Tag Archives: San Bruno Explosion
Mercury News editorial: Governor’s PUC Emails Should Be Public
by The Editorial Board, San Jose Mercury News
Brown stood by former PUC President Michael Peevey long after Peevey’s grossly inappropriate relationship with PG&E became clear. Under Peevey’s watch, the PUC let PG&E take money that was approved for pipeline safety and use it instead for executive compensation before the deadly 2010 San Bruno explosion. The governor also knew Peevey inappropriately engaged in secret talks with Southern California Edison, the majority owner of the San Onofre power plant in San Diego County. But the real surprise was this fall, when he vetoed the six-bill PUC transparency package that was passed unanimously by the Assembly and Senate. Read More ›
San Bruno Says PG&E Too Cozy With CPUC’s Mike Florio
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
Newly released documents show that PG&E executives had meetings, e-mail exchanges and other communications with utilities commission member Mike Florio that were conducted without public notice. … Florio was a key player in several regulatory proceedings that grew out of the San Bruno [natural gas explosion]. … Florio also oversaw the process that determined how much PG&E customers would have to pay to bolster pipeline safety following the disaster. In December 2012, the commission voted to have customers cover more than half the $2.2 billion in pipeline safety upgrades. Read More ›
Judge: Regulator Should Release Brown E-Mails On Nuclear Shutdown
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The 65 e-mails that [Gov. Jerry Brown and CPUC officials] either sent or received date from 2013 and 2014. “It appears from the record that CPUC and officials from the governor’s office, including the governor himself, were involved in the discussions at the CPUC regarding the San Onofre” [nuclear plant shutdown, attorney Maria Severson told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith]. “The interest of public disclosure as to who and what was behind the decision to make utility customers pay over $3.3 billion for the errors of Edison is of vital importance.” Read More ›
PG&E Could Face Steep Fines For Banned Exchanges With Regulators
by Rebecca Bowe, KQED
[One case concerned a CPUC] decision to award millions to PG&E as a reward for satisfying energy-efficiency goals, even though consumer advocates argued that the company hadn’t successfully hit the targets. … PG&E started to face major public scrutiny for its cozy ties to utility regulators after a trove of emails were released in court proceedings initiated by the city of San Bruno in the wake of the deadly 2010 pipeline explosion. … “We’ve said again and again that the rules are much too lax,” [said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network (TURN)]. “We and our allies will be pushing for the maximum penalty.” Read More ›
PG&E’s Profit Culture Is Key Element In San Bruno Explosion Trial
by George Avalos, San Jose Mercury News
PG&E faces a fine of up to $1.13 billion if convicted on the federal criminal charges. The case includes 27 allegations that PG&E violated pipeline safety regulations and one charge that it obstructed a follow-up investigation into the explosion. … The state Public Utilities Commission in April levied a record-setting penalty of $1.6 billion against PG&E for causing the explosion. … Federal investigators believe a combination of PG&E’s shoddy maintenance and flawed record keeping, nurtured by lazy oversight by the state PUC, were the three primary factors that led to the explosion. Read More ›
CPUC Reform Veto Vexes Brown Backers
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, has praised Brown in the past for action on privacy, food safety, credit reports and residential care facilities for the elderly. Holober is not happy with the vetoes of CPUC bills. “Until we saw the vetoes, we were keeping our fingers crossed that he would make the Governor’s Office part of the solution,” Holober said. “Now we are really scratching our heads. The loss of public trust, the scandalous collusion is troubling.” 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 ›
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 ›