Posted on 11/20/2004 9:35:03 AM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A top city official sharply criticized Mayor James K. Hahn following reports that a public relations company billed the city's Department of Water and Power thousands of dollars for work done on his behalf.
City Controller Laura Chick said it was a "very sad day for the city" after the Los Angeles Times reported that Fleishman-Hillard charged the utility more than $400,000 to arrange news conferences and press releases featuring Hahn and to provide other publicity services to the mayor.
"The ratepayers of Los Angeles were used to fund a public relations team for the mayor," Chick said.
St. Louis-based Fleishman-Hillard has been the focus of a Los Angeles County investigation and was sued by the city attorney's office earlier this year. The city suit contends the company padded its billing for services it performed for the DWP, Department of Airports and Harbor Department.
An audit released this week concluded that the firm billed the DWP for more than $4 million in questionable costs that it should repay. The audit examined contracts the company held with the utility from 1998 through last fall for which it received $24 million from the city.
A spokesman for the mayor said that Hahn believed Fleishman's work benefited the city and the DWP's pollution-reduction efforts rather than the mayor himself.
"The mayor of Los Angeles should be out front on efforts to clean up the L.A. environment," spokesman Yusef K. Robb said.
The Times story was based on thousands of pages of invoices and e-mails between the firm and the mayor's office as well as interviews with former Fleishman-Hillard workers. The newspaper said it showed that Hahn's office often treated the DWP contract as its own.
Candidates in the mayoral race called on Hahn to repay the city for any work done on his behalf and charged to the utility.
"It is outrageous that they were simultaneously serving as a high-priced extension of your communications department, while overbilling the city millions of dollars," Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who is running against Hahn, wrote the mayor Friday.
This being reported makes me think that maybe things really are changing out there.
Things will not change here in L.A. County (and statewide) until and unless the minority groups who support the Dems finally get wise. Mayor Hahn's father was the late L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who knew how to play the political patronage game about as well as anyone ever did. Kenneth Hahn's former chief of staff, Mas Fukai, was also a long-time Gardena city council member. Fukai also knew where to throw contracts to feather the nests of his family and supporters, and also to improve his own bank account. The corruption is long-standing and deep.
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