CommentsLA WATCHDOG--In April of 2014, the Los Angeles 2020 Commission recommended the establishment of the Los Angeles Utility Rate Commission to oversee the operations and finances of our Department of Water and Power, determine our utility rates in an objective manner, and appoint the General Manager.
But this attempt to eliminate or minimize the “political interference” from City Hall, the Mayor, and their cronies never saw the light of day as City Council President Herb Wesson and Energy and Environment Chair Felipe Fuentes buried this recommendation deep in the bowels of City Hall.
Two other excellent measures posed by Mickey Kantor’s LA 2020 Commission were also deep sixed by Wesson. These included the formation of an Office of Transparency and Accountability to monitor the finances of our cash strapped City and the establishment of the Commission for Retirement Security to review the City’s seriously underfunded pension plans and to make “concrete recommendations on how to achieve equilibrium on retirement costs by 2020.”
However, last week, Controller Ron Galperin, in collaboration with the Mayor and City Council, released the charter mandated Industrial, Economic, and Administrative Survey covering DWP that called for, among other things, the reform of the Department’s governance. According to this 581 page report, the current system is plagued by too many cooks in the kitchen, where no one entity is responsible for the Department’s operations and where our all-knowing Elected Elite are second guessing management, developing unrealistic policies and goals, and have no respect for the wallets of the Ratepayers. This is compounded by the overall lack of transparency, flawed management information systems, unclear lines of authority, and a general distrust of the Department and the City’s meddling politicians.
Navigant Consulting, the well regarded firm that prepared the IEA Survey, called for a hybrid committee of City Hall insiders to develop a consensus on a solution that would then be placed on the 2017 ballot.
But this recommendation is flawed because it does not include input from the Ratepayers and the Neighborhood Councils.
The Ratepayer Advocate and its consultant, Navigant, are also calling for “Performance Reporting” to be included in the ordinance authorizing the increase in our utility rates. This would require management to provide the Ratepayers Advocate and the Board of Commissioners with periodic reports identifying performance metrics and goals and comparing them to actual results. This would result in increased transparency, especially if this information was made available to the Ratepayers.
The Ratepayers Advocate also indicated that the Water System’s proposed five year rate increase of 25% to 30%, or about 5% a year, was “reasonable.” Unfortunately, he found that the rate increase was less than what is needed to repair its aging pipes, valves, and water mains, but this was justifiable because DWP does not currently have the capacity to meet the desired long-run replacement cycle because of constraints on outsourcing and anticipated retirements.
Navigant’s report indicated that the Department does a good job of keeping the water flowing and the lights on, but that to meet the future operational, organizational, and financial challenges, it is necessary to reform its current system of governance in order to be a dependable and efficient provider of water and power.
And while this reform has met some resistance by Mayor Garcetti and certain members of the City Council who want to treat Ratepayers as mushrooms (in the dark and topped with manure) and as an ATM, now is the time to address change and bring the Department into the 21st Century. With, of course, input from the Ratepayers.
(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee and a member of the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at: [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 101
Pub: Dec 15, 2015
Multiple Reports, Same Conclusion: It’s Time to Bring DWP Into the 21st Century
