Letter to the Editor

By Andre Hughes

Mayoral candidate and City Controller Wendy Greuel makes the front cover of the LA Weekly this week. The story by Gene Maddaus, a regular on our Friday mixer segment, talks about Greuel’s connection to some of the city’s most powerful unions and how that might come back to bite her on March 5. 

Greuel is one of the leading candidates for mayor, along with fellow front-runner Eric Garcetti. Maddaus lays the potential blame on a Garcetti win at the feet of Brian D’Arcy, head of IBEW Local 18, the union that represents most of the workers at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The opening paragraphs will give you a sense of where it’s going: Brian D’Arcy has a lot riding on the race for L.A. mayor, which may be why he’s staying out of sight. The last time he campaigned openly for something — a solar initiative — it failed, which is sort of amazing, given that solar energy polls at 80 percent. But that’s Brian D’Arcy. He can make sunshine controversial. …If [Wendy Greuel] loses the mayor’s race, the D’Arcy factor may be largely to blame. 

 One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure the relationship of the IBEW and Wendy Greuel. They have put in over $500,000 for an independent campaign to support Wendy. Of course they expect a pay back in the years ahead. LA Weekly has done a marvelous job covering this election. This story on D'Arcy is way ahead of anything the LA Times or Daily News has done on the election. I hope voters are going online to follow the campaign in the LA Weekly newspaper.

 The last thing we need is another Mayor that's owned by the DWP union.  Our rates out here in the Valley are already high enough.  In fact they're ridiculously high for a utility that's owed by the taxpayers.  Now I see why, so we can pick up that inflated salaries of the union bosses.I won't be voting for Wendy Greuel or anyone who's owned by these public employee unions.  We've stomped out their propositions in the past and plan on doing it again next month.  

 

An advocate outside her office would, inevitably, dilute her power."We thought it was a good idea in the controller's office," Greuel says. "I'm the independent fiscal watchdog."The mayor and council felt otherwise, largely because D'Arcy and Marvin Kropke, his close ally at IBEW Local 11, had spent $200,000 on an independent campaign to support Greuel in 2009.

 

Garcetti argues that putting the ratepayer advocate under Greuel's control would have "politicized that job.""If you want an independent voice, it would be tough if you had independent expenditures from the union the ratepayer advocate needs to comment about," Garcetti says.D'Arcy and Greuel lost that fight: The advocate was made independent. (D'Arcy did not return calls and emails seeking comment.)