This is, to put it mildly, more crap from the Mayor's office- and I say his "office" since I don't completely believe he does much work on his own, but has all this staff he's hired doing work that Villaraigosa himself might do if he ever decided to stick around L.A. for other than photo opps and parties. It is another plan to perform that surgery that separates money from the person, and trying to do it at a $2.50 a month clip, so as to be "painless." Don't believe that this rate is where it will end.Unless the DWP secures the extra revenue, Villaraigosa will not meet his goal of having 20% of the utility's electricity come from renewable sources by Dec. 31, said former Deputy Mayor Sean Clegg, a political consultant who worked on a voter survey dealing with the issue.
"Without a carbon surcharge . . . the DWP is going to start going backwards on the renewable portfolio," he said.
Clegg said the mayor had not settled on the size of a proposed surcharge, which could be higher or lower than the $2.50 proposal included in a voter survey commissioned by the mayor. That poll, commissioned by Villaraigosa's Committee for Government Excellence and Accountability, concluded that 64% of respondents would support a $2.50 surcharge.
The results were obtained, in part, to influence the city's "opinion makers" -- including the City Council, which will probably vote on a new DWP surcharge in coming weeks.
The other part of this story is that the "survey" that is used as a basis for forming the conclusion that their a majority in support of that charge is the survey is FROM A SMALL SAMPLE. They like to tell you all about the statistics but don't tell you about the data source so you can see how the responses were elicited. Shaping the results of a poll is one possibilty when you don't see how the questions were asked. Without more of the numbers upon which they make these claims, I can't believe anyone wants more taxes, and that's what it is, a tax and not a fee.
There is something novel that I saw from the story- Council member Jan Perry making a statement that actually is a reaonable assessment of the situation and makes some sense, a true rarity, and here it is:
Councilwoman Jan Perry said it would be "hard to explain" why the city is scaling back on services, including road repairs and libraries, while asking DWP customers to absorb more expensive bills.
"I think this is a tough time to ask people about any increase, unless you've made a very strong case to show that you have reduced operating costs as much as possible," she said.
And she might have gathered this little bit of pure wisdom from the City Council's action in December 2009, again with DWP, approving the contract that gave raises when Jan Perry herself mentioned last week in a heated exchange with Krekorian about the need for 4,000 layoffs being discussed in December 2008, a year before the approval of the DWP contracts. From the December 11, 2009 L.A. Times story:
It was all a sweetheart deal that the council approved unanimously- as they approve most things in unison with each other. That was something that challenged simple logic and generated more spin to cover the outcome as not being total lunacy, but as far as I could figure it out, it was absolutely irreconcilable with any notions of rational and prudent behavior on the part of the City Council. Perry probably was trying to avoid a repeat performance after that December bending over for the IBEW union that represents the DWP workers.Council members agreed to give a 3.25% increase this year and four consecutive
raises ranging from 2% to 4%, depending on inflation.The agreement was negotiated in a year that police will receive no raises and other civilian workers are experiencing pay cuts between December and June.
The agreement drew fire from Jack Humphreville, a DWP critic who said it was unfair for the utility’s employees to get raises when others civilian workers face such sacrifices.
Representatives of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents 8,648 DWP employees, have argued that the DWP already helps the city budget by providing more than $200 million each year to the general fund, which pays for police, firefighters and other services. Meanwhile, Council President Eric Garcetti said that city civilian employees would see a raise of nearly 6% in 2011.
All these quotes were from the story in the L.A. Times at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/la-council-unanimously-approves-raise-for-dwp-employees.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef01287648a0c9970c
You have something shown in this story that is up front as something very important and you have to question this just a little bit. Its the Union's acknowledgement of a passing over to the city general fund of a sum of $200 million dollars yearly. And Garcetti has the shortsightedness in budget terms to state the city workers' raise of almost 6% in 2011 ( do you think that's still happening?). $200 million a year? And this goes to the city like some Godfather coming in to collect his cut? The idea to me seems that the DWP should have any of the excess money over the expenses either refunded to customers or, (and importantly, neglected) re-invested into the infrastructure to replace or perform maintenance on worn or failing equipment. We see bursting water mains regularly now and a firefighter was killed in an explosion just over a year ago when an electrical vault exploded. That death was attributed to faulty equipment within the DWP's responsibility.
It's an agency run just like a slumlord who takes out money from the tenants and does not put any back to maintain the premises, his lawful obligation to do. And the money collected appears to be "profit" based on the neglect of the duties to provide proper facilities for the tenant's payment of rent. It's like that with the DWP but the City Council only looked into it when problems are put in their faces. DWP should not have all this "money to spare" that it has. Maybe that's something to consider before they try these plans to raise their rates.
One more thing- these surveys really are bogus operations. They put things online to placate critics so as to create a feeling of "making a difference" when you take the survey. Except that everything is slanted to get your answers to fit in neat pigeon-holes that the survey-takers use to support their claims of approval by the public. That's what is happening here when they say approvals are shown. Not everyone even knows about the surveys and then others see online solicitations by the mayor and have no interest in aiding their attempt to validate a survey crafted to show a pre-planned result.
They don't use actual numbers, just "percentages"- do we have all 4 million residents or maybe just 4000 persons in the city participating? I have to look upon this with a lot of doubt and suspicion since distortion and misrepresentation have been used very freely in Los Angeles politics.
So when I see Jan Perry's statement on the current surcharge matter, I have to be surprised from seeing a recognition by her of the problem and more significantly, that she actually learned something from her nonsensical vote last December for these DWP raises.
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