Raising The Roof Over Raising The Rates

Alternative Energy seems to be raising electric rates in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to conduct a review of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed package of electric rate hikes, and took the mayor to task for suggesting that defeat of the plan would plunge the city into bankruptcy.

On a 15-0 vote, the council asserted jurisdiction over the Department of Water and Power board's decision to approve the first of four increases over the next year to help pay for renewable energy and other expenditures.

Several council members said they were especially disturbed by Villaraigosa's warning, sent to them in writing the night before the vote, that a failure to let the rate hikes stand would cause the DWP to renege on its plan to provide $73 million to the city's strained general fund, which pays for basic services such as public safety and parks.

Public Utilities owned by government were supposed to be about preventing gouging by private corporations. It looks like gouging by government was not contemplated.

As we used to say back in the heady days of my communist youth. "What is mine is mine. What is yours belongs to the people." That should probably be amended to add "and the alternative energy companies."