari Swiller' outmaneuvered the Department of Water and Power to buy the 68,000-acre Onyx Ranch in Kern County for a wind farm site.

The deal "highlights the dual roles played by ...Swiller, an entrepreneur whose field, renewable energy, has received a significant boost from the mayor's pledge to make Los Angeles 'the greenest big city in America," Zahniser reports

The threads of the story tie together like a noose.

Ties between the mayor and Swiller date back to when Villaraigosa and Swiller were both employed by supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle in 2001. Swiller was a key fund-raiser in that campaign and subsequent campaigns, emerging as the man in charge of those operations and political appointments even as he was buying the valuable wind farm property DWP had tried to get for years.

Swiller's company, Renewable Resources Group,  was founded in 2004 to develop and invest in clean energy with the help of David Freeman, who was appointed in April to handle environmental issues for Villaraigosa and who has taken the lead in driving the mayor's effort to make LA "the greenest city in America."

Swiller's partner in the Onyx Ranch deal is none other than the CIM Group, the Hollywood-based real estate company that ranks near of the top of the list of beneficiaries of City Hall's special-favors-for-special interests practices.

"City Hall. Over the last seven years, city agencies have agreed to provide CIM with $58 million worth of loans and subsidies," Zahniser report. "And two city pension boards have agreed to invest up to $115 million in CIM funds on behalf of city retirees...CIM Group had persuaded the California Public Employees Retirement System to invest up to $200 million in a new infrastructure fund managed by the firm."

It's not like Swiller doesn't give a damn about the city he's helping the mayor to ruin.

He offered to sell half the Kern County property to the DWP for $65 million -- a property he bought out from under the DWP for $48 million.

Business is business, just ask DWP General Manager David Nahai who is doing everything he can to engineer billions of dollars in solar, wind and other renewable energy projects for distribution among the friends and allies of the mayor.

"(Swiller) has this friendship to the mayor. He's an advisor to the mayor. But at the same time, he's a business person," Nahai said. "So if nothing untoward occurred here, he'd be as free as anybody else to try to do a business deal."

That, my friends, is the moral sensibility of the people who running LA , the people who want blank checks for billions of dollars in public money so they can profiteer from the environmental concerns we all share.

It's a small world inside City Hall, small and laughable if it weren't so dirty.

For the second time in six months, DWP's demand for a blank check for billions of dollars
from ratepayers was rejected.

Back in March, voters repudiated the phony Measure B solar plan that wasn't a plan. On Wednesday, the reprocessed Measure B came back in the form of giving the DWP authority to impose virtually unlimited rate hikes in the name of renewable energy. The City Council rejected the proposal unanimously (Times, Daily News accounts)

Lack of transparency, failure to communicate with the public that pays the bills, insufficient details about how the money will be spent and unfairness in the rate structure are among the reasons the DWP has twice failed to get what it wants.

It seems General Manager David Nahai just can't learn from his mistakes.

Given the fact he's lost the confidence of everyone from his top managers to the Council, it seems likely the mayor will pull the plug on Nahai sooner rather than later.

Even Brian D'Arcy, the real power behind the DWP throne as head of its IBEW union, holds Nahai in such low esteem he stopped talking to him months ago and defames him around town as a man whose word cannot be trusted. That surely is the kiss of death -- undoubtedly with the traditional golden handshake.

Nahai, for all his glib obfuscations and contempt for the public, is just a symptom of the problem of the DWP.

For most of a century, the DWP has been an empire unto itself, accountable to no one.

With rare exceptions, the commissioners who are supposed to oversee the DWP on behalf of the public have been little more than yes-men. That's part of the reason the movement to create an independent Ratepayer Advocate office for DWP  is gaining momentum.

It isn't just Nahai who's lost public confidence. The DWP itself has lost the public trust.

There's a fundamental difference between a publicly-owned utility like Southern California Edison and a municipally-owned utility like the LA Department of Water and Power.

You can guess which utility is more open about what's doing, more accountable to the public and, in the case of SCE and DWP, more aggressive about going green.

By law, SCE needs to be pretty transparent so that its shareholders and the public through its regulation by the Public Utilities Commission know what's going on. Its management can be held accountable by shareholders and its board of directors, if not always the public in general.

By practice, the DWP is not only secretive but does its very best to obscure what it's really up to and its management is far more likely to be called on the carpet by IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy than any mayor or the City Council.

Perhaps that's why SCE is approaching 20 percent of its energy from renewables and DWP about half that percentage, why DWP depends on dirty coal for 40 percent of its electricity and SCE about half that.

