If ever any corporation earned regulatory legislation, PG&E did so when they spent nearly $50 million of ratepayer funds to try to pass a constitutional amendment to guarantee the monopoly.  And Mark Leno is making it happen.

Senator Mark Leno today announced legislation that would prevent Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) from using ratepayer funds to finance future political campaigns. The bill allows the corporation to continue participating in political campaigns, but stipulates that money derived from ratepayers cannot be used for political or public affairs expenditures.

Senator Leno’s bill requires PG&E to report its annual political and public affairs spending to the California Public Utilities Commission. The PUC will ensure that all political and public affairs spending identified in this report did not derive from ratepayer funds.

This is already the rule for municipal utitilies.  And, frankly, if PG&E wants to guarantee its monopoly so much, they should be totally fine with competing on a level playing field.

What do you think the odds of that are?

Speaker Pelosi doesn’t wade into every one of our ballot fights, but when the issue is contentious enough, and/or egregious enough, she’ll say something. PG&E’s $46 Million investment in Prop 16 is getting closer to passing. How could it not with that much spending. I don’t even regularly watch TV and I’ve caught a few of the rather irritating and deceptive ads.  This is egregious enough.

And so today, Speaker Pelosi weighed in to the fight on Prop 16 and coming out strongly in opposition to PG&E’s Monopoly Protection Scheme. On the steps of City Hall, her chief of staff appeared at a press conference at City Hall to make the Speaker’s position clear.

How egregious you might ask is Prop 16? Well, well over 60 newspapers have eviscerated the measure, with but one or two in support.  Over 60 cities have announced official opposition to the measure.

But the fact is that PG&E is going all out for the win here.

Prop 16 is the ballot initiative that would limit the ability of cities and counties to go into the public power business. San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkirimi says if the measure passes, it would encourage other corporations to take their issues straight to the voters.

“It is obvious that if PG&E prevails, they will be the first corporation to embed themselves into our state constitution,” he said. (ABC7)

We need turnout. PG&E has aligned themselves with the Republicans, and this is going to be a GOP friendly election.  Democrats must turn out or it is very possible that PG&E’s money may work. Please, let your friends, family and random people on the street know the importance of turning out on Tuesday.  We must beat this thing.

Prop 16 has had more negative editorial board reviews than Ishtar, yet, PG&E is still pumping money into this dud. Whether will be worth PG&E’s money is a question that can only be answered by the voters of California.

Whether it is good policy is a question with an objective answer: NO.  This is the answer from good government groups, editorial boards, progressive organizations, and non-partisan groups.  It is a policy that’s great for PG&E, terrible for the state and its ratepayers.  Today the San Jose Mercury News threw down on PG&E’s hidden agenda scheme:

Surely you’ve heard the ads, wedged between Steve Poizner’s cries of “Liberal!” and Meg Whitman’s attempts to sound tough.

“And we don’t even have the right to vote on it!” whine the indignant actors, as if they’re victims of an evil government conspiracy.

Don’t be fooled. These ads, like the rest of PG&E’s estimated $45 million campaign to pass Proposition 16, are full of lies. PG&E calls the measure the Taxpayers’ Right to Vote Act, but it’s really the PG&E Monopoly Protection Act. So we can’t resist another reminder to vote no. …

One thing that’s clear about PG&E’s campaign is where it got the $45 million for all those ads. From you. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a PG&E-free city like Santa Clara. Exercise your right to vote on Proposition 16: Say no. Tell PG&E to stop spending your money to thwart your best interests – and to stop lying. (SJ Merc)

It’s really not a big ask, even from a corporation like PG&E: don’t lie to the voters of California.  However, it’s too much to ask of PG&E these days They’re spending $45 million to get Prop 16 passed, but it’s still sinking in the polls. There won’t be any big ad buys for No on 16, just the small matter of being right.

It is my sincere hope that the voters of California will see beyond PG&E’s lies and smack them on the head for over-reaching by spending ratepayer money on anti-consumer initiatives.

PG&E is calling its monopoly protection measure the “Taxpayer’s Right to Vote” Act.  Which is kind of like calling Arnold a “liberal” or even a moderate.  It just couldn’t be further from the truth.

But, Prop 16 is inspiring some good ol’ fashioned grassroots activism, and with today’s tools, the cost of producing some great videos makes them accessible to all.  I’ll let the video do the explaining:

We mentioned this yesterday in the open thread, but since the folks at NoProp16films.org have gone full out and made a whole series of HD videos, I think it is worth its own post.

You can check out the whole series of them, but this is one of my favorites at the site.  The open thread has a good summary video, and over the flip you’ll find a video in Spanish.

PG&E & PROP 16* from No on Prop16 Films on Vimeo.

There are a lot of bad actors in California government right now. There are special interests with special interests.  Yet if you had to look for a list of companies that are exploiting the state with deceptive tactics, you would be hard pressed to top PG&E.  

