Results tagged “brian d'arcy” 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.

If the mayor and City Council had the courage to admit they were incapable of fixing LA, the federal bankruptcy judge probably could find no one better suited to clean up the mess they have made than Austin Beutner.

Smart, poised, experienced, Beutner is a specialist in taking over failing enterprises and bringing them back to life. He immerses himself in the details, hires talented people, provides the vision and support they need to do the day-to-day work of reorganizing businesses to run efficiently and successfully.

With the full power of Chapter 9 bankruptcy law, he would have had the ability to renegotiate every contract the city has with its unions and the private sector, and to restructure city government to focus on the services it could afford to provide.

He is in fact doing that as first deputy mayor in charge of everything from homelessness to the airports and harbor and as interim general manager of the Department of Water and Power. He has emerged in just a few short months as the most powerful figure in City Hall -- but without the authority of federal law to carry out a thorough overhaul.

In his 90-minute appearance Tuesday before the City Council, Beutner proved he is a force to be reckoned with. Measured, direct, forthcoming, he responded confidently in a matter-of-fact manner to all the posturing and pretenses with clear and forceful answers yet offered few details into where he is going beyond a general view that the business of LA is business.

Brian D'Arcy and the IBEW are his allies in restoring trust in the DWP. Neighborhood Councils and the public in general need to be fully informed and be made partners just as the mayor and Council must be.

It was a stellar performance that should have ended with a standing ovation. Yet it's hard to say that we really learned anything at all. So I offer you a series of short videos so you can be informed and better follow the Beutner drama as it unfolds.

Personally, I have an open mind about Beutner but I am skeptical, to say the least, that he understands the depth of the problems or that they can be fixed with radical solutions, a new deal with the unions and a vision that restores the confidence of the people in their civic institutions.

Time will tell whether the Austin Beutner Show is a hit or a bomb but there's no doubt the future of the city is in his hands.

The mayor has a lot of nerve blaming "people at the highest levels" of DWP management of being "the biggest defenders of the status quo," of failing to respond to the policy direction," of being engaged in "an absolute war" against his leadership.

Year after year, this mayor and previous mayors, this City Council and previous ones have used the DWP as a cash cow of cover up their gross mismanagement of the city and its finances.

They politicized every policy decision, appointed nine general managers in 10 years who lacked the experience or ability to run the largest municipal utility in America, demanded they carry out political agendas without regard to the interests of the residents and businesses, without regard to the need to modernize the infrastructure.

They have failed to carry out comprehensive strategies to reduce reliance on fossil fuels or to achieve moderation in consumption of water and power.

They have turned the citizen watchdogs who are supposed to serve as an independent buffer between politicians and bureaucrats into stooge commissions, corrupting the intent the City Charter.

At every juncture, they have given into blackmail, rewarding IBEW union bully Brian D'Arcy with spectacular contracts, featherbedding and law work rules. They have taken millions of dollars of his union's money for their campaigns and quaked at his threats

D'Arcy takes umbrage at the mayor suggesting his union is "part of the problem and part of the solution, saying he is "shocked and disappointed" at the mayor's "failing to take responsibility for his own actions" in running the DWP.

But so what?

The mayor and his latest unqualified DWP general manager Austin Beutner already have taken any question of wage concessions from D'Arcy off the table even as they develop phony plans for green energy and fake their commitment to transparency when all they want is billions of dollars more in higher rates from the public to add thousands of new jobs to the IBEW rolls and enrich green-washer environmentalists and green investors with insider connections.

The only statement with even an ounce of truth in it that has come out of the mayor's circle was fired GM David Nahai's retort to D'Arcy's pointing the finger of blame at the succession of DWP bosses:

"If Mr. D'Arcy truly wants to uncover the cause of the present problems at the DWP, a good, long look in the mirror might help," Nahai said.

The whole truth is they all need to look in the mirror.

Everyone in power over the last decade or long kept rates low by relying on dirty coal for half the city's power so they could afford the soaring IBEW salaries and benefits and declare as surplus electricity revenue 5, 6, 7, now 8 percent of it to keep the city general solvent.

