Friday, April 02, 2010

Oh - the light bulbs are just starting to go off?

Hands down, what is going on in L.A. is one of the most fascinating life lessons. I think it falls under that category of - no shit Sherlock.

Remember I've been talking to you about how the L.A. Department of Water and Power are locked in this battle to raise electricity rates from 9-28%? Well, rate payers finally found a clue, and started freaking out about how much it will cost them. Duh.

This made the city council attempt a compromise by voting in a 4.5% increase. DWP basically said "hell no!". The increase needs to be at least 5.7% or we aren't going to give you the 73 million we owe you. You know - the money you claim you need to prevent the city from going bankrupt.

On the DWP side, they are sort of locked into these new air quality standards. So they need to start getting these boondoggles of green energy projects they installed with reckless abandon up and running. And, they need to start getting people to pay for them. I'm sure somehow they just thought they'd find some way to pay for it eventually.

Except the inconveniences of life got in the way. Namely a crushing recession. Now they can't hide the ways they would normally pay for these types of things. Like shuffling money around from account to account so people don't really notice where the money is coming from. Or that the projects are far from cost effective.

Now the public doesn't want to pay a 25% increase. Oddly, President Money Bags told us that was going to happen. "Prices would necessarily skyrocket". Isn't that what he said? I think 25% hits that mark.

It will be really interesting to see how this turns out. You can read about it here.

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