Messing Up the Water Works? : * Reform DWP, Don’t Politicize It

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power long has been regarded as America’s foremost municipal utility. But it is now clear that the DWP needs to be reminded that it is conducting business in the last rather than the first decade of the 20th Century.

For that reason, the larger aims of Mayor Tom Bradley’s current campaign to make the DWP more closely accountable for its policies make sense. But his decision to pursue that goal by placing former political aides on the department’s governing commission raises eyebrows and should be carefully scrutinized by the City Council.

This year, the DWP will provide reliable, reasonably priced water and electricity to 3 million customers and contribute $111 million to the public coffers. But if those statistics make the department a civic treasure, it is also necessary to say that it is a treasure achieved sometimes in a manner more arrogant than a democratic society should want.

The story of the DWP’s origins are, by now, the stuff of legend--and screenplays. But, today, the problem is not so much the department’s past, as the fact that it too often seems to be living in it. We have in mind the agency’s endless, wrong-headed litigation over Mono Lake and its refusal to accept responsibility for the pollution created by its coal-fired Arizona power-generating facilities.

The mayor has judged correctly that the solution to these problems is to be found on the DWP’s five-member commission. Its members ought to be independent of DWP staff and environmentally sensitive. One of the mayor’s three appointees, Dorothy Green--head of Heal the Bay--certainly meets those criteria. But, while they are otherwise qualified, developer Michael Gage, whose appointment has been confirmed by the City Council, and attorney Mary Nichols, whose appointment has not yet been, bring with them unwanted political baggage.

Gage, Bradley’s former deputy mayor, has been a fierce advocate of the mayor’s political interests. His service in City Hall was marked by confrontations with other staff members and by bullying of anyone who raised questions about Bradley’s personal finances. Gage’s return to private life was through precisely the sort of revolving door the city’s new ethics code was designed to close: He is now president of a firm owned by a San Fernando Valley developer, who obtained an appointment to the city Planning Commission while Gage was deputy mayor.

Nichols is a respected attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, she also headed one of Bradley’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns. If her appointment is confirmed, her swing vote is expected to give Gage the commission chairmanship.

When the council takes up her nomination next week, very hard questions need to be asked. Greater accountability for DWP clearly is in order; its politicization is not.