Energy

PG&E and a Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I confess. I am an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal. For starters, that means I grew up in a little town in northwestern Iowa that has had public power since 1896 and so i know personally that public power is cheap, reliable, and accountable.

In San Francisco, where PG&E private power is expensive, unreliable, and unaccountable, I was startled to find that I am suddenly an “ultra liberal,” along with a host of other progressives and independents who support the Clean Energy Initiative and public power.

Yes, according to PG&E and the San Francisco Chronicle, we are all suspicious characters and ought to be kept under watch for the duration for advocating such “ultra-liberal” things as clean energy, renewables, public power, mandates for making San Francisco a world leader in renewables, and kicking PG&E out of the mayor’s office and the DCCC.

As Tim Redmond points out in his Editors notes (8/20/08), the term first appeared in Heather Knight’s Aug. 15th article on the changes in the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), for decades the unassailable bastion of the Burton/ Brown machine. Her lead, he noted, was “almost breathtaking ” in its drama. She wrote that the party “has veered dramatically to the left,” and that it would be telling voters to vote for a raft of “ultra-liberal politicians supervisorial candidates” and, among other things, to “embrace public power.” (The Clean Energy Initiative, as it is appropriately known, mandates aggressive goals for renewables but PG&E gallops swiftly by this point and loves to say without evidence that the initiative is a $4 billion takeover of PG&E, which is yet another Big PG&E Lie.)

Meanwhile, the new Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, who ran endless errands for PG&E as mayor and as a private attorney on the public payroll, and collected a nifty $200,000 in “consulting services” in 2007 from PG&E, wrote without gulping:

“It was quite a week for local politics, with the certified takeover of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee by outgoing Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly…But what’s really going on here behind the headlines is a move by the ‘progressives’ to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley’s Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements–and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

“In other words the central committee will be Peskin’s shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling the shots even when he leaves office.”

Tammany Hall? Richard Daley’s Chicago? Why didn’t Wiillie just say what the facts are: that the Burton/Brown machine, and Mayor Newsom and PG&E et al, are no longer calling the shots on the DCCC and that a group of real progressives are cutting the umbilical cord to machine politics and calling the shots with real progressive issues and initiatives, such as the Clean Energy Act. Willie also couldn’t say of course that PG&E got much of its influence through his office as mayor and the Burton/Brown machine, which never put as much as a pebble in PG&E’s monopoly path. Thus, until now, the machine-dominated DCCC has been a safe haven for PG&E and even this time around the real progressives only won through a major organizing effort and tough battle.

Tim wrote that he thinks Newsom’s political operatives are mad that “the progressives have seized control of the term ‘progressives.’ which is in fact an accurate and historically valuable term. They’d like to call Newsom a progressive mayor, which is inaccurate and historically invalid. But since they can’t get away with that, they’ve pushed the Chronicle to use another term for people like Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin and the best the editors could come up with is ‘ultra liberal.'” The Chronicle, which appears to be once again revving up for PG&E, tosses a juicy T-bone to PG&E and its campaign theme that only the loony left would support such dread issues as clean energy and public power.

Maybe we have a new insight into the term progressive. A real progressive supports the Clean Energy Act and public power, while a phony Willie Brown/Gavin Newsom ‘progressive,’ in quotes, supports PG&E and opposes the Clean Energy Act. In short, there is a big difference between a real progressive and a PG&E ‘progressive.’

And me? I’m still just an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal.

More to come on this illuminating subject, B3

P.S. 1:Hearst ethics policy: If Hearst wants to present Willie Brown as a “legitimate” journalist and featured political columnist, making value judgments and ethical pronouncements on who is and is not a real progressive and whether the DCCC has been taken over by clean energy progressives playing Tammany Hall/Richard Daley machine politics, the Chronicle ought at minimum to require disclosure of his “consulting services” for PG&E and other private interests that would conflict his column? What specific “consulting services” did he provide for PG&E in 2007? What is he doing now for PG&E and for how much in the November election? Is he writing a political column for the Chronicle and working for PG&E at the same time? Is he advising PG&E on how to “steal” another election?
(I left a message for Willie at the Willie Brown Institute and I put out an email to Hearst corporate for comment on Willie’s PG&E/editorial role.)

It was Mayor Willie, as the public power campaign was winning in the 2001 public power election, who ordered that the ballots be moved from City Hall to the Civic Auditorium because of an anthrax scare. I remember standing with Angela Alioto about l0:30 p.m. on election night when then Elections Director Tammy Haygood, announced the anthrax move. “Angela,” I said, “we’ve lost the election.” She didn’t believe me and kept saying, “No, no, we couldn’t lose the election now.” Alas, I was right.

We raced over to the Auditorium where there was only minimal security. There was no evidence then or later of an anthrax scare. PG&E came from behind and won by a bare 500 votes. Several days later, several tops of the election boxes were found floating in the bay. There was no explanation from Willie nor his election director and no real investigation. The gallows humor was that the campaign should hire divers to go into the bay and find the missing ballots.

