DWP gets caught again on a matter of veracity- This time by Controller Wendy Greuel

The DWP held back the transfer to the city of $73 million a few months back, saying it needed a rate hike and could not spare the money at that time without it.

The City Controller, Wendy Greuel, completed an audit and found that there was over $700 million in the DWP's own account, 10 times the amount that the City was waiting for.

"Controller finds DWP misled the public when it threatened to withhold funds from city- Wendy Greuel launched a probe into the agency's accounts after officials refused the mayor's request for $73.5 million. 'The DWP's actions unnecessarily plunged the city into a fiscal crisis,' she said." By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2010. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dwp-controller-20100611,0,7666607.story

Somebody in the DWP lied? All I can say is, 'What else is new?" Wendy is still a political person and very close to the mayor so she's not about to call these guys liars, even if that's the best word to use. The Mayor was the one pushing for the rate hike in April and he was completely on the DWP's side of the situation that was going to make bills higher for the residents and businesses in L.A. (Didn't he get elected to take care of the public's well being, and not to try making the road clear for DWP to make the most money it can make?) But you know what? He doesn't care as long as it moves all things to his goals of "looking good"- in this case, not the pretty boy stuff, but in the context of heading to a better record on converting to renewable energy and environmentally friendly things. It's all very expensive but not anything that will have him taper off for the public benefit. It's kind of like the way that Eric Garcetti presents, continuing to press on no matter how much expense it means for you and me.
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Check out Ron Kaye's blog and see his view of that situation,
"Condemned to Failure -- Beutner, DWP and the Refusal to Learn from the Past " By Ron Kaye on June 10, 2010 3:56 PM
http://ronkayela.com/ Austin Beutner is the Mayor's pick to run about 15 city departments. Usually you have one person with one department and that's the way that should make the most sense. Milliionaire or actually billionaire is working for a token amount and is the Mayor's hope for a solution to get him out of this financial jam that's been closing all around the city little by little over the past few years.

Ron Kaye sees some problems with Beutner's style and it's pretty apparent that there's a lot of posturing on this subject all around since no one wants to look bad here. The DWP workers caught by the Channel 2 reporter as they were drinking on the job and spending some down time in a strip club was just a little of a lot of ills that may not be widespread but should not be allowed to happen at all. DWP supervision either condones by its acquiescence regarding such activities or they didn't know at all what was happening until the Channel 2 reporter pointed out the problems by showing them. In that case, it points out some poor supervision practices followed, like, maybe, a failing by whoever is supposed to be supervising.

The DWP is more or less working on its own like a rogue agency, out of control from the City Council's view. Mayor Villaraigosa put Beutner into the job to be the extension of his authority. Villaraigosa was part of the problem when he was pushing for the rate hike that the DWP wanted, or it could have been a rate hike that the Mayor wanted to CYA on the budget, and keep the IBEW happy (as if they were not with the salary disparity and cushy terms that gave them raises to come in for 5 years).

The Mayor usually used to be on the union side of things and now had to be the bad guy on budget matters and you can be sure he did not want to be on the bad side of any union issues since he has relied on them for votes, a real big reason he caters to the union interests all around but look where it left the city. Such a fool.

But let's leave that for now as there's lots more going on- more antics of the Council and the Mayor to be examined, past and ongoing.

The "Bungled Solar Plan"- Another view of Tony, Brian and David giving it to you, and NOT in a nice way.

Here's more on, yes, Solar Measure B, the ballot initiative that comes up for a voter decision in Los Angeles on March 3rd- Tuesday, all the elections fall on Tuesdays by some rule that is only important to know that day, Tuesday. The story "LOS ANGELES' BUNGLED SOLAR PLAN; How D'Arcy and Villaraigosa turned clean energy into a dirty dispute," February 10, 2009, ( http://www.laweekly.com/2009-02-12/news/los-angeles-39-bungled-solar-plan/ ) is a pretty concise, to-the-point and very revealing article as the Los Angeles Weekly continues to produce about L.A politics. There is so much bad that is happening in government that books could be written on all the political people and their conniving.

This story, by reporter Beth Barrett, puts it down very clearly and it tells a very direct tale of how our Mayor Tony is involved in this mess, as it turns out, again for his own career advancement.

"Career Advancement," all for Tony, and it's the reason for most of what Tony does. Notice it's not doing "what is good for the city," because that doesn't happen here. A lot in the story is the same information as what I posted earlier today, but I did not copy that from this story. Lots of the same things show up because both just report the same facts that are seen as the whole series of events have unfolded. You know, it's like two play-by-play announcers describing the same game, one is broadcasting for the home team and the other is sending the story back home to the visiting team. Tony and friends try to hide things and sometimes they do get away with it since they are career politicians who manipulate things while they make a living at it.

"David" in the title here is David Nahai, a lawyer Tony appointed to be the DWP general manager and is loyal to TONY- you know that, too: "When he says 'jump', you say 'How high?'" Expect nothing EVER from David that goes against the Mayor's decisions. And that's how it is here in this story.