Understand, the city already gets $300 million from the 10 percent utility tax on power and now Antonio is counting on more than $250 million extra from the "power surplus" next year, $37 million more than the DWP is supposed to supply this year if it turns over the $73.5 million that is being held hostage to force the Council to approve a rate hike.

The general fund gets 12.5 percent of all its revenue from your electricity payments to DWP, money that is used to pay the salaries and benefits of other city workers who account for 80 percent of the basic costs of city government.

Don't kid yourself, the mayor and Council talked about 4,000 layoffs and sweetened pensions for 2,400 other city workers but in the end only 103 employees have even received pink slips and a total of 750 are targeted in the mayor's 2010-11 budget for layoff or transfer.  incentivized early retirement

All that talk was phony because all they have ever been concerned about is protecting city workers' jobs, not public services. Every one of the hundreds of workers transferred already to special funds, the harbor, airport and DWP already are providing services to the public -- not police or fire or library or parks or planning or code enforcement or any other core services.

City Hall has become a jobs program, not a services provider.

If there was any doubt just look at how the mayor has ceded so much of his authority to "jobs czar" Austin Beutner whose stated mission -- when you translate his slick pronouncements lacking in specificity -- is to protect and create city jobs and buy whatever jobs he can in the private sector whether they are in sweatshops or the low-wage service industry.

In case you haven't been paying attention, here are some of Beutner's recent pronouncements:

"What people don't realize is that at the DWP, labor is only 25 percent of its cost. And, they do a good job in their work. What I want to do is look at the other three-quarters of the agency and make sure costs are in line. People have made labor the issue and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency."

"What I want to do is make sure the mayor, the commission and the City council area all sharing the same information and make sure we avoid falling in to the same sort of trap.
What I have started to do and hope to do is look at all the information we have about the DWP and see what we can do to restore trust."

He admits they can't hire a professional utility manager because they have made such a mess of the DWP, yet he wants to get rid of or demote the best professionals the DWP has, create more DWP jobs, be just transparent enough to get the Council to go along, as they just did deceitfully in approving a 5 percent rate hike permanently, with one rate hike after another.

The problem is bigger than just cutting deals with business, labor and the Council to shove rate hikes down people's throats and make them subsidize the bills of hundreds of thousands of other customers.

The DWP must come clean about everything.

The year-old and almost totally ignored study by PA Consulting, the same firm that just sabotaged the mayor's 20 to 30 percent rate hike, is a blueprint for all that's wrong with the DWP.

Wages and benefit costs must be brought in line with that of private utilities and the same efficiency must be achieved. Costs and rates need to be made clear. We need to know who's really paying the bills and who is not.

When the DWP is totally transparent and property oversight put in place, when plans for fixing the infrastructure and investing in green technology are thoroughly and publicly analyzed, when providing of water and power services and not jobs and subsidized economic development are the strategic goals, then we can talk about how much and how fast we can spend our money to fix what they have broken.

Anything less is just another ripoff of the public by a rogue agency.

UPDATE: The DWP Commission has posted a "special agenda" item for Tuesday in addition to its regular meeting agenda. The item in its entirety says: "Appointment and compensation of Temporary General Manager for a period of up to six months." It doesn't say where Austin Beutner will be paid $1 a year or the $6,250 a week David Freeman got.

In the brutal world of mergers and acquisitions, the key to success in gobbling up poorly managed firms is focusing on the core business and scaling back runaway costs.

That's how Austin Beutner made his fortune at the giant Blackstone Group and later in his own boutique private equity firm Evercore Partners.

It's a ruthless business and Beutner was one of the best at it. You get rid of failed managers, bring in smart, tough people, fire a lot of workers, demand wage concessions, eliminate unproductive functions and rebuild a lean and mean business that generates big profits. Then, you sell it for an even bigger profit.

So, now that he's moved to the public sector, generously working for a buck a year, how is Beutner applying his method for success as he takes over as the ninth DWP general manager in 10 years?

