UTILITY CUSTOMERS AT LAST GETTING DAY IN COURT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “UTILITY CUSTOMERS AT LAST GETTING DAY IN COURT”

 

        The utility bailout plan known as AB 1054 has looked worse and worse for consumers since California legislators passed it in July 2019 under pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lobbyists for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

 

        The typical residential electric customer has paid for more than a year toward an eventual total of $13.5 billion to be used for reimbursement of costs when utility company equipment sparks fires, something common over the last five years.

 

        Consumer lawyer Mike Aguirre, the former elected city attorney of San Diego, from the start fought this shift of responsibility for illegal conduct by the utilities. But legislators never held hearings on the bill, concocted by an ad hoc committee that included Marybel Batyer, then a Newsom aide and now president of the state Public Utilities Commission.

 

        How surprising was it that the PUC with Batyer presiding followed by quickly rubber-stamping this years-long dunning of the vast majority of California electric customers?

 

        Aguirre protested SB 1054 at every step. He insisted it amounts to “unconstitutional taking” of consumers’ money. A federal district judge refused to hold a trial on Aguirre’s constitutional arguments, claiming alleged lack of jurisdiction over state laws.

 

        But the customers’ day in court arrives at last on April 12, when the appeal from that judge’s ruling is due for a hearing before the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The wheels of justice have ground slowly: it’s taken almost two years since the law’s passage for the case against it to get its first courtroom airing.

 

        That case seems strong. For one thing, there is no doubt the utility companies desperately wanted this bailout to pass. For it to take effect, they had to pony up $10 billion to help bankroll the new state new Wildfire Fund created by the law. They do not casually put up that kind of cash, but this time found it necessary: Without the Wildfire Fund, the criminally convicted PG&E could not have emerged from a long bankruptcy it underwent after causing deadly fires in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

 

        Questions arose at that time over whether PG&E deserved to survive, especially after it pled guilty to manslaughter in the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise and killed at least 85 persons.

 

        Says Aguirre in his appeal brief, “Instead of reforming its safety practices, PG&E sought a legislative reprieve. After receiving millions of dollars in campaign…donations, legislators and even California’s governor aligned themselves with the company.”

 

        He goes on to detail secret meetings between PG&E and top Newsom aides, including Batyer “to determine how to ensure PG&E’s customers, not its shareholders, would pay for PG&E-caused fire damages.”

 

        Aguirre calls those Newsom’s aides “compromised.” He adds that AB 1054’s “true purpose” is not to ensure good electric service, but rather “to promote utility company finances.”

 

        In fact, since it passed, there has been no talk of further utility company bankruptcies, a common subject every fire season for several previous years.

 

        Aguirre argues that Newsom and his allies “pledged customer funds…even though utility companies acted unreasonably and imprudently in causing fires over decades.” He charges that the PUC under Batyer “held a sham proceeding in which the process was illusory and the decision (to ratify AB 1054) was predetermined.”

 

        Batyer has refused to answer questions about any of this.

 

 

        Aguirre notes that rather than reforming their practices, utilities have “caused more fires and killed more people – all while (PG&E was) on federal probation for the 2010 San Bruno gas explosion that killed eight persons.”

 

        For sure, AB 1054 amounts to a show of trust for utility companies that by their own admission behaved irresponsibly for many years. The district judge’s refusal to hear the case has so far meant no one could cross examine Newsom or other drafters of the bill about their motives.

 

        One favorable outcome for consumers would be for the appeals court to throw the case back to the district judge for a full trial.

 

        Another would be for the bill to simply be ruled unconstitutional. Once the appeals court hears the arguments, it will have to say something.

 

       

-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

FEINSTEIN’S JUMP: PATIENCE MAY PAY OFF

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2018 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “FEINSTEIN’S JUMP: PATIENCE MAY PAY OFF”

          U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein took months of heat from the most left-leaning of her fellow California Democrats after she counseled patience with President Trump during a Democratic Party gathering last summer.

          But lately, she has literally jumped for joy, at least partly because of her approach.

          Most vocal in lambasting her since she advocated for patience is former state Sen. President Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, who also blasted Feinstein for being too old (she’s 84) for another term and too compromised by her past votes for things like the invasion of Iraq and the federal Patriot Act in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

          But Feinstein’s moderate approach may pay off big on the issue she’s cared about most ever since a few fatal 1978 gunshots from onetime San Francisco Supervisor Dan White suddenly propelled her into political prominence.

          For decades since then, Feinstein has pushed for strict gun control, often not a sexy cause. As an example, immediately after last year’s Las Vegas massacre, she filed a bill to ban the bump stocks used by the gunman in that attack. The day after an AR-15 automatic rifle was used to kill 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Fla., she sought to reinstate the 10-year ban on assault weapon sales she wrote and carried earlier in her Senate tenure. That ban lasted from 1994 to 2004.

          So it was no wonder Feinstein became excited while sitting beside Trump during a White House meeting on gun control when he suggested adding her assault weapons measure to a bipartisan bill for which he had just announced support.

          What are the odds that if Feinstein had been one of his most rabid critics, Trump would have jumped aboard a Feinstein gun control bill unpopular with Republicans in Congress and their sponsors at the National Rifle Association? Slim to none for a President known to act frequently out of pique.

          It’s unknown yet whether that measure will ultimately pass or how long the fickle Trump will keep supporting it. But at least he’s on record favoring it, even if he did pull back support of increasing the age limit for buying assault weapons.

