I began working in the public affairs division of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 1987, writing press releases and answering media questions. Then as now, much of the public outright disliked the nation’s largest municipal utility. Even if its power was the cheapest in California, the DWP often seemed to be a fumbling bureaucracy that was constantly raising its rates. My job was to help make it appear otherwise.
The first thing I learned there was that the utility looked down on City Hall, and not just because its gracious 1965 headquarters was on a hill a few blocks away. DWP employees were proud. They were better paid than other city workers. They had better benefits. They had their luxury cafeteria with big grand piano, deep green carpets, and terrace dining. While City Hall workers pushed paper, went the thinking, DWP workers kept Los Angeles alive—a magic the DWP pioneers had conjured out of the rugged Sierra early in the last century.
Though the job was a bad fit, I left six months later with a lofty respect for the blue-collar workforce that set up and maintained the utility’s 14,000 miles of power lines and 7,200 miles of water mains. But I also saw how the DWP’s senior bureaucracy had grown to be a fortified elite over its eight-decade existence, holding the mayor and city council carefully at bay. The bureaucrats, playing a byzantine Game of Desks in order to maintain a line of succession to the top post of general manager, had every reason to suppose this status quo would last another 80 years.