what will happen next in DWP?
the FBI says its investigation is ongoing. are prosecutor's aiming for the top?
So two guys in the messy DWP saga have laid down for the government and agreed to plead guilty to bribery. Those two, a seemingly random New York attorney named Paul Paradis who ended up getting hired by City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office, and David Wright, the former head of the Department of Water & Power, forged a bro-mance to enrich themselves off government. In short, Paradis finessed a billing lawsuit against the city of LA, took a $2 million kickback for the job, and in the process, bribed Wright and another DWP board member in order to score a multi-million dollar contract, as government prosecutors have now teased out. The plan was for Wright and Paradis to use DWP as a springboard to grow the company, Aventador Utility Solutions. This is not good for Feuer’s office and the DWP.
Aventador was sold by Wright and Paradis as the only solution to the DWP’s billing problems, despite Paradis actually being a personal injury attorney with no IT experience. Paradis literally sold the city nothing, and in exchange, received $30 million dollars. The company was at most only a few months old when it got the no-bid contract thanks to a unanimous vote by the DWP board. As a source told me last night, “Sleaziness aside, there was still no reason to approve the contract.” A quick Google by someone on the board could probably have surmised Aventador was bullshit, but the board swallowed Wright’s elevator pitch.
The whole federal plea agreement scans as bad daytime television, two confident men who shred documents, exchange burner cellphones in downtown LA cafes like creeps, and spend virtually all their time scheming how to make more money. It’s so corny it shocked me. At one point, according to the government, Wright and Paradis are aware that the FBI could be after them:
Paradis replied, concurring that discovery of their
communications could cause serious problems. Paradis stated, “The FBI, you don’t want to fuck around with the FBI.” Defendant WRIGHT replied, “Right.”
But they continued to do dumb shit. The funny thing is Paradis was already cooperating with the FBI by this time.
The feds love public corruption cases, and they have already gone after three city officials over the past few years…
So Who is Next?
Paradis, along with Beverly Hills attorney Paul Kiesel, were the special counsel hired by the office of City Attorney Mike Feuer to litigate the DWP billing fiasco, in which thousands of customers got wrong bills. Kiesel is cooperating with prosecutors and is not charged with any wrongdoing. They have long maintained that what they did was sanctioned by high-level officials at the city attorney’s office. And now the government seems to believe them, saying that at least one senior member of the city attorney’s office okayed and directed the “collusive” lawsuit during a meeting in February 2015.
"At a February 2015 meeting with at least one senior member of the City Attorney’s Office, Paradis and Kiesel were authorized and directed to find counsel that would be friendly to the city to supposedly represent Jones in a class-action lawsuit against the city," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.If we look at a recent court-appointed report on the litigation, special counsel met with members of Feuer’s office on February 23, 2015. Present from the city was Thomas Peters, one of Feuer’s top attorneys, and Jim Clark, Feuer’s number two. It was there the four met and agreed to the collusive billing suit.
"This was the inception of the collusive Jones v. City lawsuit," the court report stated.Both Peters and Clark have since left Feuer’s office (kinda unclear why), and the court report said both of them acted unethically. The question is whether they have anything to give up to federal prosecutors. Will they protect Feuer? Could this whole thing go all the way to the top? Clark and Peters have not been criminally charged with anything just FYI.
Feuer, that roving mayoral candidate, meanwhile, said he did not know about the conduct by his special counsel, but when he was deposed about this, he said “I do not recall” over 60 times.
Another unnamed “board member” who prosecutors say took a bribe from Paradis, may also be next to face charges. I figured out that guy is Bill Funderburk. Look at the way this guy smiles. It’s like a Tim and Eric skit, but for real. He did not respond to me, but his lawyer told the LA Times that that bribe in which he took free legal work from Paradis…wasn’t actually a bribe.
And the “independent monitor” Paul Bender responsible for making sure the billing settlement was going according to plan is apparently trash as well. Prosecutors said Paradis ghost-wrote his reports.
And then there’s Eric Garcetti, the elusive mayor of Los Angeles and Biden’s ambassador-in-waiting. When Garcetti became mayor eight years ago, he campaigned on the promise to reform DWP. That did not happen, obviously. He also appointed Wright as DWP general manager and publicly blessed the underlying billing settlement that has since totally unraveled. Could he have known anything about this? I dunno man.
It’s definitely a complicated case that’s been two and a half years in the making. You can go deeper here. I remember early on in reporting this story, when I approached one of the attorneys involved. I think I tried to make a joke and handed him a business card while saying something like, “I just want to tell you that I exist,” but he straight up started running away from me. It was pretty funny.
Anyway, the DWP has been shady from inception. About 100 years ago, agents from the city of LA visited Owens Valley, an area east of the Sierras. They knew it was sitting on lots of water that the future metropolis of LA would need, and posing as ranchers and farmers, they purchased land and built an aqueduct that siphoned off the water in the area. It sucked Owens Valley dry. So, yeah, we in LA are all living in a griftopia and drinking stolen water. Keep staring at your phones!