Certainly, it's why a 75-word press release was issued Tuesday by Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar announcing DWP had contracted to build a "large-scale solar power project in Imperial County...(that) will have a generation capacity of 55 megawatts."

And why a few hours later, SCE itself put out a press release announcing First Solar will build two large-scale solar power projects in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California...among the largest of their kind...(with) a generation capacity of 550 megawatts of photovoltaic solar electricity, enough to provide power to approximately 170,000 homes."

SCE notes it "is the nation's leading purchaser of renewable energy and, in 2008, delivered 12.6 billion kilowatt-hours of energy to its customers from renewable resources - about 16 percent of its total energy portfolio. In addition, the utility delivered more than 65 percent of the solar energy produced in the United States for its customers in 2008."

The best boast DWP can make is that it generates more pollution from coal-generating power plants than any other municipal utility in America.

Not to worry, General Manager David Nahai has a plan to catch up. But it's a secret so he can't tell you about it. The culture of the DWP and Nahai's own mindset require secrecy above all else so that only insiders who might benefit personally or politically are allowed access.

All you the public need to know is that it's going to cost you a ton of money.

The DWP, for instance, doesn't mention anything about the First Solar deal on its website or much else of use to anyone who wants to understand what it's doing. The last press release posted came three weeks ago and declared -- prematurely, if not falsely -- that its new water shortage measures "successfully" reduced consumption.

The website Greentech Media  in an article by Ucilia Wang at least supplies some sense of the economic game DWP is playing in signing a power purchase agreement, quoting Mark Bachman, an equity analyst at Pacific Crest, as saying First Solar "is likely to sell the power plant to investors before project completion. But the city has an option to buy the power plant after it's put in service for seven years."

What we're really seeing is Measure B all over again. Except they not only don't want a public debate about what they're doing, they don't want another public vote because they know it would be rejected soundly.

But it's the same blank check for billions of dollars without planning or analysis.

And it has got the same No. 1 goal as Measure B: Protecting IBEW jobs and its industry-leading wage structure, which by the way is set to rise 3.25 percent higher on Oct. 1 thanks to the sweetheart contract the mayor and City Council awarded four years ago with provision for wage hikes as high as 6 percent.

In general terms, the DWP needs to reduce its huge load of carbon pollution and the easiest way to do that is to upgrade coal plants to natural gas, which has the key benefit of preserving IBEW jobs. But that isn't renewable energy, just less polluting.

So wind and solar come into play to meet the 20 percent renewable energy quota by next year no matter what they cost.

It doesn't matter what they cost as far as the DWP is concerned. They have won DWP Commission approval to remove the 4 percent cap on rate hikes for renewable energy, the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor or ECAF.

The ECAF allows for rate hikes to be passed through to ratepayers without going before the City Council or facing meaningful debate or cost analysis.

DWP expects rates to only increase 10 percent a year but they could go far higher since utility officials in their desperation to catch up with other utilities paying above market prices for renewable energy. And that doesn't even taken into consideration rate increases needed to cover the under-funde DWP pension which faces a $450 million annual shortfall -- a fact that officials have done their best to hide from the public.

The council has taken jurisdiction over lifting the cap on ECAF rate increases because it's already a hot-button issue for the citizen watchdogs on the DWP Committee that led the successful fight against Measure B, the kind of issue that is likely to explode in the faces of the politicians when people see their water and power bills soaring higher than their mortgages.

A lot of effort is being put into creating a Ratepayer Advocate office for the DWP but the real solution is to put someone in charge who actually knows how to run a utility, has the short- and long-term interests of the ratepayers as the primary mission and is backed up by city officials who have mustered the political will to bring the IBEW into line with the city's financial realities.

Anything less will lead to a public revolt against policies that cost too much and fail to achieve the clean environmental goals that are widely desired.

From Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's second inaugural speech, July 2, 2009:

"Moving forward we're aiming to get 40% of our power from renewable sources by 2020 and go 60% carbon-free by the end of the next decade."Today, I am directing the CEO of the Department of Water and Power to take every action necessary to reach these goals and eliminate the use of coal by 2020. Meanwhile, we're going to move beyond the clean air action plan - the most aggressive effort to cut emissions at any port worldwide. We are going to electrify goods movement at our harbor."

That's the order the mayor gave DWP head David Nahai just six weeks ago and is the principal reason the DWP is in the process of getting approval for unlimited rate increases that will double or triple electricity bills in the next decade.

So why in the world is the DWP proposing to spend $2.4 million to hire lobbyists with the Conservation Strategy Group-- including $120,000 a year for former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez through his firm Mercury Public Affairs -- to gut enforcement of Assembly Bill 32, the 2006 law that requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, the same year DWP will have eliminated its coal dependency?

