CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION FOR UTILITY REGULATORS?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION FOR UTILITY REGULATORS?”

          Memo to United States Attorneys in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego: It’s high time you investigate the former president and some current members and officials of the California Public Utilities Commission for things like conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud.

          Evidence against current commissioners and former commission President Michael Peevey has mounted steadily over the last six months, but there has been no action against anyone.

          State rules forbid utility regulators from communicating individually with executives of the companies they regulate. Any letters, texts or emails must go to all five commissioners, as a means of preventing secret deals favoring the companies over their business and residential customers.

          Yet, emails have shown that Peevey for years communicated privately and had understandings with executives of both Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Southern California Edison Co., of which he was formerly president. He even hosted at least one high PG&E official at his country home in Sea Ranch, north of San Francisco.

          He also communicated privately with Edison execs, setting up a dinner in London with one, and in one case reported by the U-T San Diego newspaper agreeing to delay a PUC action that would limit the percentage of Edison’s executive bonuses it could bill to ratepayers until after that year’s bonuses had been paid under old rules.

          Current Commissioner Mike Florio has recused himself from some votes affecting PG&E because of his role in a “judge-shopping” attempt. Emails showed Florio helped the utility choose a sympathetic commission administrative law judge to preside over a key case.

          And there was the recently-disclosed 2012  phone call between Edison’s external relations director and the administrative law judge presiding over a case to determine how Edison and its customers would split the cost of retiring the disabled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Edison says that call covered only technicalities.

          All this led Michael Picker, the new commission president, in a public meeting, to call the emails “troubling and very painful to read.” Yet, in the year he served on the commission with Peevey, Picker never voted against him in any major case.

          One bottom line in all this is that customers of California’s big regulated utilities – PG&E, Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric – pay power rates averaging almost twice as much as consumers served by the municipal utilities in Los Angeles, Anaheim, Riverside and Sacramento. Power rates have consistently risen, while consumption has remained steady. Details are contained in this report about San Onofre generated by former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre: http://www.amslawyers.com/Breaking-News/Storm-Warning-CPUC-1-7-14.pdf.

          No, utility profits are not supposed to lead to doubly high energy bills. That, in fact, is what the PUC was set up to prevent.

          This column has frequently documented PUC favoritism of the big companies over their rate payers, labeling Peevey a “fox guarding the chicken house” as early as 2005. But the emails released in recent months provide a smoking gun pointing toward possible criminal conspiracy. If so, it could be charged as mail fraud and/or wire fraud because excessively high rates set via conspiracy would have been billed by mail or email.

          Aguirre suggests the U.S. attorneys convene special grand juries like the one that indicted PG&E for its conduct surrounding the fatal 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion.

          “We need to investigate how utility rates got so high,” Aguirre said. “It’s been a swamp of dishonesty.”

          Aguirre suggests investigating, for example, what happened to money collected by the big companies to ensure utility safety. “Edison was paid money for defective San Onofre steam generators. PG&E was paid money (since the 1950s) to fix (gas lines), but failed to do so,” his report said. Similarly, he said, defective SDG&E equipment caused a huge 2007 San Diego County fire.

          “In each case, the PUC blocked its (staff’s) investigations into utility executive wrongdoing,” Aguirre charges. No one knows what happened to billions of maintenance dollars paid by customers.

          Efforts to ask Picker about these charges and any plans to improve PUC practices were rebuffed.

          The bottom line: The pattern of utility regulators’ favoritism of the companies they oversee, even possible collusion with them, has been plain for decades. But the email and telephone call evidence emerged only lately.

          That evidence is so strong it would be dereliction of duty for prosecutors to ignore it.

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     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, go to www.californiafocus.net

TAIL WAGS DOG AGAIN IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “TAIL WAGS DOG AGAIN IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE”

          Almost exactly one year from today – Jan. 26, 2016 – voters in New Hampshire will don parkas and trek through snowdrifts to tell the rest of America who should be running for president and who should not.

          That vote will come eight days after the Iowa caucuses draw a few tens of thousands of die-hard activists from both major parties to give their version of the same thing.