"The first job is finding a permanent general manager," Beutner told RIck Orlov in the Daily News in a revealing interview on Sunday. "You cannot expect to have an agency develop any stability when there is so much turnover at the top."

OK, a good place to start no doubt, and hopefully the new boss will actually know something about running a utility unlike many of those who have been in charge in recent years. With people like David Freeman hanging around that has proven impossible but Beutner is no David Freeman so he will undoubtedly find a capable person from outside.

We also learn he is not a hands-on manager, interim or not, and will not operate from the lavish 15th floor office of the GM at the DWP building, preferring to stay at City Hall.

"Hire good people and hold them accountable...What I want to do is make sure the mayor, the commission and the City council are all sharing the same information...and see what we can do to restore trust."

Wait just a  minute, the mayor and DWP Commission are the problem as much as anyone. They are the cause of the loss of trust. And the Council doesn't care about trust, its members are only concerned about the wrath of the public and business community because of DWP's out-of-control costs, soaring rates, mismanagement, endless sweetheart deals, failure to plan, total lack of honesty and transparency -- just to name a few problems.

But none of that is mentioned by Beutner -- ratepayers aren't even a phrase that enters his mind.

But Brian D'Arcy does. Beutner has already met with the IBEW union boss and made peace, guaranteeing him that his power and his inflated wage deals are not in jeopardy.

"What people don't realize is that at the DWP, labor is only 25 percent of its cost," Beutner said. "And, they do a good job in their work. What I want to do is look at the other three-quarters of the agency and make sure costs are in line. People have made labor the issue and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency." 

So the people who "have made labor the issue" are obviously of no importance even though wages and benefits are 20 to 40 percent too high and hundreds of jobs are nothing but featherbedding and workplace discipline is lax.

And what does he mean by "costs are in line"? In line with what? In line with how the mayor wants to enrich his pals and portray himself as the greenest big mayor in America even if it bankrupts the city and many of its residents and businesses?

Beutner was hired to create jobs and is in charge of all the big pots of money in a dozen city agencies including the harbor, airport and planning. So is he being put directly in charge of the DWP to use his business skills to reduce costs and focus on the core business of supplying the city water and power or to use all the money the DWP can get its hands on for subsidies to buy jobs no matter how many jobs are killed by rate hikes?

Since he played a key role in the rate hike fiasco recently, let's look at what the rubber-stamp for mayoral policy DWP Board is up to at its meeting on Tuesday.

Bruno has heard rumors that Antonio is, well, kind of cheap.

I know, I know, this dog has had lots of fun with our mayor for living like a high roller - the mansion, a very rich taste in food and wine, world travel, body guards and the rest.  But remember, he doesn't actually pay for any of that stuff.  You pay for some of it and rich friends pick up lots of tabs.

When it comes to paying out of his own pocket, Antonio is tighter than a Chihuahua's ass. At least that's what I hear.

And the rumor seems to be confirmed with Antonio's appointment of $1-a-year jobs czar Austin Beutner to "temporarily" take over the beleaguered DWP in addition to his other responsibilities -- including Building and Safety, Airports and the Harbor and 10 other agencies.
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Golly, if Antonio found a few more guys like Beutner, the budget crisis would be over, the streets and sidewalks would be paved and we'd have 15,000 cops on the streets to really clean up this town.

While there's been a lot of speculation that Beutner would replace crazy old David Freeman, Rick Orlov had the exclusive Sunday afternoon.  The mayor must be pissed at the Dog Trainer.

"I'm keeping my office in City Hall," the new undisputed master of City Hall multitasking told Orlov.  "It's a short walk or ride from the DWP."

Well, at least Beutner knows where the building is.  That's a start.

And he wasn't particularly flattering about how the mayor has handled the recent crisis.  You can do that when you're only making a buck a year and doing the jobs of a dozen people.

Orlov said Beutner would not discuss the recent dispute over the increase in the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor, other than to say he believed it could have been handled better.

"I think now is a time to take a step back," he told Orlov. "What I want to do is make sure the mayor, the commission and the City council are all sharing the same information and make sure we avoid falling in to the same sort of trap."

That would be nice.

