STREET LIGHTING - Los Angeles has a city bureau whose fundamental job is literally to keep the lights on. Before City Hall asks the public for more money to do it, perhaps it is time to turn the lights on inside the operation itself.
The Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting oversees more than 223,000 streetlights across the city. Its responsibilities extend far beyond replacing burned out bulbs. The Bureau is responsible for engineering, design, construction, maintenance and repair across an enormous public infrastructure system.
With that responsibility should come an equally serious level of accountability.
Los Angeles property owners were recently asked to approve an updated Street Lighting Assessment to provide additional funding for operating and maintaining the system. The proposal did not receive the required approval, leaving City officials confronting a funding shortfall and questions about how to preserve baseline street-lighting services.
But before City Hall searches for another source of money, it should answer a more fundamental question:
Do we know enough about how the existing operation has been managed, engineered, inspected and supervised?
The answer should not come solely from the Bureau examining itself.
Los Angeles should commission an independent investigation or comprehensive performance audit of the Bureau's operations. That examination should include management decisions, engineering practices, project design and approval, inspections, contracting, procurement, maintenance, staffing, response times, project costs and internal controls.
And the scrutiny cannot stop at senior management.
Engineers responsible for designing, reviewing, approving and inspecting street-lighting projects must also be included in the accountability process. Professional titles should never become shields from legitimate scrutiny.
If managers made poor decisions, those decisions should be examined. If contractors failed to perform, their performance should be examined. And if engineering decisions contributed to documented failures, unnecessary costs, avoidable delays or unsafe conditions, those decisions deserve the same examination.
This is not about declaring every engineer responsible for every streetlight that goes dark. It is about following the evidence through the entire chain of responsibility.
Who designed a project? Who reviewed the plans? Who approved them? Who inspected the work? Who signed off on completion? What engineering standards were followed? Were deficiencies identified? Were warnings raised? If they were, who received them and what was done?
And when something failed, who determined why?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are precisely the questions taxpayers should expect a government responsible for public infrastructure to be able to answer.
An independent investigation does not begin by declaring anyone guilty. It begins with a basic principle: the public has a right to know whether government is operating efficiently, safely, professionally and transparently.
Street lighting is not cosmetic infrastructure. A functioning lighting system affects pedestrians, motorists, neighborhoods and businesses. When government accepts responsibility for maintaining that system, performance matters.
So does engineering. So does supervision. So does spending. And when something goes wrong, so does accountability.
Yet City Hall too often begins a difficult budget conversation by asking: How much more money do we need?
The better question is: What happened to the money, personnel and resources already entrusted to the operation, and what results did taxpayers receive?
Before Los Angeles creates another funding mechanism, shifts money from another part of the budget or returns to property owners with another assessment proposal, City leaders should demand a complete accounting.
Residents deserve to know how long repairs are taking and which neighborhoods experience the longest outages. They deserve to know how repair priorities are established, what it actually costs to design and install projects, how much work is performed internally versus by contractors, and how those contractors are selected and monitored.
They should also know whether projects are being completed on time and within budget; whether recently completed work requires repeated repairs; whether engineering plans receive adequate review; whether inspections are sufficient; and how design or engineering errors are identified, documented and corrected.
Above all, the public deserves an answer to one straightforward question: When a preventable failure occurs, who is held accountable?
That is not an attack on government employees. It is a demand for responsible government.
If an independent examination concludes that the Bureau is well managed, its engineers are following appropriate professional standards, its projects are properly designed and inspected, and its fundamental problem is simply inadequate funding, City Hall would have powerful evidence to present when asking taxpayers for additional resources.
But if investigators uncover waste, weak internal controls, management failures, deficient engineering decisions, inadequate inspections, contracting problems or failures of supervision, those problems should be corrected before residents are asked for another dollar.
Either outcome serves the public.
Independent scrutiny would also protect the engineers, electricians, field crews and other City employees who perform their jobs professionally. If an engineer identified a problem, documented it and warned management but was ignored, that should be part of the public record too.
Accountability is not about assigning collective blame. It is about refusing to exempt any level of government from examination.
Management should not be exempt. Contractors should not be exempt. Supervisors should not be exempt. And engineers should not be exempt.
If the decisions were sound, the record should demonstrate it. If mistakes were made, the City should identify them. If warnings were ignored, the public should know. And if professional or administrative failures contributed to documented problems, there should be consequences appropriate to what an independent review actually establishes.
Los Angeles residents are repeatedly asked to trust City Hall with more money, more assessments and more promises that services will improve.
But trust does not come from another presentation or another funding request. It comes from opening the books, examining the contracts, reviewing the engineering, scrutinizing inspections, following the money and tracing decisions from the drawing board to the street.
Then let independent reviewers tell the public what worked, what failed, why it failed and where responsibility belongs.
Los Angeles needs its streetlights to work.
Before City Hall asks taxpayers to put more money into the system, it should make sure something else is working too:
Accountability. Turn on the lights.
(Avrohom Moshe is a California-based civic affairs writer and public policy analyst focused on government accountability, fiscal responsibility, and public safety. He also writes on issues affecting the Jewish community, including combating antisemitism and advancing civic engagement.)