          Within less than three weeks, Nevada and South Carolina will follow, ensuring yet another four-year electoral cycle where the tail wags the dog. Candidates will have to know all about ethanol subsidies to compete in Iowa, but because California votes on June 7 next year, no candidate will have to know much about this state’s high speed rail project or the “twin tunnels” water development sought by Gov. Jerry Brown.

          Once again, California won’t matter as the Podunk states of America decide the future of this country and much of the world’s future as well. California won’t even be a factor in the general election, as the Democrats’ heavy voter registration advantage here pretty much assures its 55 electoral votes to the Democratic nominee, no matter who that may be.

          It didn’t have to be this way, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way in 2020 and beyond.

          One big reason California won’t count for much next year is that state legislators made no effort to set an early date for the state’s primary. They figured that every time they tried that – the state has voted in early February in several recent election cycles – it still hasn’t mattered much.

          This was because whenever California moved up its primary, other states governed by an “anywhere but California” mindset moved theirs up even earlier, with things getting so absurb that in 2008 and 2012, Iowans  caucused just three days after the New Year’s celebrations.

          California lawmakers also have their own reasons for disliking early primaries, the main one being that early votes accelerate filing deadlines, which normally fall about three months before primary day. This forces them to speed up their decision-making process, eroding their comfort levels. An early primary also means early fund-raising, forcing many officials to get on the phone with donors just a couple of months after taking office.

          But no one can say accurately that moving California’s primary up doesn’t increase its influence. The hard-fought 2008 Democratic contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is probably Example A of this. Obama dominated much of the initial going, but when California voted in early February, Clinton emerged about even with the eventual president. So California alone assured that the Democratic race extended well into April and all the way to Pennsylvania before Clinton finally conceded.

    It also meant that both candidates trekked around the state, it meant millions of advertising dollars for California media, plenty of revenue and extra jobs for services like caterers and charter bus lines.

          The only reason California didn’t decide the Democratic race for Clinton was the national party rule demanding proportionate representation. Obama lost in most California congressional districts, but  got plenty of national convention delegates anyhow. The result would have been very different under the Republicans’ more decisive winner-take-all rules.

          So anyone who says California didn’t matter when it voted earlier is only partially correct. And anyone who says the calendar can’t still be altered is also not completely correct.

          If California legislators and Gov. Brown want to increase this state’s influence, they can do it right now, even though there would be a bit of a price. If California moved up into January, Republican Party rules would deprive it of about 70 percent of its convention delegates.

          The Democrats might also assess a delegate penalty, but it’s not automatic, and there’s some doubt they would, since they want to keep California solidly in their column.

          All of which means California will be irrelevant-land during the next presidential season, unless politicians here are willing to defy the national parties. But they won’t, and most likely will find new excuses to avoid moving up the vote in future election seasons, just because staying put in June is easier for them despite the fact it disenfranchises their tens of millions of constituents.

         

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     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, go to www.californiafocus.net

RED LIGHT CAMERA PLAGUE ABATING A BIT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “RED LIGHT CAMERA PLAGUE ABATING A BIT”

          For many California drivers, there have been few worse plagues than the red light cameras that once operated in more than 70 cities across the state.

          At their peak, red light cameras featured tickets costing upwards of $450 for “offenses” like stopping for a red light, but with the front bumper a foot over a painted restraining line, or stopping before making a right turn, but having the camera “see” it as not a stop. Judges never allowed cross-examination of camera operators to be certain their machines were not running faster than life speed.

          But things are getting steadily more sane on the red light camera front, where only about 50 California cities still run such systems, operated by outfits like Redflex Traffic Systems and American Traffic Solutions, both based in Arizona.

          Over the last few years, more than 40 cities around this state have given up on photo-tickets, from Belmont and Cupertino in the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles and Poway in Southern California, plus Fresno in the Central Valley. Also, voters in Anaheim, Murietta and Newport Beach all nixed red light cameras when the question appeared on their ballots. Results were the same from votes in 24 other cities. There may be few law enforcement tactics more widely detested than red light cameras.

          But cities like Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Culver City still have them.

          Now the crucial, related issue of how long yellow lights should stay on has been resolved in favor of motorists.

