Los Angeles City Hall continues to punish residents with higher fees

Recycling is a trashy caper, which should make a great movie, but wouldn’t. Too slow. It takes ten years for the caper’s victims to find out that their money is missing.

In 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1383. The bill has come due, and the Los Angeles City Council just voted to raise trash fees to pay it.

SB 1383 is another idiotic law professing to solve the problem of climate change by throwing your money at the sky. Specifically, the law aims to reduce the “short-lived climate pollutant” of methane gas from landfills by mandating a 75% reduction in the disposal of organic waste from the 2014 level by 2025.

And here we are, in 2025, as the residents of Los Angeles are about to get hit with a 54% increase in the charge on their utility bills for trash collection. Currently the trash fee on the bi-monthly bills sent to homeowners by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is $36.32 per month, over $70 on every bill. The monthly fee will jump to $55.94 and rise every year for four years. By 2029, the bi-monthly trash fee on LADWP bills will be over $130.

Everybody will pay more. RecycLA just imposed a 5% rate increase affecting multi-family and commercial properties serviced by the monopoly franchise holders, who pay the city a license fee and pass the cost to captive customers.

Utility bills could start showing up in coroner’s reports as a cause of death.

Consider what’s happening to electricity rates under state laws mandating a transition away from natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power. For example, Los Angeles is implementing the “LA100” plan, targeting “100% clean energy” by 2035 no matter what it costs. According to the city’s Office of Public Accountability, it will raise rates by about 7.7% per year.

The OPA raised questions about the cost burden and the deadline. “We shouldn’t blindly charge ahead for 2035 come hell or high water,” said ratepayer advocate Fred Pickel in July. But Mayor Karen Bass had already declared her support for the plan in her State of the City speech in April, saying she was “proud to continue Los Angeles’ global leadership on climate change.”

This is why it wouldn’t make a good movie: everybody’s out of the picture by the time the money is taken. Gov. Brown, who signed the costly organic waste ban in 2016, is currently enjoying retirement on his wealthy family’s ranch in Colusa County. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti, who introduced the LA100 plan in 2017, was last seen cleaning out the U.S. ambassador’s office in India. Karen Bass will likely be long gone from public office by 2035, when the coroner is routinely listing utility bills as a contributing factor.

None of them care what their grandiose and loony ideas cost ordinary people.

And none of them can say their laws and plans to marginally reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California have any effect on the global climate. You’re paying for their “leadership.”

According to a study of trash fees commissioned by the city, the mandate to reduce organic waste in landfills has increased the cost of processing garbage in Los Angeles from $15.7 million in the 2021-22 budget to $52 million in the projected 2025-26 budget. In addition, the city will spend $5 million on “organics education.”

The official line on trash fee hikes in Los Angeles is that the general fund has long been “subsidizing” residential trash collection because the fees charged don’t cover the rising costs.

But it’s worth remembering that trash collection was once considered part of the ordinary government services paid for by your tax dollars. Today, the city government of Los Angeles, which has a projected $1 billion deficit, has different priorities for spending. For example, Mayor Karen Bass recommended a salary of $359,532 for her newly appointed general manager of the Personnel Department, Malaika Billups. That’s an increase of $7,000 over the salary of her predecessor. The job involves overseeing the 600 employees who work in the Personnel Department.

Maybe it could be a movie. Somebody should climb up to the roof and flash the DOGE signal before the entire city is consumed by organic waste.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley