Dominick Rubalcava is president of the commission that oversees the city Department of Water and Power. In an interview with the L.A. Business Journal's Howard Fine, he defends the department's $3 million-a-year contract for outside public relations work that ignited so much controversy over Fleishman-Hillard, the agency that got the sweet deal several years ago.

"You must cast yourself back to 1996-1997, when the contract was first awarded. At that time, the DWP was considered a bloated agency trying to gear itself up for deregulation that everybody could see was coming...The board then, with the full support of then Mayor (Richard) Riordan and the City Council, decided that the agency needed professional outside advice to deal with these issues. We hired lawyers, we hired environmental experts, we hired financial experts and we hired public relations advisors."

The interview talks about how news coverage of the Fleishman deal has made it harder for the DWP to sell rate hikes to the public and the council. Also in the LABJ: Linq on Third Street closed suddenly Aug. 15. A new restaurant, Ortolan, will open in the space in October under former L’Orangerie chef Christophe Eme.