Tag Archives: CPUC
Utilities Spend Lots Of Public’s Money To Influence State Politics
by Teri Sforza, The Orange County Register
“Your No. 1 example, PG&E, is textbook!” [said Chapman University political science professor Mark Chapin Johnson.] “They answer to the state through the PUC, not their shareholders. … Whenever PG&E wishes to contribute vast sums of ratepayers’ monthly payments to the political process, all PG&E needs do is gain permission to raise rates with the PUC to cover such contributions. Public shareholders or ratepayers have no say in the process. Is this a great system or what? Talk about incestuous!” Read More ›
Judge Consulted Edison On San Onofre Deal
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The utilities commission is unique among state agencies in that it employs judges who serve as arbiters, even when people have a beef with the agency itself. Members of the public cannot take action in Superior Court to challenge a utilities commission decision, but must appear before a commission employee. … The commission tasked an outside attorney to review its record on such private dealings, and the firm in June reported that violations are common and tilt the process in favor of utility companies. Legislators passed a slate of reform bills, which were vetoed earlier this month by Gov. Jerry Brown, who said they contained conflicting provisions that made them unworkable. Read More ›
San Diego U-T Editorial: Gov. Brown And The PUC: What, Me Worry?
by The Editorial Board, San Diego Union-Tribune
This is maddening. At any point over the past year, Brown could have given guidance to lawmakers on how to structure PUC fixes that he thought appropriate. Instead, apparently discerning a world in which it’s cool for regulators and utilities to have a buddy-buddy relationship, the governor ended up blocking all reforms. … Despite [scandalous] revelations, the PUC has shrugged off calls to reopen negotiations on San Onofre and has done little to cooperate with investigators… [and] pretends that $850 million in already-planned PG&E infrastructure improvements are a penalty. This is the corrupt, petty culture that Jerry Brown thinks is worth preserving. Read More ›
San Jose Mercury News Editorial: Brown’s Veto Damages PUC Reform Effort
by The Editorial Board, San Jose Mercury News
Gov. Jerry Brown’s rejection of crucial reforms of the scandal-plagued California Public Utilities Commission is appalling. … The six bills Brown vetoed would have tightened the rules on communications between utility executives and PUC members to try to halt the pattern of wink-and-nod backroom deals. The most egregious example was helping PG&E get the judge it wanted for a rate-setting hearing. The legislation also outlined simple standards for when a commissioner should be disqualified from a case and added requirements for public meetings. Read More ›
San Bruno Officials Denounce Gov. Brown’s Veto Of CPUC Reforms
by KPIX 5, CBS Local San Francisco
One of the bills Brown vetoed Friday, Senate Bill 660, would have banned ex parte, or private communications, between regulators and utility executives in some proceedings.
Leno, the bill’s author, said it was intended to rebuild public trust in the CPUC. “Ratepayers have already paid dearly for California’s failure to act, and the status quo is simply unacceptable,” Leno said in a statement Friday. “Revelations of backroom deals and breaches of transparency have undermined public trust and weakened public safety. Our efforts to reform the CPUC will continue.” Read More ›
Comcast Must Pay $33M To Settle Charges It Listed 75,000 Unlisted Phone Numbers
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The problem arose after Comcast implemented a new process for producing and disseminating listing information for its residential phone customers in late 2009. Under the system, Comcast sent non-published listings to a third-party company, while placing a “privacy flag” on the non-published listings. However, the flag was never attached to approximately 75,000 non-published/non-listed subscribers. As a result, that information – for which customers paid between $1.25 and $1.50 per month to keep unlisted – appeared in certain county phone books for the years of 2010 and 2011.
The issue came to light in 2012 … Read More ›
CPUC Reform Bills On Governor’s Desk
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
SB660 implements the reforms the law firm called for and closes a loophole that allowed for secret meetings as long as they were one-sided and the commissioners did all the talking. Leno said he is hopeful that Brown will sign the bill. “We took some amendments and we stood our ground on others” in talks with the governor’s office, he said. The resulting bill was passed unanimously by both the state Senate and Assembly. “It is clearly a quality product on a very timely and important issue,” Leno said, adding that the bill would make a difference “to a commission suffering systemic problems.” Read More ›
See How A Huge Utility Stonewalled Regulators After Its Fatal Pipeline Disaster
by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
[PG&E’s] safety performance, which long ranked toward the bottom of the utility industry, has gotten worse. … This is a company that not only provides all utility service to almost everyone in Northern California but manages California’s only operational nuclear power plant. If PG&E staff couldn’t find it in themselves to act like grownups when its policies had caused the death of eight people and the destruction of an entire neighborhood, is there anything that would make them straighten up and fly right? Read More ›
Five Years After Deadly San Bruno Explosion: Are We Safer?
by Rebecca Bowe and Lisa Pickoff-White, KQED
The explosion and fire killed eight people and injured 58 while destroying 38 homes and damaging 70 others. The community is still recovering from the trauma. … “Really the most shocking part of this is the extent to which the [CPUC] was complicit in the negligence that led to the disaster here in San Bruno,” says San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson. “You had the leadership of the California Public Utilities Commission essentially in bed with the utility. Dining, drinking, vacationing — and making deals behind the scenes. Californians should be vitally concerned … ” Read More ›
PUC Launches PG&E Probe As Agency Fails To Comply With Search Warrant
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
Meanwhile, the commission – beset by criticism that its officials have a too-cozy relationship with the utilities they regulate – failed to respond to a search warrant for records related [to] the California attorney general’s investigation of agency operations. A court document filed Aug. 7 states that “after multiple requests, and two months after the search warrant was served on CPUC, no records have been produced.” … The attorney general is investigating secret talks between the commission and Southern California Edison, the state’s second largest investor-owned utility. Read More ›
State Consumer Advocate To Pull Out Of San Onofre Nuclear Plant Settlement
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
A multibillion-dollar settlement over the closed San Onofre nuclear power plant took another blow Monday as the state consumer advocate said that he was withdrawing from the deal and would urge regulators to reopen the case. Joe Como … said Monday that he was “very disappointed” by a judge’s ruling Aug. 5 that Edison failed to report communication with regulators about a settlement. Como added that the judge did not go far enough and wrote an opinion that still gives too much latitude for utilities to communicate with regulators outside public view. Read More ›
Judge Cites 10 Violations For Edison
by Jeff McDonald, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Southern California Edison on Wednesday was found to have violated rules prohibiting backchannel communications at least 10 times in its dealings with regulators over the failed San Onofre nuclear plant. Criminal investigators and others have been reviewing whether improper private communications have compromised the public proceedings of the utilities commission. Read More ›
State To Probe Peevey Party Proceeds
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The soiree honored former California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey, and funds were raised in the name of his successor, Michael Picker. The $250-a-plate event was held at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco as consumer activists protested outside. Read More ›