L.A. Now Live: DWP resists requests to disclose employee pay

On May 22, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power released five years of payroll data with nearly 1,200 of the roughly 10,000 employees’ names redacted.

On Tuesday, a judge ordered a lawyer for the largest DWP employees union to return Aug. 1 with a whittled-down list that includes only employees who can prove a legitimate safety concern to justify keeping their name redacted.

The union filed a lawsuit last month seeking to block the department from disclosing to the Los Angeles Times the names and salaries of members who claimed they had a safety concern.

Join us at 9 a.m. as we discuss, with Times reporter Jack Dolan, Tuesday’s court hearing and The Times’ fight to force DWP to disclose who its employees are and how much they are paid.

On May 22, the department released five years of payroll data with nearly 1,200 of the roughly 10,000 employees’ names redacted.

Overall, total pay for DWP employees rose 15% between 2008 and 2012, despite the economic slump that ravaged the city’s budget and drove down household incomes in Los Angeles. Total pay includes salary, overtime and a wide range of other compensation such as unused sick and vacation time and cost-of-living bonuses.

Employees seeking anonymity made $110,730 on average in 2012, 12.4% more than workers whose names were released.

“The odds are nobody is going to be excused from having their name disclosed,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfan said Tuesday.

Tuesday’s hearing was the latest round in a fight that began in early February, when The Times filed a California Public Records Act request for the DWP’s payroll data. At the time, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 90% of department employees, was the largest single cash contributor in the Los Angeles mayor’s race.