          So, when de Leon’s campaign airs ads showing Feinstein with Trump, it will pay to remember this reward for her more moderate approach, born of a mature recognition that as long as Trump is President she will have to deal with him.

          Call Feinstein a radical practicalist if you like, but at least she’s gotten Trump to support part of her pet cause, far more than the more radically resistant style of fellow California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris has yet achieved.

          That won’t stop de Leon’s carping, also likely to include some re-showing of a Saturday Night Live satire of Feinstein’s gleeful little jump.

          De Leon, whose campaign attacks on Feinstein were labelled “shoddy” by the non-partisan national Bloomberg News service, frequently suggests Feinstein does not hold “California values,” by which he means sympathy for illegal immigrants and unwavering support for labor unions. De Leon also cherry-picks votes to blast, lambasting her okay for the Iraq war, even though all three of the most recent Senate Democratic leaders voted the same way.

          While everyone in politics knows that over 26 years, any senator will cast some controversial votes, de Leon’s attacks cost Feinstein the endorsement of the state’s Democratic Party convention. That likely won’t matter much in November, as she has a huge campaign finance edge and can easily air messages demonstrating that she has, in her words, “always voted with labor.”

          But her emotions become stronger on gun control, at least partly the product of her having been nearby when White assassinated both fellow San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone.

          Feinstein has so far avoided even mentioning the fact that de Leon was the longtime Sacramento roommate of disgraced state Sen. Tony Mendoza, who allegedly brought young women he was harassing back to their quarters. De Leon maintains he never saw or heard any such Mendoza activities.

          The bottom line here is that de Leon plainly believes he can only make headway if he attacks Feinstein for being too moderate. But every poll so far indicates this approach will not get him elected.

 
-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

MINOR PARTY PROTEST LAWSUIT MISSES THE POINT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“MINOR PARTY PROTEST LAWSUIT MISSES THE POINT”

There’s always reason for suspicion when political parties with dramatically disparate ideologies band together for anything.

So it was when the state Republican and Democratic parties partnered in a lawsuit that eventually got California’s old “blanket primary” election system thrown out in the late 1990s, thus returning the state to highly partisan primary elections for more than a decade.

It’s that way again with a minor-party lawsuit now in progress (first court hearing scheduled April 10 in Oakland) aiming to throw out the “top two” or “jungle primary” system adopted by frustrated voters in 2010 as they tried to force some moderation on state legislators and members of Congress.

The new system gets its first full-force outing in the June primary, with no party able to nominate its own candidates for the November runoff election. Rather, the top two vote-getters in each primary regardless of party will face off next November in all districts.

Both major parties opposed the initiative that created this system, even though it was heartily supported by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a nominal Republican. Minor parties like the Peace and Freedom, Libertarians and Greens also objected.

The big parties, dominated in past primaries respectively by ideologues of the right and left and with the same kind of extreme hard-liners controlling party machinery and finances, wanted to continue nominating candidates reflecting their inflexible views.

But the old system left both independents and members of whichever big party was in the minority in any district essentially without representation. The eventual winners in almost all districts emerged in party primaries, making those votes the “real” elections in districts drawn to assure domination by one party or the other.

In those elections, candidates of the minor parties were always assured a place on the November runoff election ballot, even when they – as usually happened – won far fewer primary votes than the losers in the major-party contests.

This allowed minor-party adherents and candidates in every election to maintain the illusion of influence and even possible victory right up until election returns came in and showed them once again getting nowhere. So 75 of them filed for congressional or legislative campaigns in 2010, compared with just 13 this year, according to the San Francisco-based newsletter Ballot Access News.

In reality, all the minor parties have usually accomplished is to air their ideas, even when those notions have languished because the vast majority of voters judge them essentially hopeless or worthless. Once in a long while, some outsider has tried to use a minor party candidate to influence the outcome of an election by drawing votes away from a major party figure. The last time this mattered much was in 1988, when supporters of the late Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston poured money into the campaign of a far-right American Independent Party candidate who siphoned more than 200,000 votes away from Cranston’s GOP opponent.

The minor parties want to keep all that alive, even though the only real influence they’ve had on elections has been to occasionally distort them. They realize the “top two” system will keep them off November ballots unless they suddenly develop unprecedented mass appeal. That's why few of their adherents are bothering to run this year.

“By limiting access to the general election ballot,” says their lawsuit, “(top two) effectively bars small political parties, their candidates and their members from effective political association…”

Of course, if the small parties could develop ideas and/or candidates with mass appeal, they would have full access to the runoff ballot. All their candidates must do – like anyone else – is win enough votes to finish in the top two in the new non-partisan primaries. That could happen this spring in a new Ventura County congressional district where county Supervisor Linda Parks switched from Republican to independent before starting her run. She’s not a minor party candidate, but she’s not in either major one anymore, either.

The minor parties do have one seemingly legitimate complaint, however. The main way they their presidential primary election ballot slots is by having a candidate who wins 2 percent or more of the vote in a gubernatorial general election. This may not be possible under the “top two” arrangement, as their candidates will only rarely even be on the runoff ballot. So the open primary law, passed as Proposition 14, should be amended to keep the 2 percent threshold, but have it apply to a statewide primary, rather than a general election. A court might be able to order this.

But in most ways the minor party lawsuit essentially amounts to whining by small groups trying to maintain a runoff ballot position they have yet to earn by dint of the usual methods: developing good candidates with wide appeal and strong credibility.

-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