And Beutner said he met with guy who really runs the department -- Brian D'Arcy, IBEW Local 18 business manager.

"People have made labor the issue," Beutner said, "and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency."

Huh?  Labor became the issue when D'Arcy's union was getting 6 percent raises when the economy tanked and more big pay raises for the next 35 dog years while other city employees were getting fired. 

No wonder Beutner told Orlov that he believes he can "establish a positive working relationship" with the union boss. After all, D'Arcy has been running the place while the guys supposedly in charge got run out at the rate of one a year for a decade.

"What people don't realize is that at the DWP, labor is only 25 percent of its cost," Beutner said. "And, they do a good job in their work. What I want to do is look at the other three-quarters of the agency and make sure costs are in line. People have made labor the issue and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency."

Beutner better watch out.  D'Arcy gets what he wants - and he doesn't trust people who work for one dollar a year. Thinks they must be stupid.

Woof!

S. David Freeman, the octogenarian anti-nuclear apostle of renewable energy, sent out a farewell message Monday to the Department of Water and Power's 8,000 employees urging them to "Keep the Faith" despite the controversies that have engulfed the utility.

Freeman's first term as DWP General Manager ended badly when then Mayor RIchard Riordan fired him. He didn't fare much better in his second as interim GM when controversy swirled around his veracity and the lack of planning.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa moved Freeman from his role as deputy mayor the for environment to interim GM of DWP and the Council approved him for a six-month term that ends this week.

Read his farewell letter at OurLA.org.

Contrary to those who think my criticisms of City Hall are over the top, I can only say now that everything I've ever said or written was understatement.

Even I'm surprised to say that. The turn of events with regards to DWP rate hikes is dizzying, a display of lies, abuses of power and political bungling by the mayor that is unprecedented.

It was just three weeks ago that the mayor leaked a fraudulent story to the New York Times that the DWP was losing $5 million a week and desperately needed massive rate hikes to pay its bills and avoid a downgrade in its credit rating.

Since then, we have seen him change his story about how high rates have to go and how the money will be spent at least five times, attempt to blackmail the City Council with threats of driving the city into bankruptcy if his demands were not met and thoroughly corrupt even the appearance of independence of the DWP Commission and the department's conniving and incompetent leadership.

If there was a process for impeachment, he would be removed from office. There are more than sufficient grounds.

The presence of his three mediocrities --  Jay Carson, Jeff Carr and Matt Szabo -- at Wednesday night's DWP Commission meeting giving board members their marching orders to defy the City Council is proof of his willingness to go to any lengths to impose his will as if he were some kind of dictator.

And what was at stake: $6 million in revenue over the next three months for a $4 billion utility.

It's peanuts and what he has done is nuts unless you actually believe his ill-conceived and unplanned goal of making LA the "greenest city in America" is anything more than a political slogan.

What he is doing is nothing more than a power grab and an attempt to get his hands on billions of dollars to feed the green-washers and green-hustlers that surround him and stand to profit handsomely no matter what it costs the public, no matter how many jobs it destroys, no matter what the consequences are to the future of the city.

He has made fools of the DWP Board members, exposed the incompetence of DWP management and united the City Council, the business community and the public -- with the exception of those who believe in green at any price like the Sierra Club leadership -- in opposition.

It is April Fool's Day and he has made a fool of himself.

He fabricated a credit rating downgrade threat and then missed the April 1 deadline for raising rates sufficiently to head it off.

Now, the only sane option is to cancel plans by the DWP to borrow heavily next month to buy wind and solar power at a premium on the open market to meet his artificial goal of having 20 percent renewable energy by the end of the year. The DWP is at roughly 15 percent already, on par with private utilities that are under a state mandate to reach 20 percent.

He has ignored the consultant's report calling for complete transparency of DWP costs and rates, a report that showed the DWP has no plan at all to reduce the city's reliance on dirty coal plants for half its electricity. In fact, the bunglers who run the DWP intend to get rid of cleaner but more expensive natural gas plants but have no plans to build a significant amount of green energy generating facilities.

