Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/10/2010 5:00:04 AM PDT by reaganaut1
A bitter political dispute between this city's elected leaders and its powerful municipal utility threatens to push the city into insolvency as early as next month.
Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel warned this week that the city's general fund could run out of money and fall $10 million into the red by May 5 unless the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power transfers a planned $73.5 million payment it has so far said it would withhold. Without the payment, the city would need to dip into its reserve fund, leaving that contingency dangerously low in the event of other emergencies.
The Los Angeles utility, the nation's largest municipal utility, said it wasn't making the payment because the city council earlier this month failed to approve substantial increases in electricity rates.
Utility officials say they need those higher rates to help cover the costs of investing in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, that are mandated by state and municipal laws.
The utility is an influential entity in its own right, with an annual budget of $4.2 billion, 8,600 employees and massive landholdings throughout Southern California. It makes periodic payments to the city in lieu of taxes and franchise fees.
The utility's move has kicked off a fight that already has had negative repercussions for the city. On Wednesday, rating firm Moody's Corp. cut its ratings on some $3.2 billion of Los Angeles general obligation bonds by one notch, reflecting "continued erosion of the city's historically better-than-average willingness and ability to quickly rebalance its budget mid-year."
The ratings firm warned that by the end of Los Angeles' fiscal year on June 30, general fund reserves "could be materially weaker than we had previously expected" because of the squabble with the utility.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
global warming ping
bwahahahaha. I will be doing some energy policy work in the future (I wrote a huge book on nuclear energy). Solar just doesn’t cut it, not that I don’t love to tinker with it. It’s just hard to make Mother Nature do what you think it should do..
Socialism unravels at it’s core...
Did you mention that practical, economic fusion energy is at least 15 years in the future (as they said in the 1970s), or that it's more than a decade and a half out (as the experts say today)?
GThe truth sucks!!! Get rid of the “F”ing ILLEGALS and LA would not have a problem!
Their mismanagement of renewable energy policies is just the most acute symptom. The true source of their financial cancer is long term Demoliberal “governance”...
The Demoliberals have finally run out of everyboy else’s money.
No more bribes or payola to be had.
It’s ‘Starving Time’.
Nuc Power will come in between 14 years and never, along with solar and wind, witthout a subsidy. Natutal gas is plentiful and cheap and clean
City’s general fund could run out of money and fall $10 million into the red no word about ending funding of illegals.
But natural gas is carbon based! We wouldn't want that, just because it's cheap and clean, would we?
The Left hates capitalism and free markets ... until they need the wealth they themselves cannot generate — they only know how to redistribute it.
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Natutal gas is plentiful and cheap and clean
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And disdained by Obama and Co.
Don’t expect the likes of Villaraigosa and Co. to go against
The Lord Messiah by turning to natural gas.
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Utility officials say they need those higher rates to help cover the
costs of investing in renewable energy, such as wind and solar,
that are mandated by state and municipal laws.
“
Looks like Los Angeles (and California) is doing it’s best to totally
bankrupt themselves just like Spain (wasting money on huge solar projects).
I haven’t even considered fusion for a while, it is the always receding goal line. I’m sure it will happen eventually.
Course, we could just splode some hydogen bombs underground and tap in that way . . . . :)
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