Ronnie Polaneczky: The Water Revenue Department and Ernestine the Operator: They both don't care
My favorite TV villain of all time is Ernestine the Telephone Operator. Played by comedian Lily Tomlin on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" in the 1970s, Ernestine embodied all that was awful about the old Ma Bell telephone monopoly.
My favorite TV villain of all time is Ernestine the Telephone Operator. Played by comedian Lily Tomlin on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" in the 1970s, Ernestine embodied all that was awful about the old Ma Bell telephone monopoly.
She'd perch before an old-fashioned switchboard, supercilious and evil as she answered complaints from customers peeved about the all-powerful company's crappy service.
She'd taunt her increasingly frustrated callers until you could imagine them sputtering, "Why are you people doing this? Don't you care?"
"We don't care," she'd snort, before joyfully disconnecting all of Peoria with a yank of some switchboard cables. "We don't have to. We're the phone company!"
I thought of Ernestine as I leafed through City Controller Alan Butkovitz's just-released review of delinquent water and sewer accounts.
The document details how the Water Revenue Bureau, which is unregulated by the Public Utility Commission, raised rates four times in two years while either unaware of (or too lazy to chase) millions of dollars it could've collected in unpaid bills, including penalties and liens.
Didn't they care that those increases jacked up our monthly bills by 28 percent - a hike that is killing low-income customers?
They didn't care. They didn't have to. They're the Water Revenue Bureau.
The controller's review showed that the bureau was owed a staggering $161 million by more than 62,000 customers whose accounts went unpaid for anywhere from three months to 15 years - without the water ever being turned off.
Some of the worst delinquents hadn't even been forced to work out payment plans with the bureau.
Two of the biggest deadbeats: The federal government, whose unpaid sewer and water bills on 25 accounts total $1.3 million, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, whose 34 accounts are in the red for $562,000.
Seems the bureau followed an unwritten, decades-old policy of not shutting off water for government-owned properties - an arbitrary practice that escaped scrutiny, thanks to the lack of bureau oversight by any agency whose job it is to notice when the bureau is winging it.
As for the rest of the delinquents, the bureau never seemed interested in doing the one thing - turning off the faucets - that might've kept our bills from rising.
In an unintentionally hilarious paragraph, the review deadpans, "We believe that allowing customers with large unpaid balances to continue receiving water for many years before water service is terminated is not an effective collection effort."
In defense of the bureau, Revenue Commissioner Keith Richardson has said that the agency has recently replaced its creaky, 30-year-old computer system, which he blamed for so much of that $161 million gushing out of the bureau's coffers.
But that still doesn't excuse the bureau for record-keeping that was sloppy as sewer muck and just as transparent.
The bureau didn't know how much it was owed as a result of properties sold at sheriff's sale.
Nor were there records explaining why one very lucky delinquent customer - ODAAT, Inc. & Affiliates - was forgiven its entire delinquent bill of $276,011.46.
Nor did the bureau notice - for nine years - that one of its own employees appeared to be involved in a fraud scheme that, in hindsight, seems awfully obvious: He called in his own, mighty low meter readings in order to underpay his personal water bill.
Maybe now that this humiliating review is public and the agency has some new software to tinker with (although who knows how many of the old problems will migrate into the new system?), there'll be some accountability and answers from the Water Revenue Department.
In other words, maybe they'll finally care because they'll feel they have to, in a way they never had to before. *
E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns: