Los Angeles City Will Never Divest Itself of It's Arizona Deals

Despite the nonsense being tossed out by LA Mayor Villaraigosa, various city council members, and even people from the First AME Church, the City of Los Angeles will not divest itself of its holdings in Arizona or break its contracts with Arizona companies.  There's too much money involved:

​First off, let us apologize for taking perverse pleasure in watching as Los Angeles City Council members, to borrow a phrase from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, "stepped on a few rakes" in recent days. This week the city let a permanent electricity rate hike -- one the council trumpeted as temporary -- come to fruition. Now council members Janice Hahn and Ed Reyes want the city to cut off all business ties with Arizona over that state's passage of an immigration law that will require people to prove citizenship and allow police to stop people they think are in the United States illegally. It won't be easy.

Problem is, L.A. is almost inextricably tied to Arizona. For example:

-The Department of Water and Power (which must be chuckling right about now) gets some L.A.'s water supply from the Colorado River under a cooperative agreement with Arizona, which has rights to that H2O.

-Arizona-based U.S. Airways has a long-term lease for terminal space at LAX, which is run by the city.

-Los Angeles has partial ownership of the '70s-era, coal-powered Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, which gives the city a substantial amount of its electricity. (Ironically, Villaraigosa was spinning his mostly defeated DWP rate hikes as a way to ease the city off of coal power and onto things such as solar).

-The city also gets some of its energy via another Arizona plant it partially owns, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, and relies transmission lines that cross from that state to California.

So, will LA cut off it's supply of electricity from Palo Verde in a fit of pique over the Arizona immigration bill? Will they kick US Airways out of LAX?

No.  It's all bluster and noise.  Maybe some low level city middle manager won't get to go to a Phoenix hotel and spa for a conference, but otherwise I think Arizona won't feel a thing.