Police Serve Subpoenas to DWP Union Chief

By City News Service

Los Angeles police officers successfully served subpoenas Friday to Brian D'Arcy, the head of the union representing city utility workers, demanding that he turnover financial documents for a pair of joint Department of Water and Power trusts, the controller's office said.

City Controller Ron Galperin launched a probe last month into the Joint Safety Institute and the Joint Training Institute, a pair of trusts governed by boards made up of city and union officials that received more than $40 million in ratepayer money from the DWP over the past decade.

D'Arcy, who sits on the trusts' boards and heads the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18, has refused to turn over documents detailing what the two organizations did with the money.

D'Arcy failed to appear for an audit interview and turn over documents to the controller's office by a deadline set for Wednesday, instead sending a letter to Galperin saying the trusts do not need to comply with the controller's request, according to the controller.

Galperin announced this week he would issue subpoenas to force D'Arcy to appear and to furnish the requested documents.

While LAPD officers were able to serve the trusts' custodians of records on Thursday, they were unable to track down D'Arcy himself until this afternoon.

LAPD officers were camped outside D'Arcy's Silver Lake home and a few other locations Friday, according to a Galperin aide.

The subpoenas tell the trusts and D'Arcy to appear for a Jan. 23 "audit entrance" meeting and to hand over the requested financial files, which include "support documents" for expenses made on salary, training workshop, travel and conference, office and other items listed in the trusts' general ledger and tax forms.

Galperin said he hoped D'Arcy would respond "sooner rather than later" to the subpoenas. The controller's office has only had to resort to issuing subpoenas a few times in the last decade, he said.

The union boss's inability to answer the "simple question" of how the "money has been spent" raises questions about what actually happened with the money, Galperin said.

"You can't help but wonder, but I'm not reaching any conclusions at this time," he said.