EDITORIAL DEPT. OF WATER & PR DWP SPIN EFFORTS COST L.A. RATEPAYERS A FORTUNE.

THE Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has one advantage enjoyed by few other corporations: No competition.

The DWP has a captive audience, selling essentials of modern living, with no else allowed to offer an alternative. It's a monopoly in the truest sense of the word, and monopolies don't need to advertise or curry favor with the community.

But that doesn't stop the DWP. The utility - which is public in the sense that it belongs to the taxpayers of Los Angeles, but private in the sense that it answers to no one but itself - spends astronomical sums on public relations efforts that are largely unnecessary.

Despite a straitened city budget, the DWP is ramping up spending on its corporate communications office by $1 million for the fiscal year - a 7.5 percent increase, more than triple the current rate of inflation. The office includes some 23 full-time bureaucrats paid between $41,154 and $108,542 a year.

And that's just the beginning.

Apparently public sector spin doctors aren't up to the task of serious spin control. For grittier PR needs, the DWP gets out the big guns - private consulting firms that charge as much as $425 an hour.

Heading the list is downtown PR giant Fleishman-Hillard, which does millions of dollars of consulting for City Hall and other local government agencies a year, and whose employees just happen to donate heavily to political campaigns while giving officials lots of free advice.

The DWP maintains a hefty, $3 million annual contract with the firm, as well as a $2.4 million deal with another PR consulting company, the Lee Andrews Group. Add that to the $13.3 million the DWP spends on its in-house spin-control efforts, and that's $18.7 million promoting a company that shouldn't need much promotion.

Meanwhile, the utility claims it lacks the funds for homeland security needs, so it plans to stick L.A. ratepayers with an 18 percent rate hike.

Being a monopoly has its advantages.

The DWP gives away millions of dollars to well-connected community groups, and buys friends wherever it needs them, but it doesn't respect the residents of the city enough even to take its rate hike proposal to the neighborhood councils for input.

Sure, the DWP has some legitimate PR needs, such as informing the public of conservation efforts, or lobbying for or against state or federal regulatory efforts that could affect its business. But those needs don't excuse the company's annual bonanza of self-promotion, a spending spree that includes extravagances like corporate sponsorship for the Dodgers.

Yet for all the money the DWP spends on consulting, it seems to get terrible advice. There's a far better, cheaper way the utility could boost its public image: Provide quality service, and stop trying to gouge the public with unwarranted rate hikes.