Tag Archives: PG&E
Report Calls For CPUC Reforms
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The California Public Utilities Commission for years has based multibillion-dollar decisions not on public debate or evidentiary records but rather on secret meetings and influences by the companies it regulates, an independent report has found. … Consumer advocates said the Strumwasser & Woocher report highlighted the need for legislative reform of commission practices. “Backdoor deals have completely corrupted the commission’s process,” said Thomas Long, senior attorney at The Utility Reform Network. “In private meetings that have become the norm at the commission, utility claims go unchallenged.” Read More ›
Report Blasts Secret Talks Between Utilities, CPUC
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The ability of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities to engage in back-channel talks with top California Public Utilities Commission officials unfairly skews decisions in favor of big-money interests, and the practice should be banned in rate cases, a review requested by the state agency concluded Monday. Such back-door communications became notorious last year when e-mails showed that a PG&E executive had engaged in a secret campaign to obtain a preferred judge in a $1.3 billion rate-setting case before the utilities commission. Those and other back-channel contacts — known as ex parte communications — are the focus of federal and state criminal investigations. Read More ›
Appeals Court OKs Record Penalty Against PG&E
by Vanessa Blum, The Recorder
A California appeals court on Tuesday upheld a $14.35 million fine levied against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. by the California Public Utilities Commission for providing false information to the commission in the wake of the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. … “Although the amount is large, so is the real and potential harm caused by PG&E’s inaction,” Justice James Richman wrote in a decision joined by J. Anthony Kline and Marla Miller. “PG&E does not argue that it lacks the ability to pay the fine.” The company said in a statement Tuesday evening that it does not plan to appeal the court’s ruling. Read More ›
Grand Jury Probes PG&E’s Relationship With State Regulators
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The latest grand jury investigation was opened after last year’s disclosure of e-mails between PG&E and the state utilities commission, which prompted probes by both state and federal prosecutors. Some of the e-mails showed a PG&E executive lobbying commissioners and their staffs for a preferred judge to oversee a $1.3 billion rate case. Others indicated that PG&E thought then-commission President Michael Peevey was dangling favorable state treatment in exchange for the utility’s backing for his pet fundraising and political causes. Read More ›
Utilities Agency Reforms Still Pending
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
More than eight months later, no employee discipline beyond [chief of staff Carol Brown’s resignation] has been made publicly known, and some of those involved in questionable communications have been promoted. New commission president Michael Picker, a former aide to Gov. Jerry Brown whose nomination is pending Senate approval, has engaged in backchannel communications himself, as reported by U-T San Diego in March. … The commission is still evaluating the 65,000 or so PG&E emails to figure out which employees may have violated rules against inappropriate communications. Any discipline is likely to be kept confidential, [an agency spokeswoman] said. Read More ›
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 ›