PG&E’s big payments: PG&E discloses the $200,000 payment to Willie Brown for “consulting services” in 2007 in its annual report to the California Public Utilities Commission. In a key section of this report (called page 257), PG&E is required to list every payment that it made to an outside company or consultant. This amounts to billions year.
PG&E has the entire annual report posted on its Investor Relations website, but, significantly, page 357 is missing.
PG&E’s statement explaining the omission says: “Details of this page are filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.” Reporter Amanda Witherell formally asked the CPUC press office for it and they said they’re “trying to track it down.” But she did get a copy.

Newsom heads South

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By Steven T. Jones
In the latest indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom intends to run as far away from San Francisco values as possible during his bid for governor, his campaign announced today the hiring of Garry South as its senior adviser.
I got to know South during my years as news editor for the Sacramento News & Review, when he was an adviser to then-Gov. Gray Davis, and I share the concerns of others that he represents the antithesis of Democratic Party values.
While the California Energy Crisis was barreling down on this state’s citizens and government, with enough time to head off the worst impacts, I listened to South indignantly defend the governor’s laissez faire approach until way after such passivity was indefensible. I argued with him as Davis became the most mindless law-and-order governor in California history (Davis famously argued for patterning our criminal justice system on that of repressive Singapore, a ludicrous South-inspired statement he never disavowed). And I sat in court while South and his Republican counterparts pleaded with a judge to overturn voter-approved campaign finance limits.
Garry South’s conservative triangulation approach to politics is arguably a big reason why Davis was recalled, leaving us with the Governator. Along with other soulless, scorched-earth political operatives in Camp Newsom — including Nathan Ballard, Peter Ragone, and Chris Lehane — South is sure to drag this campaign down into the lowest common denominator muck.
Hmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. Newsom can run from us, lose, and then we won’t need to keep explaining why Newsom is from San Francisco, but not of San Francisco.

The LA anti-scene guerrillas of Rainbow Arabia make dance mayhem with Middle Eastern guitar, microtonal keys

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Rainbow_Arabia_Guns.jpg

By Vanessa Carr

With feral vocals, shattering guitar riffs, and a collection of microtonal keyboards ordered off of a Lebanese Web site, Rainbow Arabia combines Middle Eastern beats and modes with the vibrant energy of Los Angeles’ experimental punk/dance scene. The result is a hypnotic neo-tribal, hipster-dub sound that falls somewhere in the vicinity of post-punk spiritualists Gang Gang Dance and These Are Powers. Rainbow Arabia plays at Cellspace on Aug. 16 before embarking on a cross-country tour with Gangi and Hecuba in October.

The band is composed of Danny and Tiffany Preston, both 36. The husband and wife duo were married for more than three years before they started playing music together and recording in their basement in early 2008. Before Rainbow Arabia, Danny played in punk-dub outfit Future Pigeon and Tiffany in Licorice Piglet.

“It’s definitely tested us, being in a band together. But the great thing is that when things are going really well, you get to share it together,” Tiffany told the Guardian.

DCCC endorses….

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The newly elected progressive block of the local Democratic Party flexed their muscles during tonight’s endorsements. It was a full house, with only Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat empty. She neglected (perhaps purposefully) to send a proxy.

Many of the supervisors’ measures passed — including the Affordable Housing measure and the Clean Energy Act. All of the items put on the ballot by Mayor Gavin Newsom failed, despite a small consistent cabal following his centrist party line. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s proxy cast steady abstentions on many local issues, with notable “no” votes against Affordable Housing, Clean Energy, and decriminalizing prostitution. She did, however, support Newsom’s Community Justice Center, which some pointed out had already been funded and should have been taken off the ballot.

All the progressive candidates handily won top seats, with David Campos beating out Eric Quezada in the hot district nine race. Nods went to incumbents Elsbernd and Chu. There was a lot of debate over whether to select second and third choices for ranked choice voting in the district supervisor races. Though there were attempts to get second and third seats filled, there was too much division among candidates and enough progressives stuck with “no endorsement” for those seats to keep solidarity behind the top seeded candidate. After some talk about the need to have at least one woman on the slate, Denise McCarthy, running in district three, was the only candidate to receive the second billing, getting votes from Debra Walker and Michael Goldstein, who stepped outside the progressive contingent that was urging a “no endorsement” vote to keep loyalty lined up behind Chiu.

The Clean Energy Act received a healthy majority of 22, with more choosing to abstain than cast a “no.” Tom Hsieh, Joe Julian, Megan Levitan, Mike Tuchow, Dianne Feinstein, and August Longo, voted against it while Laura Spanjian, Scott Wiener, Jackie Speier, Leland Yee, and Fiona Ma, abstained.

The complete rundown, after the jump:

Newsom embarrasses himself on clean energy

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Bob Brigham’s got a good post on Calitics about Al Gore’s new clean-energy ad campaign and how foolish it looks for Gavin Newsom to be on the wrong side of this issue:

This is the challenge of our time and history will record those who side with polluters like PG&E against the movement to switch that is growing every day. By the time the Democratic primary heats up, this vote will be as poison as the Iraq War vote (it is no coincidence that the polluters are using the same right-wing tactics the neocons used in their push against the reality-based community).

