DWP Spends $1 Million Providing Tours : Expenses: City officials have chastised the utility. DWP officials say the tours are necessary to update legislators, customers and staff on the department’s needs.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has spent nearly $1 million during the last year ferrying politicians, business customers and department executives on all-expense-paid tours of DWP facilities throughout the West.

In April, DWP Commissioners Michael Gage and Dorothy Green and three utility executives spent $15,000 on a two-day charter jet excursion to the Intermountain Power Project in Delta, Utah.

In February, City Councilmen John Ferraro, Zev Yaroslavsky, Hal Bernson and a contingent of eight City Council and DWP staff spent $28,000 on a 1 1/2-day tour of the Grand Canyon and a nearby nuclear power facility.

Congressional staff members, community leaders and a group of 37 DWP secretaries also took DWP tours ranging in cost from $1,250 to more than $40,000 each.

The utility spent $108,000 on a weeklong tour last October for 43 DWP staff members and private investment bankers, who last year sold $250 million worth of bonds for the department.

Expenses on 35 such trips ran the gamut from sodas at roadside markets during bus tours to the Owens Valley to $95-a-head dinners at chic Salt Lake City bistros.

DWP records show that the utility spent a total of $913,000 on tours, including salaries for a permanent, on-staff tour guide and a tour coordinator.

Officials say the tours are necessary to update legislators, customers and staff on the department’s needs and plans.

Rick Caruso, president of the DWP Board of Commissioners, said: “It’s important for government officials, bankers and environmental groups to see these places and understand what’s going on and what’s involved in bringing water and power to Los Angeles.”

Dan Waters, DWP director of external affairs, said the tours are a critical part of running a $3-billion-a-year utility. “I don’t know of any major company that doesn’t have to keep its customers informed,” he said.

Some other major utilities have no tour programs. And other utilities that do conduct tours appear to spend less than the DWP.

The Metropolitan Water District, which serves hundreds of communities between the Mexican border and Ventura, reported that it spent $422,000 on 80 tours in the 1988-89 fiscal year--about half the amount spent by DWP. The MWD is required by its state charter to conduct tours as part of a public oversight program.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. conducts tours of its facilities and has a private jet, a spokesman said. But the spokesman said Thursday that cost figures for the tours were not immediately available.

Other utilities, such as Southern California Gas Co., spend nothing on such tours. “We stopped doing (tours) about 10 years ago. . . . One reason was the expense,” said Rick Terrell, spokesman for the gas company.

Southern California Edison, the largest utility in the Southland, spends about $60,000 a year on 20 bus tours to its hydroelectric facility at Big Creek in the Western Sierra, spokesman Lewis Phelps said. He said community leaders, politicians and educators take the eight-hour bus trip and sleep in dormitories.

Anson Moran, general manager of Hetch Hetchy Water and Power, a San Francisco-owned utility that supplies water to 2.2 million people in the Bay Area, said, “We don’t have a regular tour program.” But he said the utility occasionally takes politicians on tours of its facilities in the Sierra Nevada. “We don’t do a whole lot of flying,” Moran said, noting that the facilities are about a four-hour drive from San Francisco.

The DWP was chastised last week by Mayor Tom Bradley for spending more than $700,000 on charter jet flights for both official business and tours in the last year.

And City Controller Rick Tuttle has refused recently to authorize payment of some travel and entertainment expenses run up by DWP executives.

Tuttle balked at paying a $2,800 round-trip charter jet flight that DWP General Manager Norm Nichols took to Sacramento although cheaper commercial flights were available. He also refused to pay a $475 tab submitted by two commissioners and three DWP staff members for dinner at the La Caille at Quail Run restaurant in Salt Lake City on April 4. Tuttle would only pay $150 for the dinner, so the diners had to pay the rest.

Tuttle said he will not approve future DWP charter flights unless officials can show commercial service is not available. “We’re counting on them (to spend) these funds . . . in prudent and economical ways,” he said. Several years ago, Tuttle himself went on a DWP charter flight to Arizona. He was there, he said, to address cost overruns at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant.

“I remember standing at the plane and asking the question: ‘Is this going to cost more than just going commercial?’ And they said this would be about the same since there were a number on the flight,” Tuttle said. “I wished these (charter trips) had been brought to my attention earlier.”

The controversy over DWP expense policies comes as the city faces tight fiscal times. Most city departments were ordered last month to reduce their 1990-1991 budget requests, and Bradley has imposed a hiring freeze.

DWP’s Waters said the utility, which netted $111 million for the city last year, should not be held to the same expense guidelines as other departments.

“One reason we’re having trouble with this whole issue is that we are run like a private company,” he said. “We’re trying to operate in a competitive manner.” The DWP provides electric power and water to city residents and businesses, but in recent years, the DWP has increasingly competed with private power companies for large commercial accounts.

Duane Georgeson, a former DWP executive who is now assistant general manager of MWD, said that the department’s tour expenses are a small price to pay for “protecting the low-cost sources of water which the city has always enjoyed.”

“Usually you can’t get (politicians) . . . to visit the facilities unless you provide them with charter transportation,” he said.

The DWP’s rates and budget are approved by the Los Angeles City Council.

Councilmen Yaroslavsky, Bernson and Ferraro, who attended a $28,000 trip to Arizona in February, said the trip was important and the use of a charter plane allowed the group to accomplish a great deal in a short time.

“Our water system is under fire,” Bernson said. “And to defend it, sometimes we have to let people know what’s going on.”

Los Angeles officials met with Rep. Bruce Vento (D-Minn.) of the House Interior Affairs Committee and representatives of the National Park Service to discuss Interior Department fears that Grand Canyon views were being obscured by pollution from a nearby power facility partially owned by the DWP.

When advised of the cost of the trip, all three council members expressed surprise. Said Yaroslavsky: “It’s ridiculous. . . . That’s absurd and unjustified.”

Gage and Green could not be reached for comment.

Ron Deaton, the city’s assistant chief legislative analyst, also went on the Feb. 12 trip to Arizona. He said the DWP tours tend to be costly because the utility has interests in water and power facilities throughout the West, while the city airports and harbor departments are located here in Los Angeles.

“I have taken a tour of the airport,” Deaton said. “You get in a car, and 30 minutes later, you’re back.”

Many of the most important DWP facilities are based hundreds of miles from Los Angeles. The DWP has major interests in power facilities in Utah and Arizona and water resources in the Owens Valley on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.

The Utah facility is a two-hour drive from the Salt Lake City airport, and DWP officials say it is most convenient to take charter flights directly to the facility in Delta, Utah. The Arizona power plant is likewise several hours’ drive from either Phoenix or Las Vegas airports, which have commercial traffic, and the water facilities in the Owens Valley north of Bishop, Calif., are several hours’ drive from Los Angeles-area commercial airports.

By comparison, the MWD uses commercial airlines to fly its tour members to Sacramento, then they are bused 70 miles north to State Water Project facilities at Lake Oroville.