It almost sounds like a corny joke, “how many government agencies does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Here is a hint, it took 15 years for 160 street lamps in downtown Los Angeles to be lit up after their installation. How could this possibly happen? Well, in Bright Idea Finally Shines in L.A. as reported in the Los Angeles Times it was a case of classic government bureaucracy.

The lamps were installed as part of a beautification project in 1990. Transportation officials spent $250,000 to install them and new sidewalk curbstones and street-side trees to compensate for three years of neighborhood upheaval caused by subway construction.

Over the next 15 years the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which had commissioned the decorative lamps, morphed into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. City Hall administrations came and went.

The original plan called for the owners of seven properties next to the lights to pay for the electricity but in true government fashion this was never done and for more than 5,300 nights in a row after that, the 18-foot-tall decorative lighting fixtures failed to come on at sunset. Some lay blame on the city-prepared contract was too toughly worded for the property owners.

“It was a total nightmare. It was my first experience with city bureaucracy, and it was really scary. After two years of trying to get the lights on I had to say sorry, we can’t do it,” recalled Carol Schatz, president a downtown business group who attempted 15 years ago to serve as a go-between between the landowners and the city.

Here is the real funny part. Ballots will soon be sent to the property owners where the lights are asking if they are willing to pay the estimated $9,000 annual bill for electricity and maintenance. If they say no, the city will have pay for the lights and poles to be removed.

So in summary, taxpayers paid $250,000 to install lamps even though no agreement had been made as to whether anyone wanted the lamps enough to pay their ongoing electricity costs. When a contract was prepared by the city, after the fact, it wasn’t anything that property owner wanted to sign. So the lights sat for 15 years before finally getting turned on. However if the owners of the affected properties don’t agree to pick-up ongoing costs, taxpayers will once again foot the bill—this time to pull them out.

Now someone needs to explain to me how government provided health care is going to work.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2005 at 5:21 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin', Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.