It should be clear to everyone by now that the DWP Commission members need to be replaced at once if they don't do the right thing and resign and that most of the DWP management needs to be fired starting with the missing-in-action David Freeman and Chief Operating Officer Raman Raj.

There can never be a credible green energy plan for LA until the stranglehold that union boss Brian D'Arcy has on the DWP is broken.

The City Council has shown no signs of having the courage to face him down but it does deserve credit for standing up to the mayor.

Even as the Council was giving 20 percent pay raises to D'Arcy's union last fall, it scuttled DWP's demand for a 2,000 percent increase in the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor, a quarterly surcharge that includes changes in the price of fossil fuels, green energy purchases and other costs that are obscured by being lumped together. .

With Councilwoman Jan Perry leading the charge, the Council hired PA Consulting to tear apart the DWP's books and figure out what was really going on.

It recommended a one-time quarterly increase starting April 1 of .8 cents or 6 percent to protect DWP's credit rating with further increases based upon real planning, real transparency, real accountability, real public debate and understanding.

Under the mayor's order, the DWP Board ignored all of it except the 6 percent rate hike and approved a series of subsequent quarterly increases that would have raised rates 20 to 30 percent at a time of economic recession when business and residents are having trouble paying their bills.

The Council rejected that but suggested a .6 cent increase but that wasn't good enough for the mayor who ordered the board to raise it to .7 -- a deliberate act of provocation with only a lousy $6 million difference in revenue at stake this quarter.

The Council meeting late Wednesday night told the mayor to go to hell. I'll eat these words but God bless them.

So now our city, already in a profound budget crisis, is in a profound political crisis.

Don't wring your hands and beat your breasts and weep. Challenges are opportunities.

There will never be a better moment for the community to rise up and demand a seat at the table of power and reforms that bring real democracy to the city and make LA a beacon of freedom and public participation, a city where every segment of the population felt empowered to affect public policy.

That's the only way we can ever become the greenest city in America.
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Remember back when Antonio told us he was tripling the trash fee and going to put all that money in a lockbox and use it solely to hire cops to make us safe on the streets and in our houses?

He never mentioned his "full cost recovery" policy applied only to homeowners except for the 60,000 who were getting the trash picked up free.

Remember when the state got rid of public access TV and the mayor promised to put $10 million of the $25 million they get from cable franchise taxes into a special account that would used to run Channel 35 and restore our opportunity to provide our own shows about important issues to the public?

He never mentioned he was going to use most of the money to run other departments and that he had no intention of ever restoring public access.

Nor did he bother to tell us that he was going to take all the rollover funds in Neighborhood Council accounts and put it into the general fund along with every other cent that piled up in all the dozens of other "special" accounts and do the same as his mismanagement of the city's financial affairs reached the crisis point.

So when the mayor tells you he's going to create a lockbox for his "carbon surcharge" to replace coal power plants with clean solar and wind power, only a fool or an environmentalist would believe him.

There is no such thing as a lockbox or a special fund the way City Hall does business. In their desperation, they have made a mockery of their own processes and destroyed the integrity of nearly every special from the money set aside for new community art centers, to libraries, to parks through one deceit or another.

City Hall cannot be trusted. Look at the record and the truth of that statement is indisputable.

How so many from Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Mary Nichols to the Sierra Club, can be so ill-informed or so indifferent to the public interests as to buy into the mayor's plan to double and triple electricity rates starting with increases of 20 to 30 percent this year is a sad commentary on the depths of political corruption of our time.

Knowing Antonio as well as they do, and we do, do they really think he came up with his costly green energy plan all by himself late one night after downing a couple of $1,000 bottles of cabernet his friends bought him?



No, the carbon surcharge and the virtually unlimited and unscrutinized increases in the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor that lumps together all kinds of DWP costs is nothing but the bastard son of Measure B that voters rejected a year ago.

Measure B was the clumsy handiwork of Brian D'Arcy, bully boss of the IBEW, who is the No.1 reason that LA has lagged so far behind other utilities in going green, relies for nearly its power on labor-intensive (i.e. IBEW labor) coal-burning plants and is paying a huge premium to buy renewable energy at premium prices on the open market.

