By Bruce B. Brugmann
(Scroll down for the Guardian editorial in Wednesday’s edition (ll/19/08), “Fighting Newsom’s mid-year budget cuts”)
Once again, the Guardian is editorializing about the problems of the structural city budget deficit, which of course will be worse because of the economy and because of Mayor Newsom’s moves for mid-year cuts aimed at our lame duck Board of Supervisors.
And once again, the Guardian raises the issue, as we have since our first PG&E/Raker Act scandal story in l969, that the city is losing tens of millions a year by allowing PG&E to control its cheap Hetch Hetchy power and instead forcing the city’s residents and businesses to buy PG&E’s expensive private power. (See Guardian stories and Bruce blogs for details.) And it is most annoying that Newsom and his hired gun, Eric Jaye, worked so hard to defeat the Clean Energy Act (H), when public power would be the biggest potential source of new revenue for the city. Jaye conveniently advises Newsom and runs his campaign for governor at the same time he consults for PG&E and ran PG&E’s campaign against H. Neat.
More: it also annoying that the San Francisco Labor Council allowed PG&E to hold labor hostage in this campaign and in effect allowed PG&E to drum home the charge, without labor counter, that city workers are so dumb, so incompetent, and so lazy that they can’t run an electricity system. This posture puts city workers and their unions at a disadvantage when the budget axe starts falling.
The Guardian editorial: “Fighting Newsom’s mid-year cuts”