Yet it is not too late. Every day more and more people are realizing that the time to make the switch is now, the time for bold action is now. Hopefully, Gavin Newsom will have the wisdom to realize the how silly it sounds when he regurgitates PG&E’s talking points and will stop and think about what it is Al Gore is saying.

Newsom is also looking more and more alone here, as most of the prominent political leaders in the city line up behind the Clean Energy Act. I wonder: He’s the biggest name PG&E is going to have in its campaign; willhe let the disgraced private company use his picture and make him the centerpiece of the campaign against this charter amemdment? And won’t that look awful?

Oberst, Wilco, Wrens rock for net neutrality

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rockthenet.jpg

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Rock the Net: Musicians for Network Neutrality
(Thirsty Ear)

By Ian Ferguson

Although Al Gore considered naming the Internet “Magic,” and it seems that way to some (black magic for John McCain), an actual energy- and bandwidth-consuming infrastructure supports our browsing habits. Once the Net broadened beyond ARPA, private companies (namely service providers like AT&T and Comcast) assumed control of its traffic lights. Service providers are huge corporations: profit machines compelled to consider little else. These companies want to charge content providers (Web sites ranging from Google to your favorite blog) a fee for more bandwith: more bandwith means the Net works faster for a given site.

The FCC hasn’t yet stepped in to regulate the practice, but is currently evaluating the available options. In a show of support for net neutrality – the principle that demands service providers keep the Net free and open and by extension an indie band’s site as fast as any multiplatinum act’s – a coalition of musicians and labels have united to make an album intent on persuading Congress and the FCC to come around to their point of view. After all, as labels suffer, the Net offers itself as an inevitable platform for whatever distribution model to come – take OK Go’s YouTube music video-fueled fame, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s blog-buzzed status, or Radiohead’s acclaimed In Rainbows digital release.

Though none of these bands appear as part of the collective of musicians supporting network neutrality on Rock the Net, the album more than makes up for their absence. Everyone knows that one of the most promising potentials the Internet offers audiophiles is ease of discovery. No longer must one buy countless so-so albums to find one gem: simply peruse Imeem, Muxtape, or MySpace for revelations. This disc provides a microcosm of that in tangible form: 15 artists – some familiar, some not so well-known – present tracks as varied as infinite cyberspace.

Pennies from heaven

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Growing up gay in a military family of evangelical Christians in the Reagan-era South sounds like a tight squeeze for anyone. But as Kirk Read affirms, however claustrophobic one’s environment, there’s always room for a good fantasy. Besides, Read likes tight squeezes. His active dream life (which includes having a very large man lie on top of him and expel all the air from his lungs) percolated early with the image of his young gay Christian self leaving home for school each morning past an angry throng of fellow evangelicals in protest formation, waving signs expressing God’s vehement opposition to little backpack-wearing Kirk Read, holding up the obligatory jars of fetuses, shaking fists, and lobbing Bibles. Well, Read is here to testify that dreams can come true.

The story of that, um, miraculous moment (which took place recently as Read toured his home state of Virginia with the Sex Workers’ Art Show) makes up just one part of the Bay Area writer-performer’s lively, gleefully offbeat, and largely autobiographical concatenation of multimedia performance pieces, This Is the Thing, now being reprised at Shotwell Studios after its sold-out Queer Arts Festival debut at the Garage in June. But it comes, along with a raucous striptease, as the apt climax of an evening driven by a kind of fervor and sensibility clearly (if inadvertently) inspired by Read’s "hardcore" Southern Christian upbringing (recounted in detail in his 2001 memoir, How I Learned to Snap [Hill Street Press]).

Thus the evening begins with a prayer. Stepping onto the stage looking like a young Osmond-esque televangelist in a white polyester suit and gold sequin tee, Read (ably accompanied through many a mood by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, and backed by the smooth, evocative video collage work of Liz Singer) leads those assembled in a celebration of all those things disappearing — the cassette mixtape, the bottle rocket, the sonnet — before segueing into a paean to the penny and a loose, carefree set of associations that promptly lead to Abe Lincoln as well-hung gay icon. Pennies, those "shiny whores," are a sort of leitmotif here, though I can’t exactly say I understood why. Still, in terms of theme and execution, Read’s deceptively laid-back intensity, wit, and bold and personable self-exposure tend to make up for the evening’s slighter or more muddled aspects.

At its best moments This Is the Thing melds carefully honed physical and thematic juxtapositions with Read’s loose and natural but wholly committed performance style. The effects are often simultaneously hilarious, haunting, and gently moving. In a segment titled "The Conductor," Read recounts his first encounter with his very favorite sex client, a 450-pound man with a penchant for the classics, acting out the surprisingly romantic business affair with the aid of a large Winnie the Pooh–headed bear of a mannequin — a luxurious pileup of stuffed animal pelts constructed by Doug Hansen. In another pas de deux, a quietly strange and graceful piece called "Computer Face," Read is paired with a man-size figure set on wheels, wrapped in white bandages with clumps of wires for hands, and a glowing, hollowed-out Apple computer monitor for a head. As a looped recording plays a speech by Harvey Milk, Read pulls a series of objects from the figure’s head and dances with it in tight circles across the stage. In "The Nu Handbell Choir," the show reaches a kind of peak of starkness and delicacy as Read, calmly micturating into a set of crystal goblets, describes his furtive childhood adoration for his father — a veteran of three wars — and his Army brass buddies as they assembled in his parents’ living room to drink, talk, and console one another.

