By Bruce B. Brugmann
There is a phrase I like to use to describe the power that PG&E has exercised in City Hall since the beginning of time, or at least since the federal Raker Act was passed in l9l3 mandating that San Francisco get public power from its Hetch Hetchy dam.
When PG&E spits, City Hall swims.
That is the phrase I used when I testified Monday night June ll at the Ethics Commission hearing in the infamous Carolyn Knee case. “You’re all swimming in it,” I told the commission.
I was trying to illustrate my key point: that the Commission, which had been created to expose and penalize the campaign and financial muscling of PG&E and the big guys in town, was now picking on the little guy, in this case Carolyn Knee, the woman who volunteered for the thankless job of being the treasurer of two citizens’ groups that put initiatives on the ballot in 200l and 2002 to do what the city had never done. And that was to kick PG&E out of City Hall, enforce the public power mandates of the Raker Act, and bring our own cheap green Hetch Hetchy public power to the residents and businesses of San Francisco. PG&E, the groups maintained, had an illegal private power monopoly and the citizens were forced to take this law and order issue into their own hands and go to war with PG&E.