Downsizing at the Dept. of Water and Power

* While the downsizing at the DWP is inevitable (editorial, Nov. 23), the entrance into a deregulated environment is not. The engineering and management staff associated with the design and construction of generating and transmission facilities will no longer be needed. With the elimination of the department’s extensive fleet of sedans, automotive support personnel will be fewer as well. This will greatly assist in lowering the department’s debt and making rates, particularly business rates, more competitive.

However, unless the city is really interested in mixing it up with the investor-owned utilities and increasing market share, there is no inexorable, absolute need to enter a deregulated market. It is only the leveraged buyout proclivities of Mayor Richard Riordan and the public power advocacy of David Freeman that make this seem like a done deal. The City Council still must decide and it does not have to decide tomorrow.

The department has already downsized more than 2,000 people in the last two years. Why not have Freeman’s new management team go over the tentative list of position cuts and work program reductions. Then offer early retirement packages to affected employees over 50 years of age and with 25 or more years of service. Offer a reasonable severance package to those young employees with few years of service. To those employees in between, let the city’s displacement processes find spots for many of them.

With the resulting cost savings, business rates could be substantially lowered and residential rates could remain far below market. All stakeholders/ratepayers/citizens of the city would have the rate reduction benefits of deregulation, while giving the City Council considerable time to decide about actual entrance into the fray.

NANCY PARK

Los Angeles

* The DWP is a business. Its purpose is to provide its subscribers with reliable and reasonable water and electricity services. However, as a business, it is faced with extraordinary, nearly incomprehensible debt, electric industry deregulation and an inflated work force.

The DWP is not a social welfare organization, existing only to employ city workers, some of whom may not be critical to efficient business operations. Freeman’s [lay-off] recommendation makes good business sense; politicizing it does not.

GLEN W. REDMAN

Los Angeles