LA WATCHDOG - One of the many candidates desirous of succeeding Janice Hahn as the Harbor’s representative on the City Council is Pat McOsker, the President of the politically powerful United Firefighters of Los Angeles City (“UFLAC”).
McOsker, who recently moved back to San Pedro after years in Redondo Beach, received the expected endorsement of the UFLAC as well as two other influential City unions, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
More importantly, he has received the blessing of campaign funding Union Bo$$ Brian d’Arcy, the public-be-damned business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (the “IBEW”), the Department of Water and Power’s domineering union.
However, McOsker does not have the endorsements of the California Democratic Party or the Police Protective League.
According to the first campaign finance reports, McOsker has raised more money than any other candidate, $325,000, in large part because of the $150,000 in Independent Expenditures contributed by Bo$$ d’Arcy and the IBEW front, Working Californians, the same bullying entity that sued the eight authors of the opposition argument to the infamous Measure B back in March of 2009.
However, another d’Arcy puppet in City Hall is not in the best interests of the DWP Ratepayers and their wallets.
As it is, Union Bo$$ d’Arcy has Mayor Villaraigosa and Controller Wendy Greuel in his hip pocket since the IBEW was the largest contributor to their election campaigns.
We saw d’Arcy’s influence and brute power in November when his menacing presence in the back of the Council Chambers intimidated the IBEW Eight into emasculating the Ratepayers Advocate ballot measure and deep sixing the ballot amendment that would have allowed the City Council to remove a DWP Commissioner or the General Manager with a two-thirds vote.
Union Bo$$ d’Arcy is also adamantly opposed to the Ratepayers Advocate and any increased transparency and accountability. In the past, he has unilaterally rejected the recommendations of the last two charter mandated Industrial, Economic, and Administrative Surveys that called for “benchmarking,” a widely used technique that would have allowed the Department to measure the efficiency of its operations compared to other regional utilities.
Of course, any efficiency studies would have exposed the IBEW Labor Premium that is estimated to cost Ratepayers over $250 million a year. It would also have highlighted the burdensome and costly work rules that result in overstaffing, featherbedding, and highly inefficient IBEW construction work crews, the cost of which is passed along to the Ratepayers.
Probably the most blatant use of raw power was Measure B, the Mayor’s 2009 Solar Initiative that would have granted the IBEW the monopoly to install 400 megawatts of photo voltaic solar power in the City of Los Angeles. If this measure had passed, Ratepayers would have been socked with billions in extra costs over the next twenty or thirty years.
Fortunately, Measure B was rejected by the voters on March 8, 2009, not only because of its over the top cost, but the fact that the electorate realized that it was a blatant payback by Mayor Villaraigosa for over $400,000 of campaign contributions by the IBEW to his 2005 election race against then Mayor Hahn.
While Union Bo$$ d’Arcy funded the winning campaigns of Villaraigosa and Greuel in 2005 and 2009, respectively, some of his other “investments” have not been so successful.
In 2009, despite contributions of around $2,000,000 from the IBEW, the Mayor, and their self serving buddies, Measure B was voted down by 50.5% of the voters, led by a “rag tag” group of “professional antagonists and bellyachers” who were barely able to pay their legal bills.
In the spring of 2009 runoff elections, Union Bo$$ d’Arcy invested millions in two real losers. In Council District 2, IBEW pet Chris Essel was soundly defeated by Paul Krekorian. And in the City Attorney’s race, the d’Arcy endorsed candidate, the then Council Member Jack Weiss, was trounced by Carmen Trutanich, a newcomer from the Harbor. Weiss even failed to win his own Westside Council District.
And in the recent March City Council elections, Council District 8 incumbent Bernard Parks defeated former DWP Commissioner Forescee Hogan-Rowles who was supported by millions from the IBEW and other municipal unions.
City voters have demonstrated on at least four occasions that they are able to see through the maze of campaign rhetoric from IBEW candidates, knowing that the d’Arcy stooges, like Measure B, are BAD, bad for LA and bad for their wallets.
So on November 8, Harbor voters are urged to vote, but not for Pat McOsker, the puppet of campaign financing Union Bo$$ Brian d’Arcy.
(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee and the Ratepayer Advocate for the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at: [email protected] ) –cw
Tags: Pat McOsker, IBEW, Brian d’Arcy, CD15, campaign, election, California Democratic Party
CityWatch
Vol 9 Issue 80
Pub: Oct 7, 2011
