The DWP still continues to make the life for the city dweller more expensive and add more feathers to the IBEW bed. Tomorow will be another day for this to be pursued and very possibly another day that the "rate payers" will be forced to carry the burden of the best employee deals in town. Ron Kaye, on his blog, http://www.ronkayela.com/ , has regularly followed the political activities locally, and lately he's been very keen on pointing out some of the goings-on at the DWP.
This union pressure is nothing new but there are many who really did not have any idea of just how MUCH power the union wields. You have Mayor Tony Villaraigosa coming into office and one of the first things he approved, something carrying over from earlier time, was the DWP contract that is better than anything Santa could bring a city worker. The Mayor has always been a union supporter since that's where lots of reliable votes come from. If there was a better source of votes, you would see him courting that entity, and vigorously so.
This is common to all politicians, however. And that's part or maybe the biggest reason that you don't have these folks remembering to work for the city people instead of the UNIONS' interests. It happens especially so with the city council and that's why you hear a lot of tough talk from time to time from the Council members, but then when it comes time to DOING something and voting on something, they waiver and you wind up with what the union sought in the first place, before all the tough talk and show. There may be a little window dressing added to make it look like a good deal for the tax payers, like a few Fridays ago where the city union members spent most of the morning commenting. The result was that there's still huge budget deficit and the hole is getting deeper each day by about a million dollars, according to City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Please look at the postings from today and in the past few days on http://www.ronkayela.com/ - today, "City Hall Blackmail: Fewer Cops at Lower Pay, More DWP Workers at Higher Pay," shows how two different (and outageous) outcomes are unfolding. The continuation of the exercise of power by the DWP, a city agency literally controlled by the union, appears arriving at the reality of having police take a big chunk of the - as the Mayor says- "shared sacrifice," while the DWP gets better pay than they have already. The DWP employees get at least 20% high salary for comparable positions that do other city employees, some positions said to rate at almoest 40 % higher.
I will add here the item of raises. The raises is private sector are usually tied to the cost of living and the profitability the company experiences. The COL has not risen, and many in the priviate business sector are shutting down and laying off employees, but still the DWP looks for raises and has somehow manages to avoid imposition of furloughs, forget about lay offs.
READ Ron Kaye's blog and go back for days and you will get a better picture of the illogical and hypocritical behavior of our elected and appointed officials. The "appointed" ones were "appointed" by the elected ones- and there's lots of political pay-back that decides who gets these appointments. H. David Nahai was getting roughly $330,000.00 as the GM for DWP, appointed by Mayor Villaraigosa to that job.
Now Nahai's quit, but got a consultant contract for essentially the same figure to run to the end of the year. The law allows DWP commissioners to hire Nahai as a "consultant" without any Council or Mayor approval as long as the contract is LESS THAN $150,000. Nahai's pay will come in just under that amount- for simply being available during business hours by phone or fax, to answer questions as the new guy takes over.
And the "new guy" at DWP is David Freeman, who had the job before and should know most of what it's about now- so we wonder just WHAT does all this money pay for? An HOURLY billing with invoices would make sense, but then Nahai would not get all that money. So you wonder just WHY was that deal created- and DEFENDED by the DWP Commission President, a lawyer who you would think could craft a better deal FOR THE PUBLIC, not the quitting-Nahai?
Well, there's more happening, and more to comment on later. Check http://www.ronkayela.com/ and also see the Friday, October 16, 2009 entry, "Bratton and the Conflict of Interest Issue: The Berkow Connection" that's got some comments challenging the views expressed by Ron. It seems that if you have power and are connected, then you get to do whatever you want, and that's the part too many people are willing to accept with a shrug of the shoulders, so things like that continue to happen.
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