Crimes of utilty

The Daily News' Sunday editorial, in full:

It was bad enough that the Los Angeles City Council turned its back on the people of the city and voted in years of higher DWP bills without changing any of the behavior that created the need for rate hikes.

But when city officials dredged up the death of a firefighter in Westchester in late March to justify the fleecing of Angelenos, it actually compounded this crime.

What DWP General Manager H. David Nahai and some council members perhaps don't realize is that by saying the Department of Water and Power needs these higher water and power rates to fix the electrical problems that led to the exploding manhole covers - injuring two Los Angeles firefighters, one fatally - it actually makes city officials bigger criminals than just misspending the public's money.

If Los Angeles' aging infrastructure is killing people, who's to blame? Here's a hint: It's not the manhole's fault.

The culprit is years of misspending utility revenues on non-utility needs, as directed by the city's elected and appointed officials, and that resulted in the smoldering underground cable, which was the reason for the series of events that led up to the firefighter's death. Instead of reinvesting the utilities' revenues that it reaped from ratepayers, as any publicly owned utility ought to, city officials diverted billions of dollars over the years to serve their own needs. Had the money not been lost in annual transfers of millions in water and power revenues to the city's general fund, the aging cables in Westchester might have been replaced years ago.

As well, that money could have been used to make the capital improvements that might have kept the lights on during the blackouts of recent summers.

Instead, that revenue has been siphoned off for years, in the form of those yearly transfers, unnecessary DWP costs like fancy PR campaigns, and the creation of the highest paid department in America.

Put those factors together and it seems as if it ought to equal criminal negligence.

But pilfering the public trust and coffers has become routine in government from City Hall to the White House. By squandering the taxpayers' investment, it means the money to upgrade electrical systems, water systems, critical bridges and who knows what next is deferred.

The council is correct that the DWP's infrastructure needs to be fixed. But what's incorrect about last week's vote to raise water and power rates over the next three years is who ought to pay for it.

This is a crime of utility, for which, once more, the public has to pay.