CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“THIS ‘TAX’ MAY BE ABOUT TO RISE”
If a committee of legislators or U.S.
Senators whose most influential members were under criminal investigation ever
considered raising taxes on Californians by significant amounts, protests
would be non-stop and cacophonous.
But with the seriously sullied state
Public Utilities Commission about to raise electric rates for the bulk of this
state’s residents, the silence from the public and from consumer advocates is
deafening.
Make no mistake, electric and natural
gas rates are a lot like taxes, even if they’re not called that. As with taxes,
don’t pay and dire consequences will follow.
Maybe the fact that power prices seem
more complex than taxes makes electricity customers – all of us – yawn when
rate hikes are considered. Maybe it’s because the commissioners regulating
large utilities like Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and
San Diego Gas & Electric never have to go before the voters.
But the reality is that even as at
least one current PUC member and the ex-president of the commission are under
state and federal investigation, as early as this month the PUC may change the
entire way electricity rates are levied.
The seemingly arcane question about to
be decided soon is how many rate tiers should appear on the typical California
electricity bill. Tiers have a lot to do with how much customers pay for power,
as for decades the rule has been that the more you use, the more you pay for
each kilowatt hour.
The idea has been to encourage energy
conservation, just as tiered water prices – now under legal challenge – are one
tactic to discourage excessive water use in a drought.
A typical Edison bill this spring
showed up to 618 kilowatt hours costing 14 cents each, for a total of $86.52,
while the top tier of the same bill was priced at 31 cents per kilowatt hour,
more than twice as much.
Now the commission is about to
consider a plan by PG&E – yes, the same company indicted for the 2010 gas
pipeline explosion that killed eight persons and destroyed dozens of homes in
San Bruno – to cut the number of rate tiers from four to two, a move sure to
raise the rates of low-usage customers and lower what’s paid by factories,
office buildings and other large power users.
This would essentially see persons and
companies that have cut power use to conserve energy and fight climate change
pay more for using less. Meanwhile, energy hogs will pay less for using more,
and climate change be damned. If PG&E wins the new formula it seeks, the
same kind of plan will soon come to Edison and SDG&E electric customers.
Edison already proposes a similar pricing change.
This is part of an effort started by
Democratic Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno to help the big utilities
“simplify” their billing. It’s as if Perea and friends believe most
Californians are not mentally competent to read an electricity bill.
Another Perea measure, passed last
year and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will soon impose a flat fee (note it is
not called a tax, although it acts just like one) of $5 per month or $60 per
year on every electric customer. This new charge will supposedly compensate big
power companies for continuing to maintain the state’s electric grid while more
and more consumers install rooftop solar panels and at least partially go off
the grid.
This isn’t big money for most folks,
but it is a slight disincentive to install solar, since the savings from it
won’t be quite as good as before for big users. Is this really what Brown and
other advocates of renewable energy want?
It all may be the result of direct
lobbying during a 2012 legislative conference on the Hawaiian island of Maui,
where some lawmakers saw expenses paid by corporations and/or labor unions.
Rate restructure was discussed there.
If that conference had even the
slightest influence on the coming changes, the plane tickets and hotel rooms
paid for by businesses and their union workers will turn into choice
investments.
For these changes would mean billions
of new dollars for the big utilities, lower bills for big energy hogs and
higher prices for most consumers.
Sadly, all that stands between
consumers and that more expensive new reality is the thoroughly compromised
PUC.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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