Politics & Government
Sacramento CA: UPDATE: Senator Hill Legislation to Remove CPUC Peevey
Sacramento & San Bruno CA: Please Support Senator Hill's Legislation to Remove CPUC's Peevey
UPDATE:
Attached please find a copy of the Legislation that would remove Michael Peevey as a member of the CA Public Utilities Commission.
Senator Jerry Hill to Unveil Legislation Removing Michael Peevey as a Member of the Public Utilities Commission
Find out what's happening in San Brunofor free with the latest updates from Patch.
WHAT: State Senator Jerry Hill – joined by San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane and San Carlos Mayor Mark Olbert – will hold a news conference to announce he will introduce a measure when the Legislature reconvenes Dec. 1 that would remove California Public Utilities (CPUC) President Michael Peevey should he be reappointed. A new set of emails released this week disclosed quid pro quo arrangements between Peevey and a top Pacific Gas & Electric Co. executive who was fired last month after another set of emails showed he violated guidelines on how the company should communicate with the state’s utility regulator. Section 1 of Article XII of the California Constitution states that a CPUC commissioner may be removed for incompetence, neglect of duty, or corruption by a two-thirds vote of the membership in each house of the Legislature. The resolution cites a litany of disclosures – since a PG&E gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes – that demonstrate Peevey culpable on all three counts.
Hill, Ruane and Olbert will also call on commissioner Mike Florio to resign after e-mails disclosed that he was involved with judge shopping and collusion on behalf of PG&E.
Find out what's happening in San Brunofor free with the latest updates from Patch.
WHEN: Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 – 10:15 a.m.
WHERE: In front of the California Public Utilities Commission Building
505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
Contact: Aurelio Rojas, communications director, 916-747-3199 cell, or Leslie Guevarra 415-298-3404 cell
Background:
On September 9, 2010, a PG&E natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno’s Crestmoor neighborhood, which Hill represents. Eight people were killed, more than 50 others injured, and 38 homes were destroyed and 17 damaged.
On Monday, PG&E released new emails showing back-channel communications between company executives and the CPUC. Among the documents was a 2010 email in which one utility executive told his boss that Peevey expected PG&E to spend “a lot more” than $1 million opposing a ballot measure that would have put on hold California’s law capping greenhouse gas emissions.
“I jokingly suggested that if he gave us $26 million (in energy efficiency incentives), we could come up with $3 million or so for AB 32,” PG&E regulatory executive Brian Cherry wrote his boss. “(Peevey) said that is a deal he could live with – but we both agreed lots of things above my pay grade have to happen before that is a reality.” The conversation between Peevey and Cherry occurred in late May 2010 during a private dinner in which, according to Cherry, they “polished off two bottles of good Pinot.”
In November of that year—one month after PG&E contributed $500,000 to defeat the ballot measure, Peevey personally penned an alternate decision to give PG&E $29.1 million in energy efficiency incentives. The assigned administrative law judge had, in his proposed decision, found that PG&E deserved no additional incentives.
During the same dinner conversation, Peevey told Cherry that he expected PG&E and other utilities to come up with $100,000 each to help finance a 100th anniversary celebration for the PUC. The celebration would be a fundraiser for a nonprofit—the PUC Foundation—which Peevey would oversee and would fund international delegations and events that the state was unwilling to fund.
When the San Francisco Chronicle raised questions about the fundraiser in 2011, former PUC commissioner and event organizer Bill Bagley stated that “Basically, every utility will be contributing – so if it’s a conspiracy, it’s a massive conspiracy.”
During the dinner, Peevey also noted that the PUC intended to make a final decision on PG&E’s general rate case the same month as the anniversary celebration. “I told Commissioner Peevey I got the message,” Cherry wrote. After PG&E produced the funds for the PUC Foundation fundraising dinner, Peevey penned another alternate decision in PG&E’s general rate case—this time to give shareholders an extra $6 million from PG&E customers.
Last month, PG&E fired Cherry and two other executives and released e-mails in which Cherry lobbied for a preferred administrative law judge to be assigned to a $1.3 billion rate-setting case stemming from the San Bruno explosion. The emails show Peevey was involved in discussions with PG&E – prior to the full CPUC making a decision in January 2011 – about the case.
Peevey has recused himself from a separate case in which PG&E faces a $1.4 billion in fines for violations related to the San Bruno case.
Among the emails that PG&E released Monday were several showing communications between its executives and utilities commission member Mike Florio, telling a PG&E executive “I’ll do what I can” to appoint the executive’s preferred judge to the rate-setting case. In another email, the PG&E executive discussed with Florio a dispute involving a gas pipeline in San Carlos for which the city had obtained a court order cutting pressure. PG&E was lobbying the commission to restore full pressure, arguing that it was necessary to maintain full gas service on the Peninsula. In the end, the commission voted to restore full pressure on the line.
The disclosures this week mark the third time since summer that emails between the CPUC and PG&E have emerged, illustrating the appalling extent of back-channel conversations and secret dealing between CPUC and PG&E executives on public business and regulatory issues.
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Nate Solov
Office of Senator Jerry Hill
Photo Credit: San Bruno Patch Archives
Source Credit: State Senator Jerry Hill
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Learn all of the reasons to VOTE YES on Measure N by going to the following link