          Relatively short yellow- or amber-light intervals at intersections can amount to traps for unsuspecting drivers if they are traveling too fast to stop when a light turns yellow, but not so fast they can make it across the intersection before the light goes red.

          For many years, yellow lights have been set to correspond with speed limits, but prevailing traffic speeds in many places are higher than the posted limits.

          So Caltrans, spurred in part by legislation introduced last year by Democratic state Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian, from the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, has changed the rules, demanding that from now on all yellows must be set according to the prevailing speeds of traffic, not the speed limits.

          This may amount to a change of less than half a second, but it’s enough to make an enormous difference in the number of tickets issued. For example, reported the Safer Streets Los Angeles organization, when the city of West Hollywood increased its yellow-light interval by just three-tenths of a second, violations at its red light cameras dropped by at least 40 percent. In Fremont, Safer Streets said, when Caltrans increased yellow signal time by seven-tenths of a second, violations fell by 76 percent. A full second more yellow time in Loma Linda brought a 92 percent reduction in tickets.

          There are also the questions of whether red light cameras make streets safer or even make much money for the cities than authorize them. In Oakland last year, city officials claimed to have netted just $280,000, while Redflex said the city got just over $1 million. Either way, the take was so paltry, Oakland doesn’t bother anymore.

          As for safety, there are claims – never substantiated – that because red light cameras can inspire to drivers to slam on their brakes while traveling at fairly high speed, they lead to more rear-end collisions. Longer yellows should reduce that danger as well as the peril of getting a ticket that can cost well over $500, when all expenses are done.

          None of this, of course, speaks to the serious constitutional issue of whether any legal proceeding can be valid when defendants can’t cross-examine the people responsible for maintaining the red light cameras.

          The bottom line: All signs point to the eventual expulsion of red light cameras from this state. They’ve been demonstrably unfair for years, which has led to their phenomenal unpopularity. Add that to the questions about reliability and increased safety, and you have a program that probably won’t last many more years.

         

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     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, go to www.californiafocus.net

BIG UTILITIES’ NIGHTMARE BEGINS TO PLAY OUT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “BIG UTILITIES’ NIGHTMARE BEGINS TO PLAY OUT”

          The biggest nightmare of California’s largest utility companies may be about to begin playing out, thanks to a small irrigation district in San Joaquin County and a bunch of disgruntled customers of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

          This trend also had help from the state’s voters, who in 2010 rejected a ballot proposition designed and written to prevent such a day from ever coming, a measure on which PG&E squandered about $35 million.

          Here’s what’s happening: Following a 4-1 vote by the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, the South San Joaquin Irrigation District will shortly begin taking over all PG&E’s local power poles and generating plants and begin providing electricity to 38,000 homes and businesses (about 116,000 persons) in the cities of Manteca, Ripon and Escalon, as well as some nearby unincorporated areas.

          The non-profit district promises to provide reliable power at lower costs than the for-profit PG&E.

          No, the district will not steal anything from the company: If it and PG&E can’t agree on prices for equipment and facilities – cost estimates vary wildly from about $60 million to as much as $600 million – a jury of county residents will decide the price.

          Meanwhile, PG&E must continue providing any needed electricity that can’t be generated locally, essentially using its transmission lines and grid as a common carrier, in much the same way an airline must carry any passenger who pays the fare.

          If there’s one thing this state’s big utilities don’t ever want to become, it’s common carriers, because that risks lowering their profit margins considerably. That’s why PG&E ran the 2010 Proposition 16, which lost by a 53-47 percent margin. The measure would have required a two-thirds majority vote in the affected area anytime a locality wants to break away from a big utility.

          The Manteca area is not alone in wanting out from under the big-utility thumb. Movements are afoot in San Francisco and 40 other locales around California. These are called Community Choice Aggregations (CCAs), the choice being that customers in areas leaving big utility companies can opt to stay with them simply by making that request of the new power provider.

          So far, this system has worked smoothly in both Marin and Sonoma Counties, where almost a dozen cities have separated from PG&E over the last few years, forming two new CCAs. Prices are consistently lower there than in surrounding PG&E territory, so much so that the Marin agency has lately spread its service area across the San Pablo Bay to Richmond.