D'Arcy got his grossly overpaid members 6 percent raises from the mayor in good times and now are getting up to 4 percent raises in tough (and deflationary) times. In return, he is the No. 1 financial backer of the mayor , Controller Wendy Greuel and nearly everybody else at City Hall.

So who do you think came up with this new attempt to soak the public for billions of dollars in the name of green energy, in the name of getting rid of cheap coal power, when there isn't even a remote plan in the bowels of the DWP to achieve either goal?

The business community warned soaring electricity rates will costs jobs. LAUSD Superintendent reported he'll have to fire hundreds of teachers. Residents complained the price of power was soaring too high, too fast at a time people are hurting financially. Activists questioned the lack of planning and transparency.

But the green-at-any-price crowd had their day and the DWP Board did the mayor's bidding and unanimously rubber-stamped the first in a long series of rate hikes that will punish the middle class to pay inflated wages, ease pressure on the city general fund and perpetuate the mismanagement of a rogue utility.

In a master stroke of timing, broadcast three hours after the DWP Board acted, KCET's SoCal Connected aired a hard-hitting story produced by Karen Foshay that focused on an interview host Val Zavala did with the villain of the DWP story, union boss Brian D'Arcy.

No words can describe the utter contempt D'Arcy holds for the city, its residents and businesses better than D'Arcy does himself, his arrogance and indifference fully on display on camera. The excerpts of his comments shown here are given a context in "The Price of Power" that exposes that as despicable as D'Arcy is, DWP General Manager David Freeman is even worse.

The actual rate hike approved Thursday is small, just 8 percent, but the DWP board lifted all protections for the public and failed to carry out any of the reforms recommended by PA Consulting that would restore credibility to the DWP. Even the momentum for creation of a Rate Payer Advocate was derailed by proposing to put the post under the control of Controller Wendy Greuel who voted for every rate hike as a Council member and owes her election to D'Arcy's campaign cash.

Unless the City Council steps in, most people will face power bills that jump nearly 30 percent this year and keep on soaring by double-digit percentages for years to come.

With the mayor and his henchmen leaning hard and dispensing favors to buy the Council off, it's unlikely 10 votes will be found to take control of the DWP rate issue and provide an informed and open public debate on how LA gets green energy at affordable prices and gets value for its money.

This is all about the mayor and his desperate effort to save himself politically no matter how much harm he does to the city. He has coerced the DWP Board into submission just as he has brow-beaten and threatened every department head to cover up his complete failure to deal effectively with the city's budget crisis.

It's asking a lot for bureaucrats to put their high-paying jobs on the line but it isn't the same for city commissioners who have private incomes. Yet, only Jane Usher and Nick Patsaouras have shown the integrity and courage to resign rather than go along with disastrous orders from the mayor.

City Hall's corruption is nearly complete now and things are going to get a lot worse in a hurry with the tax burdens rising rapidly even as services are being slashed.

We will soon see how people react in the coming weeks and months as they feel the impact on their lives, as the details of the unfolding scandal emerge and as they see their DWP bills are becoming higher than their rents and mortgages.

If ever there was something to go to war about in the shocking mismanagement of city affairs, it's the Department of Water & Power.

It's time to put the public in charge of this renegade agency, the nation's largest municipally-owned utility.

For a century, the DWP has operated as a law unto itself, unaccountable to no one. From the theft of Owens Valley water, to the land grab of the San Fernando Valley, through back room deals and sweetheart contracts and its refusal to "green" its power supply, the DWP has been run as if it were a privately-owned business beyond the reach of the people or political leaders.

It is the source of the Chinatown story, the darkest chapter in LA's history that has become a never ending story.

Over more than a decade now, bully boy union leader Brian D'Arcy has taken charge of the DWP as if he were chairman of the board and principal shareholder, blackmailing city officials into approving stupendous contracts under threat of strikes that would shut down the water and power systems, under threat of destroying their careers with the millions of campaign cash at his disposal.

