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David Nahai
What a hot mess. The Department of Water and Power's commission today voted to not only name and pay a Deputy Mayor as the interim General Manager of the utility, but also continue to pay retired General Manager David Nahai for three months for consulting services. Both will earn over $6,200 a week, equivalent to a salary of $325,000.Will Nahai be paid for full-time work? No, he'll be paid $6,282 a week to be "on call," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Yesterday, when the controversy surfaced, Commission President Lee Kanon Alpert said there was nothing wrong with the decision. "This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that," he told the Times. " “David’s resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months.”
Today Alpert continued to defend the move, but added it was not his decision. “This is not a Lee Alpert decision,” he said.
But whose decision was it? And there's big the mystery. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office says the decision is that of the commission's and Alpert says the commission has no authority over the manner, only that it was brought to his attention by an unnamed person.