$80,000 DWP Buyout Deal Draws Fire : Severance: Unusual pact also allows 30-year employee to draw full pension. Utility official says overall plan will still result in savings.

Los Angeles’ controversial buyout plan for its Department of Water and Power employees came under fresh attack Thursday when it was learned that the man who has headed Pasadena’s utility agency since January qualified for $80,000 in severance pay from the DWP because of an unusual pact.

Under the deal between the two agencies, Rufus Hightower, a DWP principal power engineer, was able to collect the $80,000 buyout and qualify for a maximum city pension while working for the Pasadena Department of Water and Power.

Had he resigned to take the job in Pasadena, Hightower would not have been entitled to a full pension or the subsequent buyout offer because he would have left his $128,000-a-year Los Angeles post before qualifying for the benefits. But at his request, Los Angeles officials approved a loan of Hightower’s services to Pasadena that let him accrue benefits from Los Angeles without working there.

“It sickens me,” Councilman Joel Wachs said of the Hightower case, the latest buyout to hit the spotlight. “This is evidence that DWP itself is enabling people to get away with this stuff. They aren’t Mister Innocent in this one.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Richard Riordan wrote Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, urging him to consider whether another DWP employee, Jocelino Joun, a 25-year-old Woodland Hills resident, violated the law by receiving $25,000 under the buyout plan while he was working for another city department.

Questions raised by the Joun case prompted the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday to delay its planned adoption of a buyout plan for non-DWP employees, with critics saying the latest plan needed to be thoroughly studied to determine if it contains loopholes like those alleged to afflict the DWP plan.

The council is scheduled to take up the plan for non-DWP employees at its meeting today. Wachs said he was optimistic that the council would adopt a proposal he will introduce today to close loopholes in that plan.

“I think we can get a good plan without these bad elements,” Wachs said.

Despite the rising criticism, DWP general manager William McCarley insisted that his agency’s buyout plan is praiseworthy because it will--even with its minor flaws--still result in huge savings to DWP customers.

About 1,500 DWP workers took the buyout, costing the huge city-owned utility $44 million. However, the reduced payroll will save the utility about $85 million a year.

“If there have been some anomalies, and some employees who have worked the system, our customers are still benefiting enormously from the buyout,” McCarley said.

After going to Pasadena in January, Hightower remained a DWP employee. In effect, DWP officials explained, Hightower was a DWP employee on contract with Pasadena.

According to DWP spokeswoman Sandra Tanaka, Hightower sought the contract arrangement “because he was just short” of 30 years of service at DWP when he decided to take the Pasadena job.

Under his arrangement with Los Angeles and Pasadena, Hightower was paid by DWP and accrued service credits under DWP’s retirement plan. But the DWP was reimbursed for the costs of his salary and benefits by Pasadena.

Hightower, 57, of West Los Angeles, said in an interview Thursday that he wanted the contract arrangement because it would allow him to accrue the 30 years of service with DWP needed to qualify for full retirement benefits.

“I couldn’t afford to take a hit on my retirement,” said Hightower, adding that he has two young children and that he plans to work for Pasadena for many years to come.

DWP spokeswoman Tanaka said she was unaware of any similar arrangement with DWP employees.

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On July 10, Hightower formally left the DWP payroll and became a Pasadena employee. He said he makes roughly the same salary he made in Los Angeles.

McCarley said he approved Hightower’s request for the contract. “He came up with the plan, and we got a contract with Pasadena,” McCarley said. “It was my judgment to approve it. It was a win-win situation.”

But McCarley acknowledged that the payments to DWP by Pasadena did not cover the costs of the buyout package to Hightower.

At the time Hightower entered into his six-month contract with DWP, there was no buyout package, McCarley noted.

In urging Garcetti to consider whether city employee Joun violated the law, Riordan said: “The intent of the severance pay plan is to aid employees while we reduce the size of the city’s work force--not to give away city resources to current employees.

“I would like to know, and the taxpayers of Los Angeles deserve to know, whether this action was proper or whether there were any city employees involved in improper or criminal activity,” the mayor added.

Riordan also formally asked four city general managers, including City Atty. James Hahn, to investigate the matter.