City workers head to DWP and big raises, too.

Well, well, well. We wondered if the city worker refugees who were transferred to keep from being in the layoff group were keeping their same pay- something that would have been lost with a layoff- or if they shared a seat at the table to share in the lavish feast that s the DWP's pay and benefits. See what's turning out to be a change of fortune for the city workers who were on the brink of discharge and headed for the unemployment line, but now find a very secure and warm fuzzy place with raises for virtually nothing done to earn them aside from changing to the DWP.

Did the city council who worries about jamming more city workers into the DWP's separate department think about all of this? What do you think? They continue to dawdle and really have been talking about layoffs for about a year, and since April if you count time from the date of Mayor Tony Villaraigosa's 2009 State of the City speech. Tony laid it all out and NOTHING was done- of course, not much was being done on his end since he short on time continuously spent in the city. He leaves lots of work delegated and that's leaving much up for grabs.


So read the story to see if this I have written is close to a majority view or a totally baseless complaint of some eccentric contemporary of the Mayor.

How City Hall Cuts Costs: Workers Transfered to DWP Get Raises Up To 50 Percent, THE LIST
By Ron Kaye on March 19, 2010 10:03 AM

http://ronkayela.com/2010/03/how-city-hall-cuts-costs-worke.html

More Raises approved Friday for DWP, but Council unanimously sees this as a "good deal."

"Pay increase for DWP managers gets OK -
EXPENSE: Retroactive boost is expected to cost agency $5.5 million.
By Rick Orlov, Staff Writer, L.A. Daily News, Updated: 03/05/2010 10:34:17 PM PST
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_14523162

This is an example of the direction the city is going, one big downward random spiral that ends with a big thud upon impact with the ground at the bottom of it's travel. You have city employee layoffs announced in the thousands- and the next several years are as bleak on the deficit side of things, but you have the DWP being your biggest regular bill next to housing and transportation, normally, if you happen to live in the city.

But Jack Humphreville, an activist and a member of the DWP Oversight Committee, questioned the decision.

"The council is approving a lump sum payment to the highest-paid city workers at the same time the DWP is shortchanging the cash-starved city with its transfer," Humphreville said, referring to a $147 million revenue transfer approved this week.

"At the same time, the IBEW is forcing the DWP to forgo competitive bidding on solar projects that will end up costing ratepayers even more."

The DWP is pretty much in the hands of the IBEW who have made this agency their own. If you heard the 8 a.m. special panel discussion in City Hall last week about the budget, hosted by CM Jose Huizar, you heard a lot of ideas on how we can get better representation, in the varied theories and observations that the panelists presented.

If you heard the ending, the last panelist, Ron Kaye, stated observations and drew some conclusions that were more along realistic lines than purely theoretical. Kaye's view, although very accurate, was somthing of a welcome surprise with it's bluntness, noting that the IBEW's leverage is the ability to shut down the city if it doesn't get it's way.

How did things get that way? Probably in the same way that we have see the arrival of the current budget disaster- the Council Members and Mayor applied the "Why Not?" test to all requests and proposals presented from the union, the IBEW local, and really, as with most things, they did not think of the long term or even many short term consequences and risks that were created by their decisions. The union, for their end of things in discussions and negottiations, kept leading the way for all kinds of things to come to the union's side, but the Council and Mayor followed that lead until we reached the end of the road now and it's turned out to be a cliff with a big drop.

It didn't happen overnight and other administrations may be sharing the blame, but when you get closer to the fire, you should have to noticee the heat. But before that unavoidable sensation, there were some warning signgs and maybe even see some smoke and flames before then, visible from some distance. Those signs were not heeded, and avoidance and remedial actions never really happened as the downhill slide to come was just made steeper while all the money being handled in the real estate market was too good to be true- and we saw that ended with a the falling dominoes effect reaching far and wide.

So now, the City "leaders" have no ability to deal on an equal footing with the unions and especially the IBEW. The results? Now we get these insane deals that happen as we have heard Council members discuss layoffs of police, brown out reductions in ambulance service in fire stations and some 4,000 layoffs that CM Alarcon was vehement in his correction of CAO Santana's term, and insisted that this should be calle "reductions in 4,000 positions." Call it what you want, there's still a big problem with the money to spread around and it's getting worse by the day. But at least the DWP is going to stay strong and comfy as they plan how to get out the next round of rate hikes for a list of things that will bring in more cash. And there's more information on that to come.

Mayor wants your money for DWP again- Beware.

"L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa considers a carbon surcharge for DWP customers - The extra revenue would be used to move the utility from coal to wind, solar and geothermal sources of energy. The mayor wants 20% of the agency's power to come from renewables by December." By David Zahniser, L.A. Times, February 28, 2010. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dwp-rates1-2010mar01,0,4539226.story Again, the Mayor is creating the result as he pleases to punish L.A. residents for his own sins.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.