Other vignettes are less complex but still compelling in their energy and frank humor. "Hotel Hooker Haiku" is a sassy phenomenology of an Atlanta prostitute’s working world, set to banjo accompaniment and jovial footage of some dingy, dreary motel grounds. And the more traditionally outrageous if still amusing "Missing Mike Brady" posits Florence Henderson as a clothesline post airing her sex life on a well-worn marriage sheet. The Bradys may seem a little far afield here, but then, like the best of preachers, Read is nothing if not ecumenical.

THIS IS THE THING

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 10 p.m.), $12–$20

Shotwell Studios

3252 Shotwell, SF

1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/38121

On the pulse

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How does one particular sound manage to work its way into one’s earhole and lodge itself in the consciousness, cooling its warm jets in the frontal lobes before arranging for a cozier stay elsewhere in the gray matter? For San Francisco musician Jesse Reiner, late of Citay and lately of Jonas Reinhardt, the new age sounds of the latter project likely stemmed from dreamtime as an eight-year-old. "It’s funny — I was just thinking about this the other day," he says by phone. "It may have been nap time in third grade when the teacher would play a sound-of-the-seagulls record. Maybe it’s early childhood conditioning." Add in a fascination with analog synthesizers and Moogs around the end of high school; a love of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and tracks like Pink Floyd’s "On the Run"; and the collegiate discovery of composers such as Terry Riley and Morton Subotnik: now you have makings of the man behind the proudly faux persona of the Jonas Reinhardt project, portrayed on the band’s MySpace site as a suave, sandaled Euro artist, based in Monaco and dialed in for intense relaxation.

Yet there’s nothing fake or contrived about Reiner’s band: witness the instrumental combo’s recent, jaw-droppingly powerful prog assault at the Hemlock Tavern. I’d dare any school kid to doze through that blistering performance, with Reiner on synths, Reiner’s Crime in Choir cohort Kenny Hopper on bass, and Mi Ami’s Damon Palermo on drums. Initially unveiled this spring at a Cluster afterparty in Big Sur, Jonas Reinhart rummages through the more propulsive, hard-rockin’ aspects of both Can and Goblin with a transcendence-bent energy only hinted at — by way of the bass-borne, primal glimmers of "An Upright Fortune" and fiery, urgent synth squiggles of "Crept Idea for a Mom" — on the band’s nonetheless gorgeous, multitextured self-titled disc, which will be released in November on Kranky (an iTunes-only digital EP comes out at the end of this month). Dare one call this the dawning of a New Rage? This is beat music — pulsing like mirrored hearts on tracks like "Fast Blot Declining" and "Tentshow" — meant for contemplative spirits as well as jittery soles.

And Reiner — long an aficionado of analog synth music that falls under the dread rubric of easy listening or new age — has found plenty of kindred souls of late for this bedroom project turned band: "I used to be able to go to Amoeba a couple years ago and go through this really abandoned section, at the bottom where the overstock bins were, full of new age records, and you could get everything for $1. Now they’re all $10 and $15 records." He was approached by Kranky after giving his music to friend and fellow new age buff, Adam Forkner of White Rainbow, who’s also on the label.

Where did the audience come from for these ecstatic emanations? Reiner isn’t certain, though he theorizes, chuckling: "I think it’s because a lot of people have been getting older! For people who come from a punk or indie rock background, maybe this blissed-out new agey stuff is resonating with them." Yet the musician doesn’t aim to hit all the snooze buttons in his listeners. "One of the things I want to do with my music is to make it a little edgier than most," he explains. "I don’t want it to be too sleepy-naptime music. I want to make sure it gets pushed a little bit."

Jonas Reinhardt’s tough backbone comes along with the old-school technology its songs are built on: a Maestro Rhythm King drum machine from the early ’70s. "I like the way it’s kind of rough-sounding and pretty heavy in a way, whereas most drum machines aren’t," Reiner says. The trio runs live drums and keyboards through the machine, which Reiner describes as "this funny caveman way to sequence," creating a "really cool pulse."

From there, it isn’t too hard to imagine Reiner and other newer-age indie-rockers pushing from the margins to craft their own cerebrally challenging soundtracks for yoga classes or massage sessions. "I went to Calistoga a month ago, and they had the music playing in the spa," Reiner recalls. "I thought, ah, I’d love to make my own record for this."

JONAS REINHARDT

With Jeremy Jay and DJs Conor and Pickpocket

Mon/18, 10 p.m., $7

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

Also Aug. 28, check Web site for time, free

Apple Store

1 Stockton, SF

www.apple.com/retail/sanfrancisco

PG&E’s Lie of the Week

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The mailer that arrived last week shows a bullet hole blown through a pile of money and urges voters to beware the Board of Supervisors’ $4 billion takeover of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It was paid for by the "Committee to Stop the Blank Check, a coalition of concerned consumers, small businesses, labor, community organizations and Pacific Gas and Electric Company." PG&E, needless to say, is picking up the check for the campaign.

