CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2023 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“LATEST BAILOUT PLAN:
UTILITIES SEEK YOUR INCOME INFO”
By law,
federal and state tax returns are confidential. Even some presidential
candidates, most notably Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, have managed to
use this fact to hide their finances from voters.
But now
comes the latest bailout effort for California’s three largest electric
utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego
Gas & Electric.
The three
worked together in 2022, lobbying a bill through the Legislature to partially
link utility rates with household incomes. They sold their plan as a way to
bring equity to power rates, where low-income families now pay about as much as
the rich per kilowatt hour used.
In
reality, if this plan comes to pass, it will be yet another consumer-financed
bailout for utility companies, akin to the state Wildfire Fund and the “loan”
soon to go to PG&E to help it keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station
open an extra five years to help ease the state’s transition to renewables.
While
billed as advancing equity, the four-tiered fixed payment plan to be drawn up
by the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will really act to discourage
new rooftop solar installations and protect the big companies from the
burgeoning Community Choice Aggregation movement taking hold from Sonoma to San
Diego, Placer County to Pico Rivera. CCAs offer both conventional and renewable
energy at somewhat lower costs than the utilities charge.
The
latest plan depends completely on utility company knowledge of each customer’s
income. The four tiers are designed to make consumers pay set fees for being
hooked up to the state electric grid, ranging from a low of $15 per month up to
$92 monthly. The companies say that will be accompanied by lower rates per
kilowatt hour used, but anyone who knows the sordid history of electric rate
making in California will understand lowered usage rates will soon rise right
back to today’s levels or higher.
None of
this, however, can happen without the utilities knowing the incomes of families
and businesses that are their customers.
The
Legislature assigned the PUC to decide how these huge companies get that
information. That’s a form of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,
considering the commission’s long history of corruption, scandal and favoritism
of utilities over their customers.
This is
the agency that was caught conspiring with SoCal Edison to force consumers to
pay the vast majority of the cost of dismantling the San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station after an Edison blunder disabled it. It’s the same outfit
that has never significantly punished PG&E for its manslaughter convictions
in the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018 or hit hard at
Edison for its part in igniting fires in Malibu and elsewhere. It’s the agency
where a commissioner who formerly represented the Cruise driverless car company
just voted for letting it operate limitless vehicles in San Francisco.
The five
PUC commissioners could mandate an honor system, asking each electric user
their level of adjusted gross income. But anyone who knows human nature will
understand that many customers would low-ball their incomes.
They
could ask the state Franchise Tax Board to provide income levels to the
companies, despite laws assuring confidentiality. But even if the tax board
could securely turn over the information, there’s no guarantee utility company
employees won’t leak some folks’ information.
The PUC could demand consumers
show copies of tax returns in order to start or maintain service, but that
could also subject taxpayer confidentiality to the whims of utility workers.
Any such
tactic would certainly produce a blizzard of lawsuits protesting the obvious
contradiction with privacy assurances.
But
without solid income information, there’s no way utility commissioners can
assure anyone they’re even trying to equalize electric price burdens among
various economic classes.
So the PUC
– so far completely mum on this key new responsibility handed it so blithely by
the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom – has a problem.
Whatever
it does will cut into its already shaky credibility. Far better to scrap this
idea and develop a completely different plan to assure electric equity, even if
that would mean admitting a mistake and then starting afresh.
-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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