Morning Briefs on the Dsyfunctional DWP Political Machine for Monday

We commit our Monday Morning Briefs to exclusive coverage of the proposed DWP Employees Wage Increases and the fallout from last Friday's City Clowncil Central Committee Special Joint Hearings on the matter.

DWP Headquarters on Hope Street.

 

With no delays, we link you to this important post by Village to Village Blogger Paul Hatfield on Friday's "Boss D'Arcy Dog and Pony Show" at City Hall and information on tonight's emergency meeting of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates at City Hall. An excerpt below ......

Angry citizens appeared before the City Council on Friday to protest the contract. Their arguments were heard only after a dog and pony show put on by the Council praising the deal.
What’s more, the City Council wants to approve the contract by August 30th; the Mayor plans to veto it, but it is likely the Council will override it.

There is an emergency meeting of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates this Monday, 7 PM, August 19, at City Hall to discuss the crisis. I only wish I could attend.
You can reach out to your Council Member and urge him (or she in CD 6) to delay the vote on the contract by 90 days and support a city-wide series of town halls to air the details. For those of you in Council District 2, please contact Paul Krekorian at (818) 755-7676 or e-mail his office: Councilmember.Krekorian@lacity.org. ** In CD 14, call Councilman Jose Huizar's City Hall Office at (213) 473-7014.

** Mayor Eric Garcetti used Friday to reinvent the DWP Board of Commissioners in his vision. Whether this helps in needed reforms will be fodder for further review.

** Former LA Times Scribe and Ethics Commission Member, now the "Westside White Guy Emeritas" at the LA Observed Blog Bill Boyarsky, muses on new City of Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin's use of "BIG DATA" (via computer) and its impact on the current DWP saga. An excerpt below .......

The Galperin team had to dig through a DWP salary system that listed at least 616 pay codes used by the department to boost salaries over base pay, including money for overtime, hazardous work, meals, and bonuses for working in inclement weather, working with cement and operating special equipment.
Even without this supplemental pay, Galperin found that DWP employees generally earn 20.8 percent more in base pay than other city workers. The controller’s detailed analysis unearthed such details as: DWP tree surgeons are paid 30 per cent more than those in the Bureau of Street Services; DWP custodians get 26 percent more than those cleaning up in city hall; DWP garage attendants receive 20 percent more than those in other city garages. There’s much more, available at http://controller.lacity.org/Salary_Information/index.htm.
Galperin wanted to create a database that compares salaries side by side. But the city’s technological infrastructure was so backward that he had to use a free outside website that is more user friendly, http://controllergalperin.wix.com/controlpanel.

...... its so refreshing to have a Controller who shies away from "Photo Ops Audits" for once. 

** Wondering what Ron Kaye's thoughts were on Friday's theatrics at the "Horseshoe on Spring Street"? An excerpt below ............

Propagandist Supreme Paul Krekorian, as the Councilman in charge, was proud to pay homage to the “unusual,unprecedented, historic” nature of this “open and transparent” event — words that had never before spoken in such earnestness in this Temple of Democracy, as the mayor describes it.
Assisted by rising City Council star Felipe Fuentes, he led the public and his colleagues through a more than three-hour performance worthy of theatrical awards though it did drag as he went on and on through the drudgery of having each and every highly paid member of the cast of bureaucrats formerly known as public servants — the CLA, the CAO, the CEO, the RPA, the CA — swear allegiance to the story that was so well scripted and choreographed with such attention to detail. It was hard not to wonder why they never work as hard to solve the people’s problems as they do to conceal them.

** We had a longer than usual visit from the top paid columnist at the "Old Gray Collectivist Hag on Spring Street" (aka LA Times) Steve Lopez at City Hall on Friday. Thus, on the Seventh Day, he produces this missive on the theatrics. No excerpt due to Collectivist Hag's Pay Wall Policy.

Your thoughts ..............
Scott Johnson in CD 14