Nowhere does the mailer specify the legislation it’s attacking. Why not? Because the charter amendment is called the Clean Energy Act, a proposition mandating that the city pursue a comprehensive plan for 100 percent renewable energy. That plan may include buying or constructing an electricity distribution system — which is what PG&E is really fretting about.

"The only thing green about it is cost," the flyer says. "The fact is, this proposal is backed by many of the same supervisors who are trying to build fossil fuel power plants in San Francisco."

Actually, the Clean Energy Act was authored by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who consistently opposes burning more fossil fuel for energy and is against the city power plants.

PG&E, on the other hand, gets 41 percent of its electricity from burning fossil fuels and the company is not on track to meet the state’s meager mandate of 20 percent renewables by 2010. In fact, the company’s record is only getting worse: four new PG&E-owned fossil fuel plants are under construction — the Tesla plant in Alameda County, Gateway in Antioch, and two other facilities in Colusa and Humboldt.

And now, the controller’s big lie

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EDITORIAL Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will get a huge political windfall if the San Francisco Controller’s Office moves forward with a wildly inaccurate estimate of the cost of the Clean Energy Act.

In an Aug. 7 letter sent to the Department of Elections, Controller Ben Rosenfeld wrote that the costs to the city of acquiring PG&E’s local distribution facilities are "likely to be in the billions of dollars." That’s a scary figure, the sort of information PG&E will use to attack the measure. In fact, the company is already sending around flyers calling this a multibillion-dollar proposal.

But it’s completely untrue.

For starters, the Clean Energy Act never mandates that the city buy PG&E’s facilities. The charter amendment, which is on the November ballot, sets aggressive goals for renewable energy and directs city officials to study the best way to achieve those goals. Since public power agencies around the country are leading the way on renewables — and since PG&E has already said it can’t meet even the state’s weak clean energy mandates — the city ought to be looking at taking over the business of selling retail power to residents and businesses. But buying out PG&E’s old system might not be the best way to pursue public power.

But that’s just one flaw in the controller’s reasoning. Because even if San Francisco did buy out PG&E, there would be little or no cost to the city at all.

To understand that, you have to look at the realities of how the measure would work. The Clean Energy Act would authorize the city to issue revenue bonds to buy electric power facilities. Revenue bonds aren’t backed by the taxpayers; they are paid off entirely through a dedicated income stream. So unless the city can prove in advance with a detailed study that buying out PG&E would bring in enough money to cover the costs, there’s no way Wall Street would ever buy the bonds.

In other words, there is no possible scenario under which the Clean Energy Act could cost the city money. The opposite is almost certainly true: public power cities all over the United States make money — often large amounts of money. And our figures have always shown that San Francisco would net millions, maybe hundreds of millions, in revenue from buying out PG&E.

We called Peg Stevenson in the Controller’s Office to ask her about this, and she agreed with us: revenue bonds don’t cost the city any money. Buying out PG&E with revenue bonds wouldn’t cost the city any money. So why does the analysis say the measure could cost billions? "That’s not how I expect people to read it," she said.

But that’s exactly how people will read it. And it’s grossly misleading.

PG&E is already on the attack, and costs will be a huge part of its campaign. In fact, in a July 24 letter to the controller, David Rubin, PG&E’s director of service analysis, argues that the company’s San Francisco system is worth $4.18 billion.

The letter states that PG&E "has not done an inventory of its system" — in other words, the figures Rubin cites are just estimates. And the method PG&E uses to calculate the fair market value of the property is economically and legally dubious, at best.

PG&E insists that the only way to establish a price for the city to pay for a takeover is a method known as "replacement cost new less depreciation." The idea: the city would have to pay the price that it would cost today to replace all of PG&E’s equipment, much of which is old and was purchased (and paid for by the ratepayers) long ago.

The state Board of Equalization, which sets the value of PG&E’s property every year for tax purposes, doesn’t use that method. The board bases its valuation on what’s known as the rate base — the amount of invested capital state regulators allow PG&E to earn a return on. By that standard, the system is worth less than a quarter of what PG&E is claiming (and when tax time rolls around, you can bet the utility isn’t insisting that its property ought to be assessed at a higher value).

Stevenson said the Controller’s Office might replace the term "in the billions of dollars" with a more specific figure. If that’s the case, taking PG&E’s word, and accepting the wildly inflated $4.18 billion figure, would be a clear violation of the public trust.

The Controller’s Office needs to change its statement to reflect, at the very least, the fact that no city money is at risk and that there’s a reasonable assumption that the end result of a public takeover of PG&E would be increased revenue. It should say: "The costs of purchasing or building energy facilities would be substantial — but those costs would be covered entirely by the revenue from operating the facilities. The net cost to the city would, at worst, be minimal and the potential exists for the city to bring in significant new revenue to offset taxes and general fund expenses."

That, at least, is a true and accurate statement.

PS: The supervisors should hold hearings on the economics of this measure and demonstrate how lucrative public power is for cities — and how cheap for ratepayers. Public power is cheaper. Two charts below (PDF) show how public power is consistently less expensive than PG&E’s private power. The first one looks at utilities in California; note that SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, has significantly lower rates than PG&E. The second one, from the American Public Power Association, shows overall rates for public and private utilities state by state.

