DWP works for YOU? More reasons for Santa to skip that stop.

Christmas is a week away and the City Council is on their "holiday" or "seasonal" or whatever break they accept as the politically correct term to use in place of a "Christmas" break. Regardless, they are off and no bad decisions can be made until next year.

Meanwhile, the DWP is ending the year with the H. David Nahai "consultant" contract coming to an end. You remember that Nahai, the chief of the DWP, appointed by Mayor Tony and approved by the City Council, resigned from his $325,000.00-plus per year job. "Outgoing DWP chief Nahai would keep full salary as consultant under proposal." by David Zahniser, October 5, 2009, 2:28 pm.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/outgoing-dwp-executive-nahai-would-keep-full-salary-as-consultant-under-proposal-.html

The DWP employees have raises for 5 years- approved by the council by some sort of rationale that is a math that defies my limited comprehension of the explanation of HOW a raise, and NOT a one-time raise, will be cheaper for the city than NO RAISE. My own view remains that City Council, is hopelessly intertwined with special interests, including the IBEW union here, and could not make a needed deal to save its life. And we are talking about saving the life of the city. They need to be replaced but money to keep them or their clone replacements is readily provided by the special interests.

The story at the DWP stage is here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/dwp-appointees.html DWP approves 5-year contract with employee union by David Zahniser and Phil Willon at City Hall,
December 1, 2009 3:42 pm

The city approval was soon after at a city council meeting. If you are an employee of the DWP, you have to breathe easy compared to lots of other workers in the City who face layoffs and already seeing furloughs. It's the management that's the problem, at thi s point, S. David Freeman is the chief, taking the job after H. David Nahai resigned (and maybe Antonio likes appointing people with a name starting with an initial, or maybe just coincidental).

THE BEST COVERAGE OF DWP's actions
See http://www.ronkayela.com/ for what I think is the best coverage of what DWP does. From yesterday on his blog, Ron Kaye L.A., "Your DWP: Hollow Promises, Cheap Talk, Insider Deals, Mismanagement, Secrecy, Illegalities, Lost Credibility, Waste...FAILURE!" By Ron Kaye on December 18, 2009 6:09 AM
http://ronkayela.com/2009/12/your-dwp-hollow-promises-cheap.html

WHAT NEXT?

I will end there and you can go into more on that blog for other dealings that will never be revealed by our elected politicians and so-called "leaders" of the city. There's lots more to see happening about DWP, but, like they say, "too little time," so a lot I want to present has to be left to other sources for views and coverage, so I will try to include at least those references instead of skipping over topic altogether as has been done to this time. And truly, with all the gifts city council and the DWP management manages to get for themselves, usually with a cost to the rate-payers (city dwellers), they already have a better deal that whatever Santa could bring.

DWP still not finished trying to get more of your money.

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.

The DWP deal and Nahai is not the worst of it for the public

When you think of how well politicians treat each other in sending them off with financial rewards that are better than working, you might become bothered, even angry. Well, that's justified since all that money is coming out of taxpayers (and "rate payers" in the language of DWP) so those passing out the money don't ever feel the pain personally and probably even enjoy being in the Santa Claus role to give such gifts.

What's happening with Nahai and the DWP is a small part of the real costs to city residents in the view of Ron Kaye, expressed in his blog, http://www.ronkayela.com/ today,
"Who's on First, What's on Second -- The City Hall Comedy Show," By Ron Kaye on October 6, 2009. Here's on part of the posting today that might clue you in a little more,

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.

Reading the postings that Ron has put onto his blog over time will put things into a sharper focus on who actually should be included in the assortment of culprits making the various problems for the city.

The posting in the blog yesterday, "Bruno, LA's Watchdog: We Won't Get Fooled Again," by Ron Kaye, October 5, 2009, examines a little more of the situation with David Nahai's departure and some related activities of the players, all told in the character of Bruno, Ron's dog. http://ronkayela.com/2009/10/bruno-las-watchdog-we-wont-get.html

Well, there's more to come, as usual for all these things, and water mains are still bursting with an unusual frequency, but no one know why- and that's one of the things that council members did not like to hear from Nahai, which was not really the worst part of his management. Nobody really know why that's happening but you know money was not put into modernizing or maintaining the systems that could have happened if the City's General Fund had not been siphoning off lots of the money collected over the years.

DWP Chief David Nahai Resigns.... it was inevitable.

David Nahai, the General Manager of the LADWP, has resigned to head for other endeavors. (Photo at right from DWP -Public Meeting [another one of little actual value] earlier this week- not appearing to be a happy camper.)

"Head of L.A.’s water and power utility steps down,"
October 2, 2009 from THE L.A. TIMES, "L.A. NOW" online blog, by Phil Willon and David Zahniser at L.A. City Hall.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/head-of-las-water-and-power-agency-steps-down.html

Nahai submitted a resignation letter that is four pages long and notes what his successes were, but the real problem is that he was put into DWP by Mayor Villaraigosa to do what would help the Mayor, not necessarily the public. Failing to see victory for the fraudulently promoted Solar Measure B at the polls, Nahai earned a big negative mark for that defeat and the rest of the problems continued to snowball. The recent times have shown problems with the rates at DWP and the costs to have employees work there compared to other city departments. The other problem was that the money generated by DWP was shifted off to go to the general fund of the city.

And then the water conservation program was not a joy to have applied if you live in the city. Add to this mix the unusual and serious problems of unusually frequent numbers of water mains breaking, and there's just not a good word to be said about DWP and in turn, it's GM, Nahai.

Villaraigosa selected Nahai for the job and now he's putting in David Freeman in place on a temporary basis until a new appointment can be decided upon. The job pays over $300,000.00 a year and Nahai was close to the upper limit of the pay range.

DWP has a lot of examples of what's wrong with government and with so much money sent over to the city general fund instead of improving the infrastructure. We see a city that cannot handle the current load, not to mention an unlikely prospect of meeting the needs of the super-growth that the Mayor and friends wants to push. This goes for most services in the city, including police and fire services.

With the exit of Nahai, don't expect there to be any changes to help the rest of us regular people. They still have lots of problems and there's a plan in progress that is a disguised Solar Measure B that was threatened to be pursued if it did not get approved at the polls. I am sure that's not all that is planned to cost residents and busnesses more in bills and less in quality of service.

Here's an LA Weekly story from December 2007 when Nahai was just installed, "Can David Nahai Keep the Lights On? L.A.’s man to watch in 2008. Talking water and power and history with the city’s new DWP head." Judith Lewis, published on December 27, 2007.
http://www.laweekly.com/2007-12-27/news/can-david-nahai-keep-the-lights-on/

BEST OF ALL the stories FOR LAST:

If you don't know much about the picture that Nahai was a part of, read a column by Ron Kaye to get the idea- and this was back in June 2008-
"Uncritically observed: David Nahai, the man who walks on water -- and power," By Ron Kaye on June 24, 2008, in http://www.ronkayela.com/
http://ronkayela.com/2008/06/every-story-needs-a-villain.html

And, like I said, it was inevitable that Nahai would have to go, and the time finally came, while the problems remain and increase.