He thrived on the DWP's reliance on coal-burning power plants because it meant lots of high-salaried jobs for IBEW workers. He insisted that all power sources be DWP-owned power plants because it meant lots of jobs for his union members. He squelched efforts to develop wind and solar energy resources because it meant fewer or no jobs for IBEW workers.

He constructed a system of work rules that guaranteed vast amounts of overtime whether or not there was urgent work to be done. He protected workers loyal to the union and destroyed those with loyalty to the public interest. He has corrupted the Civil Service system by having promotional jobs filled by "bid", not a competitive examination as is done in the rest of the City. He treated general managers, commissioners and elected officials as if they were his hirelings.

The result is a power grid that has deteriorated and is breaking down, wage structures that are far above the industry average and 40 percent higher than other city workers doing comparable work and the worst renewable energy record of any utility in California.

Measure B for 400 megawatts of rooftop solar was D'Arcy's creation and it was the union's money that drove the $1.6 million campaign for it that failed in the face of the push-back by ordinary citizens with virtually no money spent in opposition.

What was wrong with it then is what's wrong with it now -- it requires the DWP to own and maintain all major rooftop solar installations in the city to create even more IBEW jobs even though it dramatically increases costs to the public, stifles the growing private solar industry and slows the achievement of significant amounts of solar since DWP has no substantive experience in the field.

Yet, the mayor and Council are moving forward on virtually the same plan as Measure B because it is the price they are willing to pay to get solar power, or more accurately the price they are willing to let the public pay.

The DWP is desperate for more revenue to close contracts for wind and solar just to meet the 20 percent by 2010 goal mandated by the legislature under AB32 four years ago. That's right, DWP waited until the last minute to meet the mandate which says a lot about the management and the leadership of the "greenest big city mayor" in America.

Now the mayor wants to start a monthly $2.50 surcharge that will rapidly escalate, supposedly to replace power plants that burn the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal, with plants that burn another fossil fuel, natural gas. The plants are immensely costly, still dirty, if less so than coal and have a life expectancy of 70 years -- eliminating the possibility LA will be able to take, advantage of expected major advances in green technology for most of a century.

That's small change compared to the 20 percent power rate hike the DWP wants to impose by April 1 by eliminating the 4 percent cap on pass-through surcharges for fluctuations in the price of fuel.

Once the cap on the ECAF (Energy Cost Adjustment Factor)  is lifted, you can be certain your rates will soar even more than the 60 percent they will have gone up by 2011 under our current mayor.

The 60 percent is the same percentage the mayor has increased the transfer of DWP's "surplus" electricity revenue to the general fund. It's even more than the 30 percent he has increased gross pay at the DWP, if that's any consolation.

Soaring wages on top of already inflated salaries, soaring rates, soaring revenue to the general fund from the 10 percent electricity tax and 8 percent revenue transfer, lack of renewable energy, deteriorating infrastructure --- the costs are spectacular and rates will continue to go up and up, undoubtedly doubling or tripling.

Power rates are going up everywhere. They have to because we must reduce our pollution and we must reduce our dependency on foreign fuel.

The question is value for our money, solid plans that achieve important goals, lower costs, increased efficiency, an end to featherbedding and sweetheart contracts, complete transparency, tough enforcement of breaches of contract by consultants and contractors.

Cleaning up the DWP scandal.has become the battle cry for a better city. We must demand accountability, break the political power of the IBEW, require managerial competence, solid planning and transparency -- all these changes are necessary before we move forward and consider how we raise rates.

Rate structures are as much about fairness to all and pressure to conserve as they are the need to modernize our power system.

If you're not prepared to fight over what's going on at the DWP, you might as well give up and let them do whatever they want or get out of town as so many have done.

The DWP is the city's cash cow, the engine that drives its corruption.

The mayor and council are preparing to take huge chunks of DWP revenue to buy jobs and subsidize economic development. It is a utility, not an economic development agency. Ample power does provide for economic development by its nature, not by giveaways of public money to insiders.

This is a fight that residents and the business community cannot afford to lose. It's one thing to pay more to get something that's good for us all. It's another thing to pay more and get nothing at all.