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By a narrow margin, Los Angeles voters may have turned down a ballot proposition March 3 that would have required the city’s municipal power agency to install 400 MW of solar panels on city rooftops and at city owned airports by 2014. The vote was so narrow, however, that it may take the city weeks to certify a final ballot count. At press time, “no” voters outnumbered “yes” voters for the measure, known as Proposition B, by 1,322 in the citywide election in which 219,688 votes had been counted. That amounted to 50.3 percent for the no campaign, versus 49.7 percent for the yes campaign. However, votes remained outstanding so the tally was still unofficial, according to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Office of the City Clerk The hotly contested proposition failed after the Los Angeles Times and some neighborhood council and good government activists denounced it over concerns about both its cost and the process used to place it on the ballot. “The city council put it on the ballot back on November 7 without having a clue about what they were doing except that they were told to vote for it unanimously or else,” said Ron Kaye, an activist with Fix Los Angeles, a good government group. “The election results are a repudiation of city hall’s failure.” The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents Los Angeles Department of Water & Power workers, developed and backed the measure. Before the election, IBEW Local 18 business manager Brian D’Arcy said the proposition not only would create renewable energy and cut greenhouse gases for the department, but also provide new jobs in the city through its solar manufacturing incentives. Under the proposition, department workers would have installed and operated the solar panels exclusively. A study by the Huron Group for LADWP indicated the measure would cost $1.3 billion and that the solar panels installed under the program would produce power for 11.9 cents/kWh, raising the average residential power bill in the city by around $1 a month (Circuit, Feb. 13, 2009). However an earlier study, which proposition opponents claim the department and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa suppressed, showed the measure could have cost as much as $3.6 billion. That study by PA Consulting Group, a department contractor, called the proposition “extremely risky.” Kaye claimed that department and some city officials did not release the PA Consulting study to the public until after the council had approved placing the measure before the voters. Even some council members were not aware of the study, he claimed. Los Angeles chief legislative analyst Gary Miller said the PA study did not account for tax incentives that would have been captured by “an ownership structure” included in the measure. Under the proposition, financial institutions could have owned the department-installed solar systems long enough to capture federal tax incentives. They would have sold the electricity to the department under power purchase agreements. Miller also said that lengthening the time to install the 400 MW of panels one year more than initially planned addressed PA’s concern that a tight market could drive up the price of solar systems. The 400 MW Proposition B was part of a larger department plan to install a total of 1,280 MW of solar power capacity by 2020, including 500 MW of distant utility scale systems and 380 MW through customer-based programs. A department spokesperson said that the department could not comment on the proposition until the vote count is final. However, some maintain the department still may be able to pursue the solar plan under its existing authority without voter approval. An IBEW Local 18 official did not return a request for comment on the election, nor did other supporters of the measure.

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