What do potatoes, surfing, and Mardi Gras have in common?  They represent states where leadership has made decisions demonstrating a strong commitment to rooftop solar.  Over the past several months, the states of Idaho, California, and Louisiana have served as battlegrounds where the rooftop solar industry and its advocates have successfully defeated monopoly utility attempts to limit or eliminate net metering. In all three states where the battles have been waged, utility regulators and legislators’ decisions have led to the preservation of net metering. Net metering is the cornerstone solar policy that gives rooftop solar customers full retail credit for the excess energy they put back on the grid.  So far the score stands at 3-0, with solar in the lead.

What do potatoes, surfing, and Mardi Gras have in common?  They represent states where leadership has made decisions demonstrating a strong commitment to rooftop solar.  Over the past several months, the states of Idaho, California, and Louisiana have served as battlegrounds where the rooftop solar industry and its advocates have successfully defeated monopoly utility attempts to limit or eliminate net metering. In all three states where the battles have been waged, utility regulators and legislators’ decisions have led to the preservation of net metering. Net metering is the cornerstone solar policy that gives rooftop solar customers full retail credit for the excess energy they put back on the grid.  So far the score stands at 3-0, with solar in the lead.

Policies like net metering, along with innovative financing options and the fact that the cost of solar energy has dropped dramatically, has led to tremendous growth in rooftop solar installations over the past decade.  This growth has come unwelcomed by utilities that see the trend as a threat to their revenue and growth.

Utilities are attempting to hinder the progress of rooftop solar by pushing legislation that limits or eliminates existing net metering policies.  Utilities want to do away with net metering because they are dependent on a centralized, monopoly model that is being threatened by the emergence of rooftop solar and other forms of distributed generation.

While the rooftop solar industry has three victories under its belt, the war is not yet over.  Net metering battles continue to crop up across the US, but the solar industry has history and public opinion on its side. It’s been said that utilities are like the typewriter lobby resisting modern computers.  Plus, consumers want the freedom, predictability, and cost savings of rooftop solar.  In a recent poll from Arizona, about 67 percent of respondents said solar is the energy source they want to encourage most.

About AB 327

As explained in a Vote Solar press release: AB 327 is “a net metering and rate reform bill that contains a number of strong provisions for distributed solar. AB 327 ensures that one of California’s most important solar consumer rights, net metering, will stay in place until at least 2016 instead of being suspended as soon as next year. It also gives the California Public Utilities Commission authority to remove caps on participation in the program altogether for the first time in California history. These changes chart the way forward toward long-term solar industry sustainability, and will help hundreds of thousands of homes, schools and businesses go solar and lower their electricity bills.”

The student-led campaign to pass an oil extraction tax in California via ballot initiative entered a new phase this week. The initiative, titled the California Modernization and Economic Development Act (CMED, for short), began gathering signatures in April and hit the signature gathering deadline set by the Secretary of State today. However, Californians for Responsible Economic Development, the student-led group that drafted the initiative, is announcing plans to strategically resubmit a revised measure: “This Summer has been busy for the CMED team,” said Aaron Thule, Grassroots Coordinator for the campaign, “after a lot of hard work, we have built a signature gathering coalition for Fall and Winter that will be ready to activate and qualify this initiative come November.”

The revised initiative will still utilize a tax on oil extracted from California to make investments in education and energy affordability, and authors have kept the same title. However, the authors made several key changes to the initiative. First, CMED will now feature a sliding scale tax of 2% to 8%, which proponents argue will protect small business owners and jobs. Proponents of the initiative predict that the oil tax would bring in 1 billion dollars a year in revenue for the state. Second, revenue in the revised initiative would be allocated as follows:

– 50% would be placed in a special 30-year endowment for education. After 3 years, the endowment would begin to payout in four equal parts toward K-12, Community Colleges, Cal State Universities and University of California. After 30 years of collecting interest, proponents predict it would bring in as much as 3.5 billion dollars a year (in today’s dollars) for California’s education system.

