12-11-08 by dugan
Two or three of us at Consumer Watchdog, OilWatchdog’s parent group, have gotten calls today asking our endorsement for the city of Los Angeles’ "Green Energy/Good Jobs Act" on the city’s March 2009 ballot. We won’t be calling back. The ballot measure is a perfect example of using a green excuse to pad a political payroll and make the citizens pay.
The whole exercise is chillingly similar to billionaire T. Boone Pickens’ November
ballot grab for taxpayer dollars to fund his natural gas fuel business. An underfunded coalition of consumer, green and even anti-tax opponents helped it go down to
defeat. But how long are voters going to embrace green power if it’s
repeatedly used as such a self-serving tool? That’s my big worry. Most people are ready to pay something to go green, but whose pockets will it go to?
As background to what’s below, you should know that the city Department of Water and Power will retain ownership of the solar panels (not the owner of the building where they’re installed), that only DWP union members may install the panels (no competitive bidding) and no estimate of electricity rate increases is included.
Here’s my favorite summary, of how this lobbyist-fueled "smoking wreck" came about, by L.A.Times columnist Tim Rutten:
[T]he solar initiative was drafted by two officials of a labor advocacy
group, Working Californians. On top of that, one of them, Brian D’Arcy,
is business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers Local 18, which represents DWP employees. The local’s
spokesman, and political and media consultant, Bob Cherry, a partner in
the consulting firm of Hein, Cherry and Attore Inc., is in on the act
as well. Cherry and his partners are former longtime officials of the
California Teachers Assn., and their firm’s website stresses their
mutual role in turning that organization into such a potent statewide
political force.Once the union and its paid consultants drafted
a measure that guaranteed the local more members, and more fees for
Hein, Cherry and Attore as consultants to the campaign, it enlisted
[Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa’s support to bypass the DWP commissioners, who normally
would have held public hearings on such a proposal and passed on its
merits. Not this time — with the mayor greasing the skids, the solar
initiative slid right into the City Council’s lap, and that smoking
wreck of a deliberative body voted 11-0 to put the measure before the
electorate.This happened despite the fact that Councilman
Richard Alarcon told [LA Times reporter David] Zahniser, "Unfortunately, we don’t have the time
to fully understand and analyze this proposal." Why not? Is there some
chance the sun will stop rising if we don’t vote on it this March?
It’ll be a few months before the hired political guns start dialing robo-calls and sending out glossy color mailers on the beauty of solar power. At that point, maybe you’ll remember that "Green Energy/Green Jobs" mostly means a lot of green in the pockets of the powerful.