Tag Archives: CPUC
State Regulator Says PG&E May Be Too Big To Operate Safely
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
In levying the $1.6 billion penalty for the San Bruno explosion, commissioners cited PG&E’s shoddy records, reckless practices and numerous safety violations leading up to the disaster. The 30-inch pipeline exploded when an incomplete seam weld that PG&E didn’t even know existed ruptured. Company records showed that the 1950s-era pipe had no seams, so PG&E never conducted the type of inspection that could have caught a flawed weld. Regulators found that PG&E had cut pipeline-safety spending during years when it was making record profits … Read More ›
Funds For Safety Went To Utility Execs’ Pay Instead, PUC President Says
by Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
Money collected from ratepayers and earmarked for pipeline safety was instead spent on executive pay raises by the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., in the months before a deadly pipeline explosion in 2010, lawmakers were told Wednesday. … After the two-hour hearing, [new Public Utilities Commission President] Michael Picker told The Times that he’s gathering additional documentation that PG&E put off safety and maintenance work to boost its profits and provide top executives with bonuses. Read More ›
PUC Critics Cite Concerns Over ‘Revolving Door’
by George Avalos, San Jose Mercury News
[Michael] Peevey, who served as a PUC commissioner and president for 12 years, is seen by the agency’s sharpest critics as the poster child for the damage caused by the revolving door. He came to the PUC after working as president of Southern California Edison, which provides electricity for 14 million customers and is regulated by the PUC. … The exchange of jobs between the PUC and utilities extends to staff as well as commissioners. Tens of thousands of emails released starting last year and extending into January show many instances of PUC staffers working with PG&E executives in a cozy fashion. Read More ›
San Bruno: PG&E Should Pay $1.6 Billion Penalty As Punishment For Fatal Blast Says Top Regulator
by George Avalos, San Jose Mercury News
A consumer group, The Utility Reform Network, praised the proposal from [California Public Utilities Commission President Michael] Picker, but warned that vigilance is still needed to ensure the PUC doesn’t accommodate PG&E unduly in other decisions. Among those pending matters: a plan to finance PG&E improvements to its natural gas transmission and storage system. That proposal could produce an increase in gas bills of 11.8 percent, or $5.23 a month for the average residential customer. Read More ›
Regulators’ E-Mails With PG&E Blasted As Culture Of ‘Lawlessness’
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
Stephen Weissman, a UC Berkeley energy law professor who previously worked as a lawyer at the [California Public Utilities Commission], said the current standards reflect a “cultural divide” with similar agencies in other states that ban such lobbying altogether. “California does not even discourage” the contacts, Weissman said. “To the contrary, it welcomes them.” Worse, he said, is that there is no penalty for utilities commissioners who violate the rules. There is not even a requirement that commissioners report such lobbying. “We feel this lack of direct accountability,” Weissman said, is a “major contributing factor to the apparent repeated violations.” Read More ›
Lawsuit Contests CPUC Lawyer Hiring
by Jeff McDonald, UT-San Diego
[Plaintiffs attorney:] “They are misusing public funds by hiring lawyers — very expensive lawyers — to hide public records that relate to the misuse of ratepayer funds.” … According to [CPUC President Michael] Picker, the commission is facing at least three separate criminal investigations — two by the California Attorney General’s office and one by the U.S. Department of Justice. … Investigators are looking into alleged favoritism by [ex-CPUC President Michael] Peevey and others after a deadly 2010 pipeline explosion in San Bruno and the 2012 failure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Read More ›
Legislators Pressure CPUC Officials Over PG&E E-Mails
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
Committee Chairman Sen. Ben Hueso, D-Logan Heights (San Diego County), told [Commission President Michael Picker] that some of the 65,000 e-mails between commission officials and PG&E that were recently released as part of a court case show that the regulatory process appears “extremely skewed” toward the utility. The e-mails have shown utilities commission officials working to name an administrative law judge whom PG&E preferred to a rate-setting case, and a PG&E executive trying to leverage the former commission president’s interest in a coal-gasification project into favorable treatment for the firm. Read More ›
CPUC Boss Equated Safety Advocate With Mass Murderer
Days after the 2010 PG&E gas explosion that killed eight, hospitalized many more and leveled 38 San Bruno homes, the Executive Director of the California Public Utilities Commission emailed a vice president at the company, equating pipeline safety advocate Mark Toney with an infamous mass murder. Perhaps … Read More ›
PUC Emails Appear To Show Former Chief Michael Peevey Overstepping His Role
by Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Group, estimated that the email banter and “backroom deals” have cost PG&E ratepayers millions if not billions of dollars, because they may have prejudiced legal decisions, including rate setting. “A regulator is supposed to have an arms-length relationship with the utility,” the ratepayer advocate said, “not an embracing relationship.” Read More ›
PG&E Wields “Pervasive” Influence At PUC, Now Described As A “Rogue Agency”
by George Avalos and Josh Richman, Contra Costa Times
“It’s almost as if PG&E was a Rasputin, or a Svengali, with the magic power to get the PUC to do what PG&E wanted,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, whose San Mateo County district includes San Bruno [where a natural gas blast in September 2010 killed eight people and destroyed a neighborhood]. … The PUC remains under intense scrutiny because skeptics believe Peevey created and then nurtured a culture of cozy relations with San Francisco-based PG&E and other utility giants in California. Read More ›
Agents Search Michael Peevey’s Home In PG&E Judge-Shopping Case
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The search warrant covering [former California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey and former PG&E executive Brian Cherry’s] homes said investigators were looking for evidence of improper “ex parte communications, judge-shopping, bribery, obstruction of justice or due administration of laws, favors or preferential treatment” related to matters coming before the utilities commission from December 2009 on. Read More ›
SB 215 Sustains Drive For CPUC Reforms Originally Sought Via SB 660
1/27/15 update: The Senate passed SB 215 (Leno) 37-0 yesterday, sending the CPUC reform bill to the Assembly. The bill includes limits on “ex parte” (private) communications that CFC had sought in SB 660, which had passed both the Senate and Assembly last fall but was vetoed by Governor … Read More ›
New CPUC President Promises Reform
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The new president of the California Public Utilities Commission issued a public pledge on Thursday to repair damage done by his predecessor, Michael Peevey. Michael Picker, the former political consultant who was named commission president last month, read a lengthy statement at the outset of the first meeting of the year, promising to improve state oversight of California utilities. … “We have a lot to do,” Picker concluded, “so let’s giddy-up and go.” Read More ›