And the latest rebuke isn’t even about Prop 16, their deceptive monopoly preservation proposition.  Instead, it is about Marin County’s community choice aggregation (CCA) program, where PG&E is fighting to keep customers on their roles.  And lying to do it.

California utility regulators Monday warned Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to stop using telephone and direct-mail tactics that could derail competition from the state’s first nonprofit group to offer electric service.

The warning letter from the California Public Utilities Commission came in the midst of PG&E’s $35-million campaign to pass Proposition 16, a statewide initiative on the June 8 ballot aimed at making it harder for local governments and citizens to form nonprofits to provide electricity. … (The PUC) said PG&E’s mailers to customers were “misleading” and the utility “must refrain from sending any mailers of this nature in the future.”(LA Times)

At this point, if there is a rule, PG&E will do its best to go as far as possible to violate it. If they make a promise, as they did with honoring the will of the people to create CCAs, is it worth anything any more?

We simply can’t trust PG&E with a monopoly on power anymore.

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.

PG&E, the Proposition 16 backers, leave a lot of information out of their slick new TV ad. Let’s go through it (transcript over the flip.

Let’s go over it, claim by claim. First, read the fine print

PAID FOR BY YES ON 16/CALIFORNIANS TO PROTECT OUR RIGHT TO VOTE, MAJOR FUNDING FROM PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY, A COALITION OF TAXPAYERS, BUSINESS AND LABOR

Of course, it only flashes on the screen for 4 seconds, so you can’t really read it in the ad. But if you could read it, you wouldn’t even know that 100%, not “major,” funding comes from PG&E. Every penny comes from the electrical utility, who has a lot to gain in their attempt to actually limit the people’s choice, and even limit their voting. By the way, PG&E ins’t a coalition of anything, especially labor. No labor organization that I know of supports this measure.

“But in the end, it’s really government run electric service.”

This is technically true, but they leave a few convenient facts out. Government or municipal electric service is accountable to the voters through board elections and consumer choice.  PG&E is beholden to its management and stockholders to make them money. Operators at public power agencies cannot be paid multi-million dollar corporate bonuses like the $10 million a year compensation package PG&E’s CEO, Peter Darbee is getting. (That’s paid for with ratepayer funds.)

Furthermore, government or municipal electric utilities cannot spend one dime of your ratepayer money for a political campaign like Prop. 16.  But PG&E, a for-profit utility, has contributed $25 million in ratepayer funds to pass Prop. 16 which will limit consumer choice and give PG&E a virtual monopoly.

Under current law, local government can spend unlimited public funds to go into the electricity business, and we don’t even have the right to vote on it.

This is absurd. Local governments are made up of elected officials – County Supervisors, Mayors and City Council members. They and their actions are highly accountable to voters. It’s the way we decide every other spending decision, apparently PG&E wants special privileges. Anyway, local public agencies cannot put taxpayer resources at risk without a vote of the people under existing law.

Requires voter approval before local governments can spend public funds to take over electric service.

Of course, what it doesn’t mention is that it isn’t just a simple up and down vote. Proposition 16 requires that two-thirds of the electorate has to approve a new municipal power system – giving PG&E a clearly unfair advantage. This is a rarely achieved supermajority that a deep-pocketed for-profit business like PG&E will use to ensure consumers have no choice in power providers.

Whether government run electricity is a good idea or not, voters should have the final say, because we’re paying the bills.

Today, voters have NO say in the high rates and poor service that PG&E provides. Prop. 16 locks that in. Virtually every municipal or government run power system in California charge lower rates than PG&E, some by 25% or more.

Transcript:

Image- power lines

Woman narrating: “It goes by different names”

Text Images on the screen: “public power” “local public electricity providers” “community choice aggregation”

Women narrating: “But in the end, it’s really government run electric service.”

Women on screen: “under current law, local government can spend unlimited public funds to go into the electricity business, and we don’t even have the right to vote on it.”

Image and spoken by women: “Proposition 16, The Taxpayers Right to Vote Act”

Highlighted text on screen read by women: “Requires voter approval before local governments can spend public funds to take over electric service.”

Woman back on screen: Whether government run electricity is a good idea or not, voters should have the final say, because we’re paying the bills. Vote Yes on Proposition 16, the taxpayers right to vote act.”

In a conference call a while back, PG&E CEO Peter Darbee accidentally let slip the truth about his “taxpayer’s right to vote” act. Hardy-har.  Basically, this initiative isn’t intended to really give anybody the vote, instead, it is intended to stop counties from even trying this sort of thing. Keep in mind, these words are direct from the mouth of Darbee:

And the idea was to diminish, you know, rather than year after year different communities coming in as this or that and putting this up for vote and us having to spend millions and millions of shareholder dollars to defend it repeatedly, we thought that this was a way that we could sort of diminish that level unless there was a very strong, you know, mandate from voters that this was what they wanted to do. (John Geesman)

Here’s the thing, very rarely do you get 2/3 of people to agree on anything. So PG&E is banking on counties never even bringing this stuff up for a vote, in all intents and purposes, killing community choice aggregation (CCA) in California forever.

