LA WATCHDOG - Eric Garcetti was not elected mayor because voters believed his campaign malarkey about how to balance the budget and fix our streets. He won because many fiscally prudent voters cast their ballots against the City’s campaign funding public unions, epitomized by Union Bo$$ Brian d’Arcy, the public be damned business manager of the IBEW, our Department of Water and Power’s domineering union, and his gangster like attempt to buy City Hall.
Underlying IBEW Union Bo$$ d’Arcy’s investment of almost $3 million of his members’ dues in Wendy Greuel’s mismanaged and failed campaign was his desire to control City Hall and the City’s secretive Executive Employee Relations Committee (the “EERC”) so that he could extract yet another exorbitant wage increase from DWP and its beleaguered Ratepayers. He would also be able to fight off any reasonable attempts to have DWP employees contribute to their very generous health care benefit and to reform the DWP’s severely underfunded pension plan.
Union Bo$$ d’Arcy will be pounding the table demanding that his union have the exclusive right to build, operate, and maintain all DWP’s renewable energy projects, not only in Los Angeles, but throughout California. This over reaching demand is reminiscent of Measure B, Mayor Villaraigosa’s Solar Initiative that was rejected by the voters in March of 2009 because it would have saddled Ratepayers with billions in extra costs associated with the reliance on notoriously overstaffed and inefficient DWP construction work crews.
But the thuggish behavior of Union Bo$$ d’Arcy and his desire to conduct labor negotiations behind closed doors with the City’s highly compromised EERC highlights why the City’s labor practices must be reformed. In particular, all labor negotiations must be open and transparent where the City Council, the Ratepayers Advocate, the Ratepayers, and the Neighborhood Councils are properly informed on a timely basis and have adequate time to review and analyze any proposed labor agreements.
The five member EERC consists of the Mayor, the City Council President, and three additional members of the City Council. It is charged with overseeing the City’s labor negotiations, contracts, and employee relations.
But this is the same organization that gave away the store in 2007 by approving an unsupportable, five year, 25% wage increase to the City’s civilian workers. They also approved the 11% to 19% multiyear raise for DWP workers although they are paid 25% to 40% more than workers of other regional utilities. Then two of its then members, Dennis Zine and Eric Garcetti, had the audacity to tell us that this new contract saved Ratepayers over $300 million.
Needless to say, these elected officials are influenced by the union leadership, either through generous campaign contributions or threats of retaliation. This creates a massive conflict of interest that does not work in favor of the Ratepayers or hard working Angelenos.
The current contract between the DWP and the IBEW which represents over 90% of DWP’s employees expires in October of 2014.
The first step is to entrust all labor negotiations to the DWP management and not to the conflicted EERC.
Prior to the beginning of any negotiations, the DWP management must develop detailed information on IBEW wages and benefits and how they compare to other regional utilities to determine if any raises are warranted and whether employees should contribute to the cost of their very generous medical and pension benefits.
DWP also needs to develop a program recommended by PA Consulting that allows for flexible work rules so that the Department is able to benchmark its operations, determine the proper levels of staffing, and contract out noncore operations.
Finally, any new contract must be made available to the public for at least 60 days before it is approved so the City Council, the Ratepayers Advocate, and the charter authorized Neighborhood Councils have adequate time to review and analyze its economics and work rules.
These recommendations will not be very popular with Union Bo$$ d’Arcy and certain politically ambitious members of the City Council who view DWP as their own cash cow. But Ratepayers are sick and tired of being ripped off for over $1 billion* a year by City Hall and its cronies. This was evident when 78% of the voters approved the formation of the Ratepayers Advocate in March 2011.
But the issue of open and transparent labor negotiations with the IBEW is not an isolated issue as far as the voters are concerned. Rather, it is closely tied to the lack of trust and confidence in City Hall as a result of all the self serving shenanigans of our Elected Elite and their buddies who occupy the bowels of City Hall.
There are many issues that are important to voters.
We have oversized developments that will cause massive gridlock in their neighborhoods. Just look at the big money shenanigans associated with the Millennium Hollywood and money laundering Alan Casden’s development on the already clogged Westside at Sepulveda and Exposition.
We have lunar cratered streets and cracked sidewalks, but no plans to maintain and repair these core assets that essential to the City’s economic well being.
We also have a budget that relies on unrealistic concessions from our civilian unions which will result in a cumulative deficit over the next four years of almost $800 million.
And there is no plan to balance the budget, fund our pension plans, and fix our streets and the rest of our failing infrastructure.
Until Garcetti and the Wesson led City Council engage in real budget, pension, and work place reform and learn that they need to be respectful of Ratepayers, local neighborhoods, and their Neighborhood Councils, the odds of the voters of Los Angeles approving the Englander/Buscaino Street Repair Tax that will increase our real estate taxes by up to 6% are slim, very slim indeed.
(* The over $1 billion rip off consists of the $250 million transfer fee / tax from the Power System to City’s General Fund; the $300 million from the 10% City Utility Tax; the $250 million IBEW Labor Premium (not including the impact of restrictive work rules); pet projects such as Griffith and Elysian Parks and the Silver Lake Reservoir; and the dumping of surplus City employees (and their unfunded pension liabilities) on DWP.)
(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee, the Ratepayer Advocate for the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, and a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Hear Jack every Tuesday morning at 6:20 on McIntyre in the Morning, KABC Radio 790.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 43
Pub: May 28, 2013