Dwp

Average employee pay at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power rose 15% over the last five years, despite an economic slump that ravaged the city's budget, records released Tuesday show. DWP workers received significantly more generous pay increases than other city workers, who received an average raise of 9% over the same period. The median household income for Los Angeles residents - the public utility's customers - fell over roughly the same period, from $48,882 in 2008 to $46,148 in 2011, the latest year for which U.S. census numbers are available.

Eric Garcetti held a narrow lead over Wendy Greuel late Tuesday as the two longtime city officials battled each other - and voter apathy - in the race to become the 42nd mayor of Los Angeles. With more than half the vote still uncounted, the contest remained too close to call. Greuel, addressing supporters at a downtown club, said she expected the election to go into "overtime. " Garcetti, speaking just before midnight, told supporters in Hollywood, "The results aren't all in, but this is shaping up to be a great night.

MAMMOTH LAKES - The people of this small High Sierra ski town have survived drought, forest fires and earthquakes. They have endured economic recessions and volcano scares. But nothing in their history prepared them for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The DWP launched a legal attack six months ago for control of the city's primary source of water, Mammoth Creek, which tumbles down the slopes through town. The utility contends it has owned the water since 1905 and Mammoth Lakes has been poaching for decades.

The two apparent front-runners to replace Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas are veteran public officials with strong connections to the east San Fernando Valley Democratic machine that has sent candidates to City Hall since the mid-1990s. Both also are women, which means the race gives voters the best shot in the city of putting a woman on the overwhelmingly male council. Nury Martinez, a Los Angeles Unified School District board member, and Cindy Montañez, a former state assemblywoman and executive at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, are among six candidates competing in the special election Tuesday to replace Cardenas, who was elected to Congress.

After a year of strong sales and profits, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is coming under new scrutiny, with the city's top money manager charging that the utility has made a habit of waste and profligacy. City Controller Laura Chick has launched a full-scale audit of the city agency, repeatedly accusing DWP officials of wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on lavish parties, community events and staff perks. Making matters worse, state Atty. Gen.

Bluebird Field in Sun Valley was created as a field of dreams, existing only in the netherworld of Hollywood make-believe. MTM Enterprises built it in 1983 as the home of the "Bay City Blues," a fictitious minor league team and a weekly NBC television series bearing the same name. The Blues didn't win very often, but the only statistics that really counted were Nielsen ratings. And they were bad enough to cause the network to drop the series after only eight episodes. It was when the series was canceled and MTM packed up its cameras that a strange thing happened to Bluebird Field: It came to life.

News item: Utility head takes demotion to retire with larger bonus (March 11). Now I know what DWP stands for: Depart With Payola. IRA NICKERSON Studio City

Re "DWP will buy excess solar energy," Jan. 12 Well it's about time. But why should the L.A. Department of Water and Power limit the amount of solar energy it will buy from customers through 2016 to 100 megawatts? Why not buy all the solar power available? Why can't residential customers sell all the power they generate? Residential customers' meters should simply run backward when they generate more power than they are using, essentially selling it back at the same rate they pay. We would end up with a broad-based system less reliant on large, centralized facilities with all the large liabilities (think San Onofre)

One of the exasperating facts of contemporary Los Angeles politics is that City Hall is beset with problems, but its critics are often as misguided as its culprits. That's certainly true when it comes to the Department of Water and Power. In the recent City Council elections, a number of challengers — and incumbents — argued that the DWP is a cesspool of overspending and that the utility's excessive electricity rates stiff consumers to prop up a bloated city bureaucracy. Persuaded, city voters approved two measures intended to rein in the DWP, including the creation of a ratepayer advocate.

Does the Department of Water and Power need more oversight? The recent and perhaps continuing showdown over electricity rate increases suggests that it does. The city owns the utility, but it's still hard for City Council members or the public to get accurate and consistent information on the department's finances, plans and practices. The problem has been exacerbated by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's fumbling attempt to impose a carbon surcharge, supposedly to begin a serious transition from burning dirty coal to relying instead on renewable energy.

The union representing Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees won a temporary restraining order Tuesday, preventing the release of workers' names with their salaries until each employee has had more time to argue that the identity disclosure could pose a safety risk. The names of DWP employees who don't file an objection via their union will be released May 21, election day in the city mayor's race. The decision, by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, essentially removes DWP management from the process of notifying employees that the agency's payroll data has been requested by The Times.

A day after a debate in which they told Los Angeles voters their prime focus as mayor would be promoting job creation, Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti took up the topic Monday, while also continuing a furious debate over union influence in their runoff election. City Controller Greuel met voters at a Century City mall and handed out her glossy 35-page "Leading L.A. Forward" brochure, which includes a multipoint plan that she said would bring more jobs to Los Angeles. City Councilman Garcetti talked with business leaders in North Hollywood about efforts to expand the aerospace industry in Southern California, saying he would look for ways to help with marketing, job training and government regulation.

Average employee pay at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power rose 15% over the last five years, despite an economic slump that ravaged the city's budget, records released Tuesday show. DWP workers received significantly more generous pay increases than other city workers, who received an average raise of 9% over the same period. The median household income for Los Angeles residents - the public utility's customers - fell over roughly the same period, from $48,882 in 2008 to $46,148 in 2011, the latest year for which U.S. census numbers are available.

Despite bitter attacks in recent weeks, the two candidates for mayor of Los Angeles grudgingly conceded in a debate Sunday night that their rival was (mostly) honest and not so different on many of the plans they have for leading the city. That didn't mean City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel didn't find plenty of opportunity for attacks on each other's trustworthiness and independence. But they also laid out records that they said made them most qualified to replace Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is leaving office June 30 after serving the maximum two terms.

It's beginning to look like there's nothing Wendy Greuel wouldn't do to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. Her boatload of big-money backers seems fond of trash-talking gibes so slimy, they're apt to backfire and turn voters off. I hope Greuel takes a lesson from what happened this week, when she castigated opponent Eric Garcetti for accepting support from their former rival. Greuel blanketed black and Latino neighborhoods with mailers blasting Garcetti for accepting the endorsement of Kevin James, a Republican who finished third in the mayoral primary.

A federal court judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power against a state agency it claimed was illegally forcing the city to waste billions of gallons of precious High Sierra water to control dust on dry Owens Lake. U.S. District Court Judge Anthony W. Ishii determined that the issues are for state courts to decide because the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District is a state agency. The DWP has a similar challenge pending in state court.

No one reading "His Brown-Bag Lunch Was Worth Millions" (July 27) could deny Richard Callison deserves his $25,000 reward for spotting "one little clause on exemptions," which exempts DWP from a million-dollar fee they have been paying for 20 years. The really troubling part is that Callison's reward wasn't purely for saving the DWP millions of dollars; it was for the best suggestion of the month! I thought I was reading a Dilbert comic strip converted to text. Do they give $25,000 each month for the best suggestion?

Shortly after lawyers for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees' union filed a lawsuit to delay release of their members' names and current salaries, both mayoral candidates called on the agency to make the information public as soon as possible. The candidates - City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti - also began blaming each other for DWP employee pay that averaged $99,381 in 2011, according to the most recent publicly available data. That was more than 50% higher than the average pay for other city workers, and about 25% higher than employees at comparable public and private utilities, records show.

Employees at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, whose union is the single biggest contributor in the current mayoral race, earned average total pay of nearly $100,000 in 2011, according to a Times analysis of the most recent publicly available payroll data. That's more than 50% higher than the average total pay of all other city employees, The Times found. It's also about 25% higher than employees at comparable public and private utilities, according to a report commissioned by the City Council last year.