LA City Attorney Failed to Disclose $242 Million DWP-funded City Slush Fund

Описание: Los Angeles, CA – Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer supported a deceptive notice to ratepayers in a class action settlement over the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to a City slush fund, according to attorneys for Consumer Watchdog.
On Monday, Consumer Watchdog filed its final court papers in an appeal of a class action settlement in which the City Attorney’s office did not provide any notice to Angelenos or the court of the $242 million transfer. Though the $242 million transfer was not disclosed to consumers in time to exercise their right to opt-out or object to the settlement, the settlement barred consumers from challenging it in court. Read Consumer Watchdog’s opening brief here: https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/site...

The Court of Appeals filing comes as scrutiny intensifies over public corruption at the City Attorney’s office involving the settlement of another DWP ratepayer case. Two City Attorney special counsels secretly represented both the ratepayer plaintiff and the City/DWP defendant. The City Attorney failed to inform the court, the public or ratepayers that attorneys he hired represented parties on both sides of the case. City Attorney Mike Feuer’s Number Three deputy, Thomas Peters, resigned over the weekend, the third resignation in two weeks in connection with the scandal. Consumer Watchdog called for all three resignations and that of top deputy Jim Clark at the beginning of March when it learned about the scandal.

DWP billing errors have been a perennial problem for Angelenos, with outrageous examples, like a family being overcharged $60,000 for a leaky toilet.The special counsel quickly settled the action, with little scrutiny and no investigation and no real changes to DWP’s practices. The City Attorney’s special counsel Paul Paradis received $36 million no-bid contracts in the settlement from DWP. Read Consumer Watchdog’s letter calling upon Attorney General Xavier Becerra to take over a public corruption investigation at the City Attorney’s office: https://consumerwatchdog.org/sites/de...