Read the story, it's much shorter than my version and she's the one paid for writing anyway.

You still come up with the bottom line, we in L.A. are being asked to sign off on a bad deal that benefits the UNION- oh, I forgot- the "Brian" part in my title is for "Brian D'Arcy" who runs the IBEW in the DWP operations, the union big wig. Brian is the one who put together lots of the terms. Remember there's a part written into this Measure that requires the IBEW workers only to handle installation. Gee, that's one part that Brian can claim credit for. Can you tell? And the idea of Unions is that the benefit of any deal the Union makes is going to .... the Union, not the DWP, not the Consumers or the City, but the UNION. That's always the way the game is played. No surprises here.

The idea that this is a locked in deal means it is going to be costing us more just on the basis that there is no competition for the work and THAT means "not an ecomical deal." IBEW: 1, Consumers:0. And on it goes.

Tony gets the credit for this, as the story tells you. I knew that part just from knowing Tony and keeping track of his antics. I used to support him but somewhere after losing the first election for Mayor, he turned bad and not just bad as a person, but bad in hurting people financially for one part and by dragging L.A,. into more wasteful things that are not honest. His personal family life is important as well, and you already know that part, so you won't expect to see the same family photos in campaign brochures this time around. But I don't need discussion on that aspect to decide against a second term for Tony.

There's a Mayoral Candidate Forum in Eagle Rock "Center for Arts" this Thursday night at 7:00 pm for all candidates to talk, and it's not even a debate, just a "tell us about yourself and why you should be mayor" kind of thing and a sort of brief mixer afterward. Well, Tony is not coming because of a "schedule conflict," according to his aide. I will tell you right now that the conflict is that his schedule rules out any appearances with any of the challengers. That way Tony doesn't goof up and lose votes- or even worse, by allowing some words of truth to come out - maybe even about "Solar Measure B."

Imagine that. Mayor Tony can't explain it to us, doesn't have the exact cost, and still wants us to give him complete authority to run up expenses and to approve later changes without any other supervision or vote. (and the story shows there LOTS of information still MISSING- the EXACT COSTS is just one of the things that should sink this deal on that basis alone. "You want to charge me and you still don't know how much it's going to cost us?" And he will be long gone when the entire impact of this will be realized, another nice deal for him.

Please check the story and don't rely on me only when you form your own opinion. Tony, David and Brian are on the same side- and it's not yours.

Steve Lopez in the L.A. Times- Should Mayor enter debate? What's to hide?

Steve Lopez: "Mayoral race is worth a debate"- Vote on that decision on same page as the story. Mayor ducks from the challengers. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez28-2009jan28,0,5532518.column

Election time will be here in just over one month. Compared to the presidential elections there’s not been much of any widespread news about the race for Mayor of the City of Los Angeles. That was the case until today when Steve Lopez, columnist for the L.A. TIMES wrote in his column about the fact that the mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has refused to participate in any debates with challengers for the office.

Lopez’ column is the first real commentary on Walter Moore, the candidate for mayor who, of all challengers, has raised the most money for campaign funding, over $200,000.00, but no one really knows ABOUT him or any of the other candidates where the general public is concerned. (Moore's website: http://web.mac.com/waltermoore/WalterMooreForMayor/Home.html )

Lopez mentions only Moore and not any of the others, including Zuma Dogg, a friend who I think has learned a lot from attending city council meetings for well over 2 years. ZD has had better attendance at the 3 meetings per week than some council members, many of whom wind up missing important matters, and many just missing a lot of meetings, like Jack Weiss, a council member running for City Attorney.

My opinion has always been that if you want the vote of the public, then you should earn it and not just expect it. Antonio Villaraigosa has become so smug in his job as mayor, a job he has done very poorly, that is, when he decides to stay in the city instead of campaign for Hillary Clinton for President, and then shift to Obama when Hillary ended her attempt. Also part of the road trip was Antonio’s need to travel around the country to raise campaign funds for this election. It’s kind of funny that he’s collecting money to be reelected as mayor of a city that these donors don’t even live in.

Antonio’s focus on getting as much money as he can to pay for ads to convince people he’s great and he’s working for you all the time, things that are completely unsupported by any facts and that would actually or “should” actually cause an uprising of voters against him.

In Los Angeles, you don’t have a very informed body of voters. Campaign propaganda gets to be a very effective tool when reach people who do not bother to look beyond the advertising. When you get your news from television as your main source, it’s like getting the TMZ version of life, more than any real news. Listening to radio will do more to inform but even radio news is not evenly available.

This all leaves the voter to rely heavily on what comes to him or her by the one-sided presentations typical of political ads. Tony Villaraigosa depends on this condition and the campaign funds he raised while traveling out of L.A. amount to over $3,000,000 (that’s right, THREE MILLION DOLLARS, to be spent to keep him in office. Like I said, don’t expect there to be anything objective in those ads. Honesty is not part of the political gain.

Tony wants to win and he is so sure of it that he will just skip any debates and FORGET ABOUT VOTERS as usual until he needs them.

