At long last - Hahn the nexus

What crack?
It was just a matter of time...

"All the way to the top"
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~2541662,00.html#

Wrongdoing in DWP's P.R. scandal goes to Mayor's Office and other city officials
The $4.2 million in overbilling that City Controller Laura Chick has found in the Department of Water and Power's contract with the Fleishman-Hillard public relations firm raises serious questions about the leadership of Mayor James Hahn.
The $3 million-a-year contract was initiated in 1998 by then-Mayor Richard Riordan and then-DWP chief David Freeman for advice in deregulating the city's utility and competing for electricity customers in the open market.
It was a waste of money then, and when deregulation was abandoned, it should have been terminated. But that isn't what Hahn and the bosses at the DWP did. They found that $3 million to Fleishman-Hillard and $2 million through it to another friendly firm, the Lee Andrews Group, bought them a lot of favors at taxpayers' expense.
Chick's seven-month, $175,000 audit has cut a trail right to the heart of the scandal that threatens to bring down Hahn. It also offers the chance for real reform of the DWP, which has squandered untold millions of dollars of the public's money in inappropriate if not outright dishonest ways over the years.
In picking up on Chick's audit, county and federal investigators - already hot on the trail of pay-to-play contracting practices in the Hahn administration - need only follow the trail of this betrayal of the public interest to Room 303 in City Hall, the office of the mayor.
Chick called this "the worst tomfoolery I've ever seen," and urged Fleishman-Hillard to pay back the money. The management of this international P.R. giant should waste no time in doing so.
But the audit's real value is that auditors sketched the outline of collusion between the Mayor's Office and top DWP officials to use Fleishman-Hillard's expertise to cover up their own failings, their own misconduct - and stick the public with the bill
There is nothing in the audit or anywhere else in the record that suggests that the P.R. firm was doing anything but the bidding of city officials. Ostensibly, the firm was paid to promote the utility's services and policies. Why a monopoly with its own huge P.R. staff needed such costly advice has never been explained. That's because the explanation would be unacceptable.
The simple truth is that Fleishman-Hillard was there to help the mayor and the DWP look good - even if they were up to no good. Sometimes the advice came as free pro-bono help, such as throwing the mayor's annual media holiday party or sponsoring his "One Book, One City L.A." campaign. Sometimes it was billed at up to $350-an-hour, as when Chick first challenged the contract in 2002 and the firm provided damage control.
This scandal isn't about a greedy contractor bilking the city. DWP officials signed off on every bill. They were getting what they wanted. So was the mayor.
What's so extraordinary about Hahn is that he's so shameless. He actually wanted to share in the limelight of Chick's audit and had the brass to send a letter to the city attorney expressing his outrage over Fleishman-Hillard's billing practices.
"Sorry isn't good enough," the mayor said. No, it isn't, but it would still be nice to hear people say it when they've done wrong.