– 25% would be used to provide families and businesses with subsidies to help them switch to cleaner, less costly forms of energy

– 25% would be allocated toward rolling back the gas tax increase enacted last July, to make gas more affordable for working class Californians.

The growing coalition, which set signature gathering goals to qualify the measure by early Spring, includes the University of California Student Association (UCSA), groups at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, CSU Bakersfield and several community colleges. California College Democrats and Young Democrats, which have both endorsed an extraction tax for education and clean energy, are also lending support. “It’s hard to believe that California is the only state that practically gives away our energy – especially when, as a state, our schools and colleges continue to struggle and we have yet to provide adequate funding to meet our own renewable energy standards,” said Erik Taylor, president of the College Democrats, who added: “Cal College Dems aren’t the only ones focused on the problem. At the Democratic convention in April, the state party endorsed an extraction tax policy for California. At the Democratic eboard meeting in July, the Young Democrats took it a step further and endorsed an extraction tax for education, renewable energy and community development.”

The UCSA, which represents hundreds of thousands of students in the UC system, plans to organize across several campuses in order to ensure benefits for students. Kareem Aref, the President of the UCSA, commented, “Affordability and funding are critical issues at the UC and Prop 30 simply is not the solution in itself that we need. Our campaigns for this year are designed to ensure a stable and long term funding stream for the UC. We are excited to push CMED to the next level and see this initiative implemented.”

More information and updates from the campaign can be found at http://www.cmedact.org

Over the course of a career, firefighters are relentlessly exposed to a hellish mix of toxins. These exposures put firefighters at a substantially greater risk of getting cancer — a reality documented in more than 80 peer-reviewed medical studies. Law enforcement officers – regularly exposed to toxins and often without breathing apparatus – pay a similarly heavy price.

Sacrificing your life to slow-motion poisoning from job-related exposure isn’t as dramatic as dying in a fiery instant, but for firefighters and police officers, it is every bit as noble and heroic.

For their families, time is especially important. Every day spent fighting for life is also another day with the family … another day with the hope of a cure. While they fight, stricken officers have the comfort of knowing that, should they die, their survivors will enjoy a modest safeguard in the form of workers’ comp death benefits.

But, believe it or not, those safeguards come with an expiration date.  

Because of a provision created in 1913, a firefighter or police officer stricken with job-related diseases must die within 240 weeks of his or her diagnosis in order for survivors to qualify for the death benefit. If a stricken officer lives one day longer than 240 weeks, their spouses and children lose out.

Closing this cruel loophole is at the heart of Assembly Bill 1373, Assembly Speaker John Perez’s measure that won overwhelming bipartisan approval in the Legislature last week.  AB 1373 narrowly modifies this 100-year-old “death clock”, extending the cutoff to 480 weeks while ensuring that the benefit goes to immediate dependents.

Sadly, a lot of active firefighters and police officers who are diagnosed with job-caused illnesses don’t get to test that limit – they die before it hits. But in the relatively few cases where modern medicine extends life, this outdated limit imposes a heartbreaking penalty on the survivors.

Last year, in the midst of a heated ballot campaign and under intense lobbying by special interests like the League of California Cities, Governor Brown vetoed similar legislation, citing its potential cost. With those concerns addressed, AB 1373 is back on the governor’s desk.

If you have just a minute, please go to this page to watch a short video and, if you’re so inclined, sign a petition urging the governor to sign AB 1373.

The Senate and Assembly votes to approve AB 1373 were overwhelming and bipartisan. Supporters included the full spectrum – from “fiscal wonks” to “big spenders.”  They understood that it’s not about unions, or firefighters, or police officers. It’s about families who shouldn’t be punished because their loved one didn’t die fast enough.

With more than half a decade of public safety downsizing under our belts, California first responders are no strangers to the tight budget times. But with or without the cost figures, basic humanity suggests that spouses and children shouldn’t be forced to pay a penalty for hoping that a loved one stays around a little longer.

Please urge Gov. Brown to sign AB 1373.