George Skelton has a column today about Prop 16, PG&E’s power grab to assure themselves a monopoly. And for the most part, he nails the problem of their logic:

San Francisco-based PG&E is attempting to assure itself a monopoly of current Northern and Central California customers by erecting a practically impenetrable barrier to other electricity providers. … And the whole exercise is an affront to the original intent of California’s century-old ballot initiative system, which was created to protect consumers against powerful special interests. This does the opposite. It protects an interest against unhappy consumers.

PG&E’s poison pill for the public is the two-thirds vote requirement. The company is cynically promoting Prop. 16 as a “taxpayers right to vote act.” (LA Times)

And that’s all well and good there, and really, he gets the message across to voters that they should oppose the measure. So, credit where credit is due to Skelton on that one.  But then he continues on, and that’s where he misses the problem with the measure:

It has nothing to do with taxes. And people already have the right to vote, at least in a new territory proposed to be served by a public utility.

There’s no legal requirement now that customers currently served also give their permission for expansion. And there should be. But it should be by majority rule.

Now, it’s a little unclear which vote he wants to require, but I’m putting down right now for good ol’ fashioned representative democracy. It’s what has made our country great.  The problem with forcing votes is just what Skelton outlined a few paragraphs ago.  If there is a proposed expansion, PG&E will spend millions to defeat it, while the municipal utility can spend $0.00 on the other side to educate voters.

Community Choice Aggregation, which is what this is about in the case of San Francisco, is simply an option. It doesn’t require anybody to join public power, it simply gives ratepayers the option of opting for the public alternative.  PG&E simply doesn’t want to give voters that choice, so they’re trying to lock in their monopoly.  Even if that is a simple majority vote, they’ve shown in the past that they are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money for every inch of turf.  Just look at the case of the proposed Yolo county expansion of SMUD. PG&E spent millions of dollars to defeat that.  And, by the hair of their chinny, chin, chin, they were able to beat it down.  

Thing is, given a fair fight, PG&E will lose every time. Instead of fair fights, they like to stack the deck in their favor. They spend large amounts of ratepayer dollars or put ridiculous measures on the ballot like Prop 16. Either way, they’re going for the jugular of the body politic.