CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2016 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2016 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COASTAL
COMMISSION EX PARTE BAN NOT ENOUGH”
There’s a good chance state lawmakers this
year will pass a ban on ex parte communications involving members of the
Coastal Commission. It’s a nice idea, but inadequate.
Ex parte communications – the legalistic name for private meetings,
phone calls and email exchanges between key state officials and the people or
companies they regulate – emerged two years ago as one of the most corrupt
parts of California’s public life.
That’s when emails revealed the
president of the state’s Public Utilities Commission had met secretly with
executives of the Southern California Edison Co. during an industry meeting in
Poland. The meeting produced a hotel napkin outline of a $3.3 billion charge to
Edison customers, who might get off the hook later this summer for at least
some of the expense of closing the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, caused
in large part by an Edison blunder.
Before then, executives of Pacific Gas
& Electric Co. were already talking and emailing secretly with PUC members
and staff about how to ease their costs for the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline
explosion that killed eight and destroyed dozens of homes.
These were classic examples of ex
parte communications, a practice that’s long allowed both sides of disputes
before some state regulatory agencies to make their case in private. Reality is
that a big advantage always accrues to utilities and other interests with the
money to hire full-time advocates paid to develop close ties with regulators.
Last year, legislators unanimously
passed several PUC reform bills including a ban on ex parte communications with
commissioners. Gov. Jerry Brown quickly vetoed the measures, which could have
harmed the interests of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, parent company of
Southern California Gas Co. and the San Diego Gas & Electric Co., where
Brown’s sister Kathleen is a highly-paid director.
The bills Brown vetoed had a narrow
focus, homing in on only one state commission. Revelations over the last year
made it clear that ex parte communications have also long been a key part of how
the state’s Coastal Commission operates. No one knows how much influence
consultants meeting privately with commissioners had over the springtime firing
of that agency’s strongly environmentalist former executive director.
Brown, whose coastal appointees
approved the firing, has so far said nothing about ex parte communications, or
whether he will veto the bill banning them from Coastal Commission operations that
easily passed the state Senate. It is carried by Democrat Hannah Beth Jackson,
who represents much of the Santa Barbara and Ventura county coastline.
Jackson’s bill is fine as far as it
goes, but it falls far short of what’s needed. Brown’s 2015 veto means ex parte
communications are still legal at the PUC, where commissioners lately adopted
their own rule against such conversations or emails. But the commission can cancel
that rule anytime, and just might when the heat is off.
Ex parte communications are also
allowed at the state Board of Equalization, the Public Employee Relations Board
and the California Air Resources Board, where automakers are a constant
lobbying presence.
What’s needed is an across-the-board
ban, not piecemeal legislation like last year’s attempted ban at the PUC and
this year’s reaction to crises at the Coastal Commission.
Members of these commissions and
boards often whine that they rule on so many cases they’d be swamped if they
had to act only on information in submitted documents. They say their talks
with parties affected by their rulings give them better, more complete
understanding.
But these officials are often
well-paid, the PUC commissioners and many other state board members taking home
six-figure salaries. Why shouldn’t they pore over detailed documents, rather
than subjecting themselves to the blandishments of lobbyists, consultants and
landowners? At the PUC, commissioners also often have private meetings with
Wall Street bankers whose investment choices can be affected by state rulings,
especially if those bankers know in advance which way a decision will go.
All of which means the playing field
in state government right now tilts toward favoring big money interests. Sure,
a ban on ex parte communications by coastal commissioners would be a step in
the right direction, but it’s just not enough, not when the same practice is
common elsewhere, too.
-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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