VOTERS deserve some respect from a candidate- he’s asking US for our vote, we are asking HIM for his approval. THIS IS RIGHT WHERE IT’S ALL TURNED AROUND and there is complete and utter contempt the voters, especially regarding their needs in terms of honesty and some truth. With Mayor Tony, that’s asking too much. Debating ANYONE for him would show the flaws he has to hide. Someone doing a good job would gladly entertain challenges and be able to HANDLE QUESTIONS with some confidence, not trickery and playing out a strategy to cover up things.

The Mayor has become such a publicity whore that he finds his way to tragedies in the news. Anywhere there are cameras clicking or tape rolling is where you can expect to see the Mayor, even if he really has no legitimate function or business to make his presence necessary at the scene. Sometimes his presence entirely inappropriate, but Tony cares only about getting his face on camera and more publicity to try to cover up the true picture. Remember the recent train crash that happened in Chatsworth? There was Tony to give us the updates on what was happening as if he were the news reporter there.

The head safety official working on the scene normally handles this. In this case, the City Fire Chief was the man on that job, but Tony actually bumped him out to take over at the mike, while he also put on a fire fighter's yellow coat that might make you think he was doing some of the rescue work.

It’s all for appearances, like a magic act that tricks you into believing something that isn’t really happening like it first looked to you. That’s Tony’s entire administration of the past, coming up on 4 years. It was 4 years of planning for the next election and the next political moves, when you could see all the while that the city was being run on auto pilot, with the Council doing most of the decisions for the mayor to just come by and approve when he was in town.

And now, after the Presidential election is done and his own race is rapidly approaching, the mayor is staying around longer inside the city limits, but he still cannot stay in his city hall office. Tony has to find those camera lenses for his own performances. The family of 7 that was killed by the father in Wilmington was completely shocking and a horrible event, but Tony found that HE was NEEDED there on the scene. It wasn’t the police and counselors and other emergency responders on the scene who were important, only Tony. The EVENT, with the loss of the lives of an entire family ws not bad enough. It was NEWS, so that was enough for Tony to do this ghoulish appearance, saying NOTHING THAT WE DIDN’T ALREADY THINK AND SHOWING NO RESPECT for the sadness of the friends and family of the deceased. But Tony got his face in the cameras to show us HE’S important.

I forgot for a moment that the L.A. Weekly’s story has it right, “Antonio Villaraigosa, the All-About-Me Mayor” who works 11% of the time on real city business and spend 89% traveling, attending fundraisers and other personal matters, all documented in the story which based it’s calculations on the calendars that it was entitled to receive according to the law. http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/news/the-all-about-me-mayor/

Well, as Steve Lopez’ column says, maybe Tony will win, but aren’t the citizens entitled to hearing him in a debate for the voters of Los Angeles to know what there is from each Moore and Villaraigosa to give to voters? Lopez thinks it’s pretty arrogant of Tony to refuse to present any kind of information to voters that he could give in a debate.

I say that Tony should debate Moore and include the other challengers, too. Most of them are only known to a few people and Zuma Dogg is one of the grass roots challengers who got way over the 500 valid petition signatures almost entirely by himself in order to qualify to be on the March 3 ballot. It worked well for him so that he could personally hear from people as to what they thought about matter's including the city's needs and conditions.

David Hernandez, another candidate, is an activist on the ballot as well, and was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that tried to have the winning city ballot measure overturned by the court to cancel the EXTENSION of the term limits to three terms from two, a measure that the City Council intentionally and dishonestly described as “limiting” as in shortening, not “extending the limits” like it actually did. It was all done by them to keep their jobs longer, and 5 of them benefited from this voter approval that I call a voter deception.

Hernandez recently returned to the appellate court to hear the decision. The court there rejected his challenge that relied on the actions being in violation of the city charter, saying that while it could not be done by the state government, the 2-in-1 law was not prohibited specifically by the city's charter.

So if you think that Tony is such a great individual, just think about why Tony could only could get hurt and not helped from being in a debate- maybe something might come out such as "the truth." That's a threat to his image; “the truth” about what he’s done and what he’s not done.

Of course the Mayor is not into truth- that’s his enemy. I just said that the campaign money will pay for ads on TV and radio. And the money will give you those very fine glossy brochures in your mail that should include lots of the pictures that Tony’s generated from all his necessary appearances. I see Tony proclaiming, “I’m the pothole king” and figure that it’s all that matters to him, the publicity. It brings to mind the Sit’N’Sleep set of commercials where the owner “Larry” is always doing something to sell more mattresses and making deals that make his accountant say, “You’re killing me, Larry.” Tony is the huckster, hustling the voters for something he’s shown he does not deserve. He needs to be the “One-Term Mayor.”

One other item missing from Tony's election brochure and website this year will be the same family man style of photos he used last time around. We all know why that is the case. Nice job, Mayor.

See the Steve Lopez column online (linked at the top of this item) in the "California" section of the L.A. TIMES, and make your selection online to VOTE on your opinion, Should Tony debate? Most responders are saying “Yes”