This Dirty Work Not What City Meant

If the idea at the city’s Hyperion Waste Treatment Plant was to get their minds out of the sewer, the workers weren’t helped by technology.

Ninety-nine city employees at the plant have either been counseled or suspended for allegedly viewing, transmitting or failing to report pornography on their work computers, Los Angeles officials said Wednesday.

Five of the employees, including an unspecified number of supervisors, received suspensions of up to 20 days for inappropriate use of city resources, and the rest were counseled in the last couple of months against misuse of city computers, according to Sanitation Bureau spokesman Mike Qualls.

“It was totally inappropriate behavior on the part of a relatively small group of people when you consider there are 6,000 employees in the Public Works Department,” Qualls said.

It’s not the first time city officials have had to clean up Sanitation Bureau computers.

Five years ago, five city employees, including a wastewater manager for the Sanitation Bureau, were disciplined for accessing adult Web sites. As a result, the city installed blocking systems on its computers aimed at preventing employees from viewing porn sites.

In the latest incident, employees at the city’s main waste treatment plant allegedly circumvented the blocking systems by sending pornographic images to themselves and co-workers from their home computers or by bringing in floppy discs with material they loaded into their city computer, Qualls said.

Top managers became aware of a problem last May when one e-mail with a pornographic image was mistakenly sent to an employee in another city department.

Five employees were suspended for sending e-mails with pornographic material to other employees. The 94 who received counseling received e-mails and did not report them, Qualls said.

An initial investigation was completed in October, and disciplinary action was being meted out as late as Wednesday.

As a result of the incident, all 2,600 employees at the Los Angeles Sanitation Bureau have been ordered to undergo training on the proper use of city computers, Qualls said.

City Council members reacted with shock to the scale of problem and said they had not been notified by the Public Works Department.

“Obviously, some people need some very focused counseling about what you can and cannot do with city computers,” said Councilwoman Jan Perry, chairwoman of the council’s Public Works Committee.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said he was concerned that city resources were not being used to benefit the public.

“Government is obscene enough. They don’t need to be engaging in that kind of activity,” Coupal said.