So, PG&E, why don’t we just call this what it is: Kill CCA Forever Act. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been hounding Marin and San Francisco counties as they have been preparing to enter a CCA program?

Look, the amount of money required to set up a CCA is a relatively small amount of money compared with other expenditures at the county level. I don’t have exact figures, because there hasn’t been a good case study for CCA. PG&E tries to kill them before they get out of the planning stages.  Why require a vote on this one small issue when elected leaders can spend far more on other, costlier programs?

The answer is clear, PG&E doesn’t like it because it messes with their bottom line.  Despite the fact that they claimed that they would play nice with CCAs when they screwed up the power during the brownouts, they’ve continued to act in bad faith. (As an aside, the public power operators fared far better in terms of brownouts than PG&E and other private power companies)

This has nothing to do with anybody’s right to vote. If we wanted to vote on everything we could move to Athens, circa 2500 years ago. But, California is too big for votes on every issue, and PG&E with its big corporate accounts overflowing with ratepayer money uses every last penny hiring fancy consultants to go around spreading lies about “how this is just about letting people vote.” They know it is a bunch of bullshit, and Darbee acknowledges that much.

You think the PG&E spokespeople will be quoting Darbee about how he intends there to be less voting? Yeah, I’m not holding my breath.

Yesterday, the PUC heard a debate about Prop 16, PG&E’s attempt to buy itself a brand new supermajority law. The PUC has, in the past, taken positions on initiatives in areas that it regulates.  It should join every editorial board that has looked at the measure and say NO! to PG&E’s power-play.

But, today there was some bigger news.  A group of municipalities sued to take Prop 16 off the ballot:

The City and County of San Francisco today joined with public entities from throughout California in a lawsuit to strike the controversial PG&E-funded initiative constitutional amendment, Proposition 16, from the June 8, 2010 statewide ballot for being wholly false and misleading, and for concealing its true nature and purpose from voters. Dubiously self-entitled the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act” by its proponents, despite having no bearing on taxation or government spending, the California Attorney General recently re-entitled the measure, “New Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers.” The proposed amendment would impose a new super-majority vote threshold before public entities in California would be allowed to pursue virtually any energy services programs intended to benefit ratepayers or the environment.

*** **** ***

“Despite what its proponents would have us believe, Prop 16 doesn’t help taxpayers and doesn’t empower voters-in fact, it does the exact opposite,” said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera. “Enabling a one-third minority to hold the will of the majority hostage has been a disaster for our state budget process in Sacramento. Now, Prop 16 would impose that recipe for deadlock on California’s energy future. State law enables courts to remove initiatives that misrepresent and conceal their true nature and purpose. If our elections laws are to have meaning, the court should strike this deceptive amendment from the ballot.” (Press Release)

Of course, the pro-Prop 16 Consultant Strike Force (paid out of PG&E’s ratepayer-funded political slush fund) immediately flew into action. This is from Robin Swanson, a Democratic consultant:

Opponents would rather file lawsuits behind closed doors and use legal maneuvers to try and stop people from voting than talk to the voters of California in the open forum of an election.

Ironically, Proposition 16 was put on the ballot simply to guarantee voters the right to vote before local governments borrow or spend public dollars to take over electric utilities. Particularly in these tough economic times, we need to make sure we can use our vote to hold the politicians accountable.

But, as evidenced from today’s actions, it’s clear that the opponents don’t want voters to have a say on this issue at all.(Press release – Robin Swanson)

To say this is deceptive would be a grand understatement.  Let’s put this in perspective.

And finally, PG&E is going to give anybody lectures about voting when they are trying to institute a supermajority requirement? It’s ludicrous on its face.  But, that’s why they are going after the supermajority requirement.  Even a 50% vote of the people is ridiculous after they previously agreed to support communities who wanted to embark upon community choice aggregation.

In the end, this is just bad policy. It’s why editorial boards across the state are panning this awful measure:

Pacific Gas and Electric spent $3.5 million to collect more than a million signatures to qualify what it calls the Taxpayers Right to Vote Act for California’s June ballot. The title makes it sound like motherhood and apple pie. It’s just the opposite. If voters approve the scam, it will protect PG&E from dissatisfied customers angry about bad service and high costs. (Fresno Bee, 1/20/2010)

The point isn’t to protect taxpayers’ rights. It’s to protect the profits of a monopoly utility – both from ambitious clean-power schemes in San Francisco and from modest annexations in Redding. This is one measure where voters will need to look past the catchy slogan and see who really stands to benefit.(The Redding Record Searchlight 1/16/2010)

It is unusual for The Bee to come out against a ballot measure before the campaign has really started. The PG&E initiative deserves special attention. It’s that bad.(Sacramento Bee, 1/192010)

Californians must stand up to this effort to pass a monopolistic measure with our own money.