Manicures and lap dances, on our dime

I appreciate a cold beer and a quick manicure as much as anyone.

Still, I was stunned last week to discover the lengths to which some workers will go to satisfy those cravings on company time.

First, we had DWP linemen caught on tape passing on-the-clock hours in a strip club and driving their utility trucks around town while drinking beer from paper towel-wrapped cans.

Next came allegations that doctors and nurses at the county-run Olive View hospital got their nails filed and eyebrows waxed on the job at a makeshift beauty salon set up on ventilators in a ward for fragile newborns.

Both situations are “under investigation” by officials whose understated public pronouncements only underscore how dysfunctional things really are.

“Sometimes individuals make bad judgments,” county Health Services official Carol Meyer told Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske. Those individuals were sent home, where they’re collecting their regular paychecks while the incident is “under investigation.”

Over at the Department of Water and Power, six workers have been reassigned while their bosses study the video shot surreptitiously by a KCBS news team. DWP interim head Austin Beutner — also the city’s “business czar,” brought in by Mayor Villaraigosa to clean up the joint — promised that those who “violated our policies will be dealt with accordingly.” Then he quickly took refuge in statistics: An organization with 10,000 employees is bound to have some rule-breakers, he said.

Departmental policies? Office rules? These guys are accused of drinking beer behind the wheel of very big trucks. That’s a crime, not a policy slip-up.

And the bad judgment involved in getting a French manicure on top of a ventilating machine in a room full of at-risk infants — as one physician is alleged to have done — makes me worry about how safe those babies are.

The problem isn’t a couple of bad apples, a few employees skirting the rules. It’s the fact that so many people participated in, or at least kept quiet about, things that were so obviously grievously bad ideas.

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This isn’t a knock on all government employees. Many are working harder than ever, squeezed by pay cuts and furloughs, doing more with less.

The ratio of screw-ups to hard workers is probably not much different in public service than it is in my office, or yours.

But these are people whose salaries we pay, doing jobs that affect the health and safety of others.

Their mistakes hit us in the pocketbook, through the multimillion-dollar judgments we’ll owe if a beer-swilling linesman runs over somebody or if a vulnerable infant dies in a hospital ward that reeks of nail polish fumes.

It’s not just a question of dollars, though. Incidents like this reflect a lack of pride and professionalism and a troubling sense of entitlement: lap dances and manicures as on-duty perks.

In fact, one DWP employee told KCBS that strip club visits are a “tradition” among linesmen when it’s too rainy to work.

I’m not playing moralist. They can spend their lunch hour however they want. But I don’t want to foot the bill for an afternoon of pole-dancing that leaves workers so drunk they have to nap in the truck.

The video was shot at a strip club in Councilwoman Jan Perry’s downtown-area district. They were particularly disturbing for Perry, who has locked horns with the DWP over rate increases.

A veteran DWP linesman’s salary can brush six figures in a good year. “These are the middle-class jobs we fight for. And it seemed like they just sort of took them for granted,” Perry said.

“For every job those guys had, there would be a hundred people lined up behind them to get it. The disrespect they showed, to do what they did in such a brazen manner. . . . That’s what was so hurtful,” she said.

Her colleague, San Fernando Valley Councilman Dennis Zine, said he’s gotten an earful in his district.

“The people in my community are outraged to see what municipal employees are doing,” he said. “It’s a real slap in our face. We just had our rates increased . . . and they’re out there drinking, partying, having a good ol’ time at taxpayers’ expense.”

If the DWP’s investigation confirms what the video appears to show, the employees should be fired and their supervisors called on the carpet, said Zine, who heads the council’s Personnel Committee.

“They’re making a fortune. . . . They think: ‘We can do whatever we want. Nobody can mess with us.’ It’s the attitude, the culture. And we need to send a message that this won’t be tolerated.”

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It wouldn’t be tolerated in the kind of private business that Beutner hails from and that he’s supposed to be attracting to Los Angeles. Those businesses are accountable to customers and their success depends on high standards. So it shouldn’t be tolerated in the public sector.

Longstanding problems at Olive View and DWP are no secret. The hospital is being investigated for alleged understaffing and inadequate medical care. And part of Beutner’s mission was to clean up the rogue municipal utility.

Villaraigosa told The Times’ editorial board that Beutner is supposed to “deconstruct” the agency. Here’s a chance for the business guru to show the public just what that means. It’s time to put into play the four-point reform plan he detailed in an op-ed in our newspaper.

“Here are the four areas I will focus on immediately,” he wrote. Point 1: “Transparency. I want ratepayers to see how their dollars are put to use.”

Thanks to KCBS, now we see. And we don’t like it.

sandy.banks@latimes.com