The relevant line shows public, private and co-op rates, average per kilowatt-hour. Note that public power in California is about one-third cheaper overall.

California ……………….10.9…….15.3……..11.5

www.scppa.org/Downloads/Rates/chart1.pdf

http://appanet.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/PDFs/utilityratecompstate2006.pdf

PPS: We’ve seen these shenanigans from the Controller’s Office for years; see our 1982 story (PDF) on how PG&E forced a misleading statement onto the ballot.

And now, the controller’s big lie

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By Bruce B. Brugmann (Scroll down for links to our current editorial on PG&E shenanigans on the Clean Energy Act initiative and a similar l982 Guardian story on PG&E shenanigans on the public power initiative of that era)

To repeat: When PG&E spits, City Hall swims.

In September of l982, public power forces placed Proposition K on the ballot, an initiative that would authorize a city study of the feasibility of municipalizing PG&E’s electric distribution system in San Francisco.

The Guardian headlines told the emerging story of the standard PG&E response whenever its illegal monopoly in San Francisco is threatened.

Front page: “Uncovered! PG&E’s inside moves at City Hall to squash public power: To subvert Prop. K, the utility sets up a front group, circulates a secret poll and recruits Feinstein, Kopp, Molinari and the city controller and city attorney.” (Feinstein was the mayor and Kopp and Molilnari were powerful supervisors. This time around, PG&E won’t have that luxury of public officials falling over themselves to run their errands and they have been forced to scramble for political support as never before.)

The head on our inside story: “PG&E attempts a coup against public power in San Francisco, The controller puts a misleading, one-sided and apparently illegal $1.4 billion cost-estimate for Prop. K in the voters’ handbook–using PG&E’s numbers.” The story pointed out that the data submitted by the controller for the handbook was originally supplied by a PG&E attorney and a City Hall lobbyist for PG&E. And the controller never bothered to talk to the public power group nor do any independent investigation of his own. Why? The big PG&E Lie ran in the controller’s statement in the voters’ handbook and was a major factor in PG&E’s victory over the public power initiative. PG&E’s major campaign theme, then and now, is the relentlessly repeated argument, “too risky, too costly.”

Today, as our current editorial discloses, the situation is much the same in the controller’s office.
Controller Ben Rosenfeld wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to the Department of Elections for the voters’ handbook that the costs to the city of acquiring PG&E’s local distribution facilities are “likely to be in the billions of dollars.”
What’s his evidence for this astounding figure? The only evidence is a July 24 letter to the controller from David Rubin, PG&E’s director of service analysis, who argues that the company’s San Francisco system is worth $4.18 billion.

Once again, the controller took PG&E’s word without gulping. He didn’t check with the public power people. He didn’t check with the state Board of Equalization, which sets a much lower value on PG&E property (which PG&E doesn’t protest at tax time.) He didn’t do his own research. He misinterpreted the initiative (which provides for revenue bonds, which would be paid off through a dedicated income stream and thus would cost the city nothing.) And he didn’t discuss revenue (public power cities have cheaper power and lower rates than PG&E and they make gobs of money). In short, public power in San Francisco, with its own power source at the Hetch Hetchy dam, is the biggest potential source of new revenue for the city. Again, why didn’t the controller do normal due diligence and research on such a vitally important issue for a cash-strapped city? Why is the controller once again so slavishly buying the PG&E Lie and propaganda line? The public deserves an explanation.

Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, authors of the measure, and the clean energy forces are working hard to get PG&E out of the controller’s proposed ballot information and get some honesty in. Our suggested language: “The costs of purchasing or building energy facilities would be substantial–but those costs would be covered entirely by the revenue from operating the facilities. The net cost for the city would, at worst, be minimal and the potential exists for the city to bring in significant new revenue to offset taxes and general fund expenses.”

Let’s kick PG&E out of the controller’s office. Let’s kick PG&E out of City Hall. B3

Click here to read this week’s editorial And now, the controller’s big lie.

Click here to read a similar Guardian story from Sept, 1982, outlining PG&E’s mode of attack on a public power initiative

Gas hurts: touring bands feel the pressure of geopolitics

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How will East Bay combo the Phenomenauts be able to fuel their van with today’s gas prices? Photo courtesy of Bagel!

By Kat Renz

You’ve got your band, your gear, your route. The road family piles on and off the rigged-up van or plush, star-caliber bus, ready for a nonstop, balls-out journey playing for legions of fans across the chosen land. It’s a classic image, old as rock ‘n’ roll, inspiring power ballads and hoary metal anthems: The tour.

With the music industry on its head due to plummeting record sales, live concerts seem the one assured mainstay of the business. Music-lovers will always pay to see their favorite acts onstage. But when the national average cost of regular gas is $3.88 per gallon, will bands be able to get there?

Currently, in San Francisco, regular unleaded gas goes for between $4.13 to $4.79 per gallon. Last August, gas was $2.77, and in 2005, it was $2.36, according to Energy Department statistics. And last year at this time, Oakland trio High on Fire – on the road eight or nine months a year – wasn’t too preoccupied with petroleum stats. Yet upon wrapping up the nation-wide, Megadeth-led Gigantour at the end of May, and realizing the amount of money devoted to gas was twice as much as budgeted, tour manager Brady Schilleci said priorities have changed.