The DWP already has its own team of expensive lobbyists on the payroll -- including former Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez at $180,000 a year -- even though it's not subject to most state regulations like private utilities.

David Zahniser in the Times reports the DWP's explanation is that they are worried AB 32 will result in a "cap and trade" program that requires utilities that rely on coal power, to purchase expensive pollution credits.

Nahai wouldn't talk to Zahniser abou it but spokesman Joe Ramallo said "cap and trade" could result in a "massive transfer of ratepayer money" away from the utility/

Nunez also was coy about talking but Glenn Gritzner, managing director of Mercury's L.A. office, declared: "It could be implemented in a way that costs the ratepayers a heck of a lot of money."

Who are us poor folks who pay the bills to believe?

The mayor says no coal by 2020. His team at the DWP says penalizing utilities that still rely on coal in 2020 will cost a fortune. Does that mean they aren't really going to achieve his goal and already know it?

Maybe the mayor's plan is phony and DWP officials are just throwing more ratepayer money at insiders like Nunez.

Whatever the truth is -- and you never know either with the DWP or the mayor -- the only certainty is rates will continue to soar and the DWP will remain a cash cow for City Hall.

When the MTA, the LAUSD and the LAPD all lost the confidence of the public because of scandals of one sort or another, the answer was to put in place an inspector general with independence to serve as the public's watchdog.

Needless to say, our elected elected have done their best to water down the independence of these watchdogs over time but they still provide at least some protection for the public interest.

This DWP lobbying contract is just one of a hundred reasons why we need a Ratepayer Advocate -- the organizational equivalent of an inspector general -- to keep an independent and watchful eye on where the money goes and how our utility operates.

The commission that oversees the DWP has stalled this contract for the moment but it has neither the staff nor the independence to be a public watchdog.

That's a lot of what's wrong with City Hall. The commission system is a failure, corrupted by our elected officials to be little more than a rubber stamp system of approving whatever they want, for whatever reasons they want.

This has never been clearer than in the last year. Ever since Nick Patsaouras and Jane Usher resigned key commission positions last year in disgust with what was going on, the mayor with agreement of the City Council has stacked the "juice" commissions like DWP, harbor, airports, planning with people tied to the very special interests that benefit from city policies.

City Hall needs major reforms to bring the public in as a partner and to provide oversight and accountability. A DWP ratepayer advocate is one of those reforms and should be implemented quickly.

If the DWP is to be believed -- always a risky proposition -- then we know who the worst water waster in town is: The City, of course.

According to today's report from the DWP on the first month of its mandatory water conservation rules, there is an overall reduction in water use of 11 percent compared to June 2008 and 14.4 percent lower than June 2006 when the drought began.

That was a full year before the mayor deigned to call for voluntary conservation and a full year before mandatory measures were imposed -- measures the City Council wants to drill with loopholes for the rich, the poor, the sick, the horsey crowd, corporations with large expanses of lawn and most of all, itself, including the half-acre of grass outside the soon-to-open $500 million yet-to-be-named Police Headquarters.

But I quibble and digress.

The point is nothing was done for two years while the water supply evaporated and the cost of buying water boiled over, a time period during which cities like Long Beach shattering records for conservation.

And then LA imposes Phase 3 restrictions, the most stringent in the whole state, suggesting that the DWP didn't plan for this crisis or is over-reacting to justify enormous rate hikes in the name of the absurd doctrine of "revenue neutrality" so it can keep on giving 6 percent raises to its IBEW work force.

Whatever happened to "shared sacrifice" or has it just become "screw the public" as usual.

But I quibble and digress again.

The point is today's DWP announcement about how we did in conserving water during June so here's the numbers:

Single-Family Residential: -16.8%
Multi-Family Residential:  -8.3%
Commercial:  -12.7%
Industrial: -3.4%
Governmental: -29.5%
Total Water Usage: -14.4%

You can look at these numbers in different ways.

For instance, you could say the city has done a fantastic job of conserving water, better even than homeowners who have been the only ones to reduce water use by a degree in recent years.

Or you could say that if the city can cut water use by nearly a third in just one month maybe the city has been the No. 1 water waster for years, squandering this precious resource as if we weren't just a town out in the desert somewhere.

Given the fact that homeowners have led the way in water use reduction in recent years and the city has not, it seems to me to be the inescapable conclusion that the city is the problem.

Not to quibble or digress, but isn't it time to check up on DWP General Manager David Nahai who was caught last year with his hose running as one of the biggest water wasters in town. I wonder how he's doing, and if his water meter is working properly.