L.A.’s Top-Paid Employee, DWP Chief Lane, to Retire

Paul H. Lane, who rose from water pump designer to general manager during his 40 years at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, announced Thursday that he will retire next year as head of the nation’s largest municipal utility.

Lane, 66, has run the department since 1983 and is the city’s highest-paid employee, earning $150,566 a year. During his career he has seen the DWP grow from a utility with a $140-million annual budget into a $2.65-billion business.

Lane made the announcement at a meeting of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners, which oversees DWP operations. He said he was leaving the job to “start a new career of music, writing and bicycling along the beach.”

A congenial manager who is said to have a knack for working with people, Lane is credited with improving communication and morale at the department, and with working well with other utilities and the City Council. He has maintained a low public profile, although his name appears in the media each year during council debates on salary increases.

Lane earns $50,000 more than Mayor Tom Bradley and $6,000 more than the city’s second-highest paid employee, General Manager Clifton Moore of the Department of Airports.

Lane said the notoriety arising from his salary bothered him at first. When he retires, probably in March, he will take with him a $126,000-a-year pension. “Salary is something that you like to think is kind of private,” he said.

Lane’s first job at the department paid him $365 a month to design pump and tank systems for housing developments in the Santa Monica Mountains. In the 1960s, he spent six years in the politically sensitive Owens Valley, where the city gets about 80% of its water.