Pelosi and the Clean Energy Act

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Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron raises an excellent question: Will Nancy Pelosi, who says she supports Al Gore’s ambitious renewable-energy goals, support San Francisco’s Clean Energy Act?

Pelosi can’t easily duck it, since the Democratic County Central Committee will vote tomorrow night on whether to endorse the Charter Amendment, and Pelosi is a member of that panel. She never goes, of course, but she has a proxy, who presumably will be voting the way the Speaker has instructed. So we shall see.

We shall also see where FIona Ma, Leland Yee, and Betty Yee, all members of the DCCC, are on this landmark measure.

Don’t let PG&E screw you!

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An open letter to the small business community

I was astounded to see that once again some small business organizations, and leaders, are about to put an argument on the November ballot that retails without blushing the PG&E lies and propaganda line against the Clean Energy Act and does not represent the views of many of us in the small business community.

As you can see from my recent blog, the current Guardian editorial, and our stories and editorials since l969, PG&E screws our small businesses and residents in many ways: high rates ( much higher than public power cities), frequent blackouts, lousy service, unaccountability, and a propensity to cut off power or force small businesses to buy an expensive bond if they are late on payments. And there’s no way to effectively complain about PG&E’s terrible service, rates, and glacial moves toward renewable energy.

Most embarrassing of all, the ballot argument retails the big PG&E Lie: the erroneous whopper that the cost to the city of acquiring PG&E’s local distribution system would be $4 billion. For starters, the Clean Energy Act never mandates that the city buy PG&E’s aging facilities. The charter amendment sets aggressive goals for renewable energy and directs city officials to study the best way to achieve those goals.

Since public power agencies around the country are leading the way on renewables, and since PG&E has already said it can’t meet even the state’s weak clean energy mandates, the city ought to be looking at taking over the business of selling retail power to businesses and residents. But buying out PG&E’s old system might not be the best way.

More: even if San Francisco did buy out PG&E, there would be little or no cost to the city at all. The act would authorize the city to issue revenue bonds to buy electric power facilities. Unlike typical general obligation bonds, the revenue bonds would not be backed by taxpayers, and would be repaid by the money the city would make by selling retail electricity. Revenue bonds are paid off entirely through a dedicated revenue stream. So unless the city can prove in advance with a detailed study that buying out PG&E would bring in enough money to cover costs, there’s no way Wall Street would ever buy the bonds.

In short, there is no possible scenario under which the Act could cost money. The opposite is true: Public power cities all over the United States make money, including the public power system in my hometown of
Rock Rapids, Iowa, which has had a successful public power system since 1896. Many public power systems
make large amounts of money while keeping rates well below private power rates. And our figures show that San Francisco would net millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars, in revenue from buying out PG&E.
Moreover, PG&E each year yanks upwards of $650 million out of the city with its high rates, according to our study.

So why are some small business leaders once again buying PG&E’s Big Lies and once again trying to get small business groups and businesses to sign a ballot argument that undermines their own economic self interest? Would any of them run their own businesses this way? Small business people should steer clear of this embarrassing, self-immolating argument and either support the Clean Energy Initiative or stay neutral.

Most important, the business of PG&E Lies is academic. Because of the federal Raker Act giving San Francisco an unprecedented concession to dam a beautiful valley (Hetch Hetchy) in a beautiful national park (Yosemite), San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. mandated by federal law and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to have a public power system. And the longer the city is in violation of the Raker Act (because it does not have a public power system), the more vulnerable the city is to the tear-down-the-dam movement quietly orchestrated by PG&E and its allies. And that would be a costly catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the supervisors should hold hearings on the economics of this measure and demonstrate how lucrative public power is for cities–and how cheap for businesses and residents. They should also invite small business people to testify about their problems with PG&E. We’re posting charts at SFBG.com that show that in California and throughout the U.S., public power is less expensive than private power across the board. B3

P.S. We are doing a major story on how PG&E screws local small business on many levels. If you have specifics and examples with your business, or know of any, please let us know at the Guardian. On guard, B3, who watched today from my office window as the fumes curled up from the Potrero Hill power plant, courtesy of PG&E

*PAID BALLOT ARGUMENT LANGUAGE

Proposition ___ Will Hurt San Francisco Small Business Owners

The Board of Supervisor’s plan to takeover PG&E would force San Franciscans to pay an estimated $4 billion for the power system through a dramatic increase in monthly utility bills. If Proposition___ passes the City would lose the more than $20 million a year that PG&E pays in taxes and fees. That means our taxes would need to go up to pay for this lost revenue or basic services, like libraries, street cleaning, police and fire services. It will cost more to do business in San Francisco as small business owners and their families will face an additional $400 to $600 a year expense in utility bills.

