Council Confirms New DWP Manager

The Department of Water and Power has a new general manager -- its sixth since 2007.

The Los Angeles City Council confirmed the appointment of energy industry consultant Ron  Nichols.

Nichols, a managing director of Seattle-based Navigant Consulting Inc.,  said last week that he plans to foster more transparency within the utility,  which members of the council accused of resorting to "dirty tricks" last year  while seeking approval of an electricity rate hike.

"Getting information out before a decision is made, letting people have  more daylight on the options before things are set in stone, or before  something has to be acted upon, is a really big part of that, and I think it  will go a long way towards restoring trust,'' he told the council's Energy and  the Environment Committee.

Nichols also vowed to improve customer service.

"I look at the people that are served by the utility as customers, not  as ratepayers," he said last week.

The DWP's outgoing interim general manager, First Deputy Mayor Austin  Beutner, called Nichols "a fixer."

"We set out to find an experienced utilityman or woman to run a utility  and we did that,'' Beutner said. "Ron's got 30 years of relevant experience  in challenging circumstances -- the most complicated municipal situation in the  country, in Long Island; (and also) he was brought in by Governor Davis to help  solve the problems that arose from deregulation in California."

At Navigant, Nichols was based in Sacramento. According to the company's  website, Nichols was "the lead business and regulatory adviser on the two  largest revenue bond issues ever completed and has advised public power,  investor-owned utilities, governmental agencies and non-regulated energy  suppliers on over $30 million of value of transactions."

Beutner has been the interim general manager of the department since  April. He took over from S. David Freeman, who held the post for about six  months, serving in an interim capacity in place of H. David Nahai, who left to  join the Clinton Climate Initiative.

If approved, Nichols would take over an agency that has been at odds  with the City Council in recent months.

Last spring, the DWP pushed for a rate hike of up to 28 percent for  businesses and high-usage customers in the midst of an economic recession, then  threatened to withhold a promised transfer of $73.5 million to the city if the  rate hike was not approved.

Some council members said the threat amounted to extortion.

In response, the council has authorized two measures that will appear on  the March ballot. One seeks to create an Office of Public Accountability  staffed with a ratepayer advocate; and the other would require the DWP to give  the council more time to review the utility's proposed annual budget, and  guarantee the amount of money that the DWP will remit to the city each year.

The council originally approved -- but the mayor vetoed -- another  ballot measure, which would have given the council authority, by a two-thirds  vote, to fire the DWP's general manager and board members, or reverse their  removal by the mayor. The council considered overriding the mayor's veto last  week, but the effort fell short of the 10 votes needed.