          Plainly, the peril to the monopolies of companies like PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric is of their own doing.

          All backed the disastrous deregulation of state electricity approved by the Legislature and then-Gov. Pete Wilson in the late 1990s. That plan saw the utilities sell off many of their most significant power plants to generating companies. Now, CCAs can buy from those companies at negotiated prices. As part of the selloff deals, the utilities agreed to continue transmitting power from the generating stations over their grid.

          In the new Manteca-area CCA, the total savings will amount to $12 million per year if the irrigation district’s 15 percent price cut promise becomes reality. That could come to an average saving of about $200 per year for a typical family.

          This may explain why the only persons speaking against the departure from PG&E at the local agency commission’s hearing were affiliated with the utility. Meanwhile, customers said things like this, from Manteca resident Roger Beauchamp, “PG&E doesn’t respond to our needs and puts profits in front of the well-being of their customers. Fire ‘em.”

          The company’s image certainly hasn’t been helped by its highly equivocal response to the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion and its later criminal indictment for behavior afterward.

          For sure, the movement away from giant utilities to small city- and district-owned power companies is not yet widespread and does not yet threaten the big companies’ survival or even dented their bottom lines. But it is a thorn in their sides, a reminder that given a choice, a lot of Californians would like to break away.

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     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, go to www.californiafocus.net     

DEMS RISK A BIG LOSS IF SOME DON’T CURB AMBITIONS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2015, 2014 OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    "DEMS RISK A BIG LOSS IF SOME DON’T CURB AMBITIONS”

          U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer hasn’t made it official yet, but even before she announces expected plans to retire when her current fourth term ends in early 2017, fellow Democrats are lining up to seek her job.

          After all, a Senate seat is a plum job anywhere, but especially for Democrats in California, where it’s been decades since any of them lost a reelection bid for statewide office. Whoever takes Boxer’s place can expect to become the state’s senior senator after 2018, when the then-85-year-old Dianne Feinstein is also widely expected to retire.

          But ambitious Democrats should beware: Their eagerness, even greed, could do in their party’s hold on Boxer’s spot. It has happened before in California, and very recently.

          The field of potential Democratic candidates for Boxer’s slot is large, possibly going beyond obvious prospects like Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Attorney General Kamala Harris, state Treasurer John Chiang, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and his predecessor Antonio Villaraigosa. Less obvious might be Silicon Valley moguls like Facebook chief executive Sheryl Sandberg and billionaire hedge fund operator Tom Steyer, of late a financial angel for liberal causes.

          Of course, they don’t all have to jump into the run to replace Boxer, who has shown no signs of making another run. Two years later, in 2018, Feinstein’s seat will most likely be available, along with the governor’s office now occupied by Jerry Brown.

          Heated competition for all three top jobs is likely. But friends say Newsom and Harris, longtime friends who share a campaign manager, probably won't run against each other.

          They and the rest of the large possible field would be well advised to heed what happened in 2012 in the 31^st Congressional District in San Bernardino County, a district where Democrats have a solid voter registration advantage and one where President Obama twice won by healthy margins.

          Obama, however, didn’t need to worry about the top two open primary system, where only the two leading primary election finishers make the fall runoff election.

          In 2012, four Democrats went after this seat, which had long been held by Republican Gary Miller, who was expected to lose his job after redistricting in 2010 solidified the Democratic margin in his district.

          The first complication for the Democrats was extremely low primary election turnout, prompted by the facts that Obama had no primary election challenger and Republican Mitt Romney had sewed up his party’s  nomination long before California voted in June.

          Almost four times as many people voted in the November runoff that year as in the primary. This and the plethora of Democrats splintering their party’s vote allowed Miller and then state Sen. Bob Dutton to finish first and second in the primary. Democrat Pete Aguilar of Redlands, the preferred candidate of his party’s leaders, finished third with just 23 percent of the vote.

          So Democrats had to wait two years before Aguilar managed to win the seat last fall. If at least some Democratic prospects to succeed Boxer don’t stifle their ambitions, precisely the same thing could happen in the Senate primary, even though no Republican has yet expressed interest in running.

