Power at the DWP

Among the dozen measures the City Council hoped to put to voters on the March 8 ballot was one that would allow it to fire the general manager of the Department of Water and Power and the commissioners to whom he ostensibly reports. To do so, however, they needed the approval of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who vetoed it instead. On Wednesday, as council members meet the mayor’s new nominee to run the department, they will try to muster the 10 votes they need to override. Even the measure’s chief backer, Councilwoman Jan Perry, expects the effort to fall short. Let’s hope she’s right.

There is in fact a political tug of war between the mayor and the council over the DWP, but rather than adjusting the pull on either side of the rope, Los Angeles instead ought to limit the political meddling and return a measure of professionalism and independence to the utility.

Backers of Perry’s measure argue that council oversight is all that has prevented higher rates over the last decade. That may be so, but the argument misses the point. The goal should not be to prevent any and all rate hikes but to keep rates, over the long term, lower than those of competitors and thereby ensure that municipal power remains a good deal for residents. Power rates in Los Angeles are going to rise whether or not the city embarks on expensive new green power programs. Just maintaining the DWP’s generation and delivery capacity requires an investment. Besides, green power is not an option but a mandate; state law requires that the city move production away from dirty coal-burning plants, and the ratepayers’ only choices in coming years will be to pay the costs of cleaner generation or pay fines for failing to do so.

The DWP was never devoid of politics during the 20th century when it built Los Angeles, but it operated under a balanced system in which engineers were allowed to use their expertise without undue tinkering by elected officials. As with most city commissions, the mayor appointed and the council confirmed the five members of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners. Each served a five-year term and was subject to reappointment. Terms were staggered, so that no one mayor or council could sweep out and replace a whole board. The board would then hire — and oversee — a general manager to run the department.

As the decades passed, residents began to place more faith in their elected leaders or — perhaps a better way to say it — less faith in non-elected commissioners. The mayor won the power to appoint (and the council to confirm) the general manager. But the commissioners continued to be in charge, and no general manager who wanted to keep his job could afford to hide data, reports or policies from the board.

But the pendulum swung too far. In the Los Angeles City Charter adopted in 1999, voters put their elected leaders more firmly in charge of nearly every corner of City Hall, including management of the DWP. Commissioners now serve at the mayor’s pleasure, but so does the general manager. The result is that the Board of Water and Power Commissioners has only the illusion of oversight. The utility’s leaders must attend the meetings and go through the motions of answering questions, but the general manager knows (as do the commissioners) that the only person whose opinion matters is the mayor.

On paper, there was a point to such a system. Voters elected Villaraigosa in 2005 and again four years later after he vowed to make Los Angeles a greener city — and that meant making the Department of Water and Power cleaner and greener than state law required. The mayor recognized, correctly, that investment in green power was the key to continued reliability and rates thatwould in the long run be lower than those offered by private utilities that only sluggishly dabbled in renewable energy. The mayor also correctly recognized that the DWP culture was still wedded to coal, and that the agency needed some updating.

In practice, though, mayoral control has resulted in chaos. General managers shuttle in and out, policy discussions take place behind closed doors, and the utility’s labor union uses its clout with the mayor to make decisions about the agency’s direction — and about compensation of employees — that previously were made by independent management.

Now that the mayor has nominated energy consultant Ron Nichols as his sixth DWP general manager, the department needs to be moved a step back. When charter reformers redesigned city government more than a decade ago, they wisely avoided tinkering with the Christopher Commission reforms that already had been put into place at the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of Rodney King showed that organizational change was imperative. Those reforms included a chief who was appointed by and somewhat accountable to the mayor but answerable to an old-style staggered and independent commission.

The DWP, likewise, should return to a commission system that restores integrity by restoring a balance between independence and accountability. Instead of offering voters measures to increase its own power to meddle, the council should offer a plan for a less-political DWP. If it fails to do so, Los Angeles may need a Water and Power Christopher Commission to set the utility on the right course.