My power bill rivals my mortgage. Los Angeles, please show us the math

When I opened our LADWP bill in late September, my jaw hit the floor. 

We owed $3,322.01 for two months of water and power, and more than $2,100 of that was electricity alone. I checked the account number twice. It was ours.

I live in the San Fernando Valley with my wife and two sons. Out here, summer heat often tops 100 degrees and sometimes 105, so we kept the thermostat at 74. That isn’t a luxury. In the Valley, it’s basic survival for families and pets.

I posted a video venting about it on TikTok and X, expecting just a few friends to commiserate. I asked if I was secretly powering a crypto mine for the whole Valley, or if LADWP just figured I’d pay my mortgage twice that month. 

Instead, it got close to a million views, and thousands of Angelenos wrote back saying the exact same thing: Our utility bills are now rivaling our mortgages and rent payments.

Wow. After that, I sat down and read all six pages of the bill.

We used 5,358 kilowatt-hours over 60 days. That’s more than last summer, because it was hotter and the AC ran more. 

But look at how LADWP prices it. 

The first 1,000 kilowatt-hours cost about 26 cents each and the next 2,000 cost about 32 cents, and after that every one of them costs almost 41 cents. We had 2,358 of those. 

The bill says the tiers are there “to provide an incentive to conserve electricity.” I’d love to know what I was supposed to conserve when it was 105 outside. 

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Seems like a Heat Tax: Families get pushed into the top rate just for trying to avoid heatstroke.

Then there are the charges you can’t see. 

LADWP builds pass-through charges into the price of every kilowatt-hour, with opaque names like the Energy Cost Adjustment and the Incremental Reliability Cost Adjustment. Together they added more than 12 cents to each one this summer. 

Most families probably have never heard of them, and they quietly inflate every bill in the city.

The water and sanitation side adds up too. Our sewer charge alone was $337.23, and trash was another $113.51. 

And because LADWP bills every two months, a bad summer doesn’t arrive as one hard month. It arrives as one enormous bill, due in 20 days, with an 18% annual late charge if you can’t pay it and a warning that your service can be shut off.

Here’s what really irks me. LADWP is a publicly owned utility, and it belongs to the residents of Los Angeles. 

My bill still carries a 10% city utility tax, $192.08 this time, and this year the city approved moving $225.8 million out of LADWP’s power fund into its own reserves. 

We should not be an endless revenue stream to cover city budget shortfalls.

So I started a petition on change.org — and more than 10,000 of my neighbors have signed it. We’re asking for four things:

• City Controller Kenneth Mejia should launch an independent, public audit of how LADWP calculates its rates, its tiers and those pass-through charges.
• From July through September, the city should raise the Tier 1 and Tier 2 limits so families aren’t pushed into the top rate for keeping cool.
• Families should be able to pay monthly instead of getting hit with a two-month shock bill, and the sewer and sanitation add-ons should be capped during peak heat.
• No one should lose power over a summer bill spike, and everyone hit by one should get an interest-free payment plan.

Since the video, Mejia has told the press that the bills don’t sit right with him, and his office has asked LADWP for data. That’s a start. 

LADWP also offered to send someone to the house to show us how to use less power. I appreciate that, but my neighbors are getting these same bills — and what all of us need is an answer about how the numbers get made.

Los Angeles votes for mayor on Nov. 3, and whoever wins will oversee the utility that sends these bills. 

I’m not telling anybody how to vote. But Mayor Karen Bass, and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who’s running against her, should tell ratepayers before Election Day whether they support an independent audit of LADWP.

Living in Los Angeles is already unaffordable enough. 

Running an air conditioner shouldn’t force families into debt. Our thermostat is still set at 74, and my boys have no idea what that costs. 

All I’m asking is for the city that owns our power company to show us the math.

Micah Reed is a father of two in the San Fernando Valley. His petition, Cap the Heat Tax, is at change.org/CapTheHeatTax.