          One thing for sure: If one and only one Republican makes this race, he or she is almost certain of a runoff slot. And if a slew of Democrats get in against two Republicans, both Republicans could advance to November, guaranteeing the GOP an improbable Senate seat for six years.

    Look what happened just last spring, when Pepperdine University Prof. Pete Peterson was the only candidate with a GOP label running in a crowded field for secretary of state. Peterson, perhaps helped along by the federal indictment of San Francisco state Sen. Leland Yee, drew 30 percent of the vote despite being almost a complete unknown.

          He then became a tough challenger for eventual winner Alex Padilla, another Democratic state senator at the time of the primary.

          So some of the Democratic prospects will have to make an early choice to wait two more years before seeking higher office, or else the party could lose a seat it has held for decades. But the wait could seem endless and frustrating to Democrats, who would have their own hubris to blame if they eventually lose the Boxer seat.

    -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

CHIANG RECORD UNIQUE AS TOP DEMOS READY TO MOVE UP

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “CHIANG RECORD UNIQUE AS TOP DEMOS READY TO MOVE UP”

          Weeks, perhaps months, before taking their oaths of office for statewide posts like lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general and insurance commissioner, the five Democrats in those jobs plainly were thinking of their impending runs for higher office.

          For the first time in more than 20 years, there’s a strong likelihood that both California seats in the U.S. Senate will open up within the next four years. There is certainty that Jerry Brown will leave the governor’s office after a record four terms.

          No one doubts that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will go for higher office soon. If you’re a significant Democratic campaign contributor, your phone may already have rung. Newsom tried for governor once before, but was thwarted by Brown. And it’s been a given for years that Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, has higher ambitions. They share a campaign manager, so probably will seek different offices.

          New Secretary of State Alex Padilla may wait another cycle or two before trying to move up; he won by only about 560,000 votes last fall, the second-lowest margin for any constitutional officer.

          Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones will also likely move on when his new term ends, but his relatively low profile might make him more likely to seek another secondary statewide office like attorney general before trying to move farther up. At 53, he’s probably young enough to wait a little while.

    There's also the ever-ambitious former mayor of Los Angeles and Assembly speaker, Antonio Villaraigosa.

          Perhaps the least known and most accomplished of the corps of likely Democratic candidates is John Chiang, the newly elected treasurer who served eight years on the state Board of Equalization and eight more as state controller. He has sometimes clashed with legislative leaders and  ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

          Chiang, 52, was a high school classmate of Jones in Chicago. He has a reputation as more of a technocrat than a politician, and that’s the way he likes it.

          “In government, when we make decisions, ideally 90 percent of what goes into it should be based on expert knowledge,” he said in an interview in his 48^th floor Los Angeles office. “That’s how we’ve tried to do it in the controller’s office and how we’ll do it as treasurer. But in politics, decisions are often 90 percent political and just 10 percent based on expertise. I don’t like that.”

          Chiang tangled with Schwarzenegger several times during the movie muscleman’s seven-plus years as governor, most notably when he defied a 2008 Schwarzenegger order to cut the pay of more than 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour during a state budget standoff. Chiang continued paying workers their regular salaries. A year later, he issued IOUs to pay state bills during another budget deadlock.

          Two years later, acting like a non-partisan, he invoked a law just passed via a ballot initiative and suspended legislative salaries when the lawmakers didn’t pass a budget by the legal deadline.

          Yes, Newsom while San Francisco mayor was the first public official to sanction gay marriage and Harris is one of the two highest-ranking African-American officials in California history. But neither has taken the kinds of political risks Chiang did.

          One of just five Asian-Americans ever elected to statewide office here, Chiang does not deny he’s interested in the jobs likely to open up, but he’s unsure if or when he might move on them. This son of Taiwanese immigrants sounds almost as if he’s coining a new Confucian paradox when he notes that “There are lost opportunities if you don’t move early, but speed kills.”

