To hear a bracingly candid assessment of Los Angeles politics, look no further than Brian D'Arcy, the labor leader whose union represents 8,000 employees at the Department of Water and Power, the nation's largest municipal utility.
The man who runs the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 is no fan of the city's neighborhood councils, calling them "dysfunction-palooza." He is critical of certain environmentalists, saying they place the interests of their corporate backers over the welfare of the city.
And even though he devised the solar energy plan known as Measure B, D'Arcy is a withering critic of other DWP environmental initiatives. He is especially vocal about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's drive to ensure that 20% of the utility's power comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2010.
" 'Environmental leadership' isn't meeting some artificial deadline by any means necessary," he said. "Environmental leadership is actually creating economic development while cleaning the air where you live, putting people to work and linking the environment to it. That's not really what's going on, if you ask me."
Measure B , billed heavily as a "green" jobs initiative, went down to defeat at the polls March 3. But it thrust D'Arcy, frequently described as the most powerful man at the DWP, into the spotlight as never before. After years of wielding power behind the scenes, the 58-year-old Silver Lake resident has reluctantly begun attending news conferences, newspaper editorial board interviews and even one heated campaign debate on Measure B in Mar Vista.
Even after the election, D'Arcy continues to speak out, using his dry wit to skewer not only the DWP's general manager, H. David Nahai, but the utility's efforts to secure solar power in the Mojave Desert and geothermal energy in the Salton Sea.
The union leader said there is "not a chance" that the DWP would reach the mayor's 20% goal by the end of 2010. And he has vowed to persuade the DWP's five-member commission to do what voters would not: approve his solar plan, which would use the utility's workforce to add 400 megawatts of solar panels across L.A.
"He does not feel that he lost the election," said S. David Freeman, a harbor commissioner and a Measure B supporter who ran the DWP until 2001. "He put this issue out in the public in a way that it wasn't before, and the impression that I have is that he intends to continue to push for it."