          He will likely move, but deliberately. “Any of these jobs would be a phenomenal opportunity. I think about the issues all the time,” he says. “When we talk about financial issues and trade, the Senate looks good, but you have the drawback of needing to chase 50 other votes. The governor, meanwhile, leads the largest state in an invaluable country, so you have the chance to shape the future more than in any office except president.”

          Yes, his wife Terry sometimes has said she’d like him to leave politics for a higher-paying private job. He’s demurred.

          The bottom line: Although Newsom and Harris and Villaraigosa are sure to generate more hype and make more noise as they pursue their next jobs, it would be foolish to ignore John Chiang.

         

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski 

Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com 

PUC CHIEF DEPARTS, BUT BAD DECISIONS LIVE ON

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2015 OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “PUC CHIEF DEPARTS, BUT BAD DECISIONS LIVE ON”

          After 12 years of favoring big utility companies over individual consumers, Michael Peevey has at last left the California Public Utilities Commission. But many of his ill-considered, some say corrupt, decisions will linger on.

          Peevey departed in a carefully stage-managed mid-December commission meeting, forced by scandal to abandon previous plans to seek reappointment by Gov. Jerry Brown for another six-year term.

          Just how problematic was the Peevey reign (in many ways, he really did rule over the commission like some kind of potentate)? The scandal that finished his tenure involved buddy-buddy email, in-person and voice exchanges with executives of big companies he regulated, especially Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The notes contained assurances PG&E would do just fine in whatever proceeding was current at the moment, that its solid profits would not be cut.

          So when the commission last fall fined PG&E for its conduct after the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight persons and destroyed 38 homes, Peevey could not vote. But his influence was clearly felt when remaining commissioners levied a paltry $1 million fine, a pittance for PG&E, less than most of the blown-up homes were worth.

          In the same session, Peevey took part in the unanimous vote to approve a settlement awarding Southern California Edison more than three billion consumer dollars over 10 years to pay for its colossal error that caused the premature retirement of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Also voting for the settlement was Michael Picker, later named by Brown as commission president.

          Emails have shown that Edison executives knew beforehand that steam generators they installed at SONGS were fatally flawed. When executive misdeeds are so egregious, why should customers pay anything? Why not force the company to foot the entire bill for its irresponsibility? One reason might be that Peevey is a former president of that company. Another might be that the administrative law judge presiding over that case spoke privately with an Edison executive before recommending the settlement. That's the very definition of judicial misconduct.

          All this is in keeping with the revolving door that’s been allowed by governors from Brown (in his first two terms) to Gray Davis (who first made Peevey the PUC president) to Arnold Schwarzenegger (who reappointed him). The revolving door goes the other way, too: an early Brown choice as PUC president was John Bryson, later Edison’s chief executive for decades. Was that plush job a reward for previous favors?

          The PUC has never addressed any of these questions, and a former San Diego city attorney is now suing to get the SONGS settlement reversed.

          Other lousy Peevey decisions also live on. There’s the state’s big emphasis on solar thermal energy rather than rooftop solar, which assures not only high costs for gigantic, inefficient solar arrays in desert locales, but also guarantees 20 years of high utility company profit margins on the costs for power lines needed to bring the solar power to its eventual users.

          One such development, being built by Spain’s Abengoa S.A. near Boron in the Mojave Desert to supply PG&E customers, will be so expensive the PUC has not yet dared reveal its actual price. When the cost is revealed, it will be too late for consumers to do anything.

          Another is a “peaker” power plant in San Diego which local consumer advocates insist is completely unneeded. Voted down the first time the PUC considered it, this project was later approved after some Peevey bullying.

          Meanwhile, Californians can be glad another Peevey move was frustrated. That was his attempt to abandon much of the state’s reserved space on pipelines bringing natural gas from Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Colorado and instead import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Indonesia and Australia.

          This would have left California without any of the price benefits of the recent gas production boom that dropped prices radically in the last year. Peevey was thwarted when the state Lands Commission refused to allow an LNG importing plant offshore near Oxnard in Ventura County.

          The wayPeevey left drew more attention and heat than the commission has seen in the last half century. Consumers can hope the spotlight stays on and pressures successor Picker and his colleagues into a new sense of fairness.

     -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, go to www.californiafocus.net