Join San Francisco ‘s Small Business Community in Voting No on Proposition___

Two turntables and a saxophone: Meet DJ Purple

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Steve Hays, AKA DJ Purple, is a Karaoke DJ — or a KJ as they’re called — who throws dance parties throughout the Bay Area. Forget everything you thought you knew about the karaoke scene. There are no sad old men or drunk frat boys singing Dave Matthews songs at DJ Purple’s shows. Serious music-lovin’ hipsters flock nightly to places like Jacks in The Mission – across the street from where this interview (and drive by shooting!) took place — to sing their favorite heavy metal, rap, and eighties pop tunes while DJ Purple plays back up on the sax. This ain’t your daddy’s karaoke show!!!

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SFBG: So what’s your deal?
DJ Purple: I’m Steve Hays, otherwise known as DJ Purple Hays. Did you get that name connection there?

SFBG: Actually I think I just realized it a minute ago. It’s the Jimi Hendrix thing, right?
DJ Purple: Yeah, it’s more of a Jimi Hendrix connection as opposed to drugs or whatever. I actually started using the name back when I was in my first band. I was a little sophomore kid and there was this band of seniors I knew. I used to hang out at their shows and one day I was like “Can I play?” They asked me what my name was and when I said Hays, they were like “Oh let’s call him Purple.” I had no idea what they were talking about at the time.

SFBG: So then you just used it as your DJ name too?
DJ Purple: Yeah, well when I started deejaying -I used to just be a regular DJ, by the way; not a KJ like I am now- I played around with a few names. But then I made a flyer one night and left a stack of them at the bar while I was performing. Some guy picked one up and yelled “DJ Purple, No Way!!!” I figured if the name could get that kind of response out of some random guy at a bar, then it must be good.

SFBG: How long have you been doing the karaoke thing?
DJ Purple: I got inspired by a show I saw in 2002 in Palo Alto. It was a karaoke dance party as opposed to just your standard karaoke show. So this KJ had somehow managed to sell out a 500-person venue with a karaoke show. People from all over the Bay Area came to see him. It was awesome.

SFBG: So what exactly is the difference between a normal karaoke show and what you do?
DJ Purple: Well, 99% of the karaoke shows out there are kind of boring. As a real DJ, my focus is on moving the crowd. I like to get people dancing. So one of the main differences is that I don’t have slow songs in my book. The slow songs always ruin things. Like, you’ll get some high-energy stuff for a minute but then someone will stand up and sing “Yesterday” by the Beatles and the whole place will yawn. There are always weird pauses between songs too. I’m a DJ so I keep things moving. Each song transitions into the next and I do my best to keep the energy up.

PG&E grantees: Revealed

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By popular demand, here’s some highlights from PG&E’s 2007 charitable giving. If you want to see the complete list, look at pages 58-90 of this PDF. That document also includes the dues they pay to belong to certain organizations which tend to have certain sway with certain politicians and voting blocks. Example: a whopping $325,000 to belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Who shows up at the first public hearing on the Clean Energy Act, to argue — with PG&E talking points — against putting it on the ballot? The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

PG&E also paid $90,000 to the Committee on Jobs, $92,500 to the Bay Area Council (on top of the $40,000 gift they also gave the group — which has also shilled for them at public meetings), and $26,500 for BOMA

There are some other interesting grants to note. For example, Slide Ranch got $5,000. Who’s on the board of Slide Ranch? Francesca Vietor, who’s up for possible appointment to the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Most of the grants are pennies to PG&E, but a couple nudge up into significant chunks of change. Over a million each went to the Foundation for Environmental Education and the National Energy Education Development Project.

See some other familiar faces, after the jump:

Lawsuit challenges high-speed rail project

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Four environmental groups and two cities today filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court challenging the California High Speed Rail Authority’s recent decision to lay track over Pacheco Pass, rather than going with the Altamont Pass option preferred by the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit isn’t likely to directly affect this November’s Proposition 1, the $10 billion bond measure that would allow work to begin on the San Francisco-Anaheim high-speed rail project. Yet the language in the bond measure could be updated to include new fiscal oversight and other provisions if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs Assembly Bill 3034, which this week broke through a logjam in the Assembly and appears likely to win Senate approval next week.

The lawsuit was filed by the Planning and Conservation League, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, California Rail Foundation, Bay Rail Alliance, and the cities of Atherton and Menlo Park.
A press release from CRF says, “The environmental and transit groups advocate a well-planned, cost- effective, and environmentally sensitive high-speed rail system in California. They want high-speed trains along the Altamont route, to help commuters from the Central Valley and Sacramento, who currently clog up Interstates 80 and 580. This route would divert millions of regional trips annually to electrified rail, yielding extremely significant air quality, greenhouse gas reduction, and energy savings benefits.”

CHSRA staffers and board members argued that Pacheco was a cheaper, faster route that eliminated the need for a costly and logically difficult bay crossing to reach San Francisco. South Bay political leaders also threatened to oppose the project if Altamont was chosen. Yet CHRSA is also working on a regional rail connection over Altamont that would eventually tie into the high-speed rail system, which is at least a decade away from being operational.

Lollapalooza day two: Wilco’s Nudie suits, Rage ‘n’ storming the castle, and SamRon hangs with LiLo

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It ain’t broke: Broken Social Scene. All photos by Angela Smith.

By K. Tighe

Day Two, Aug. 2, of Lollapalooza posed an interesting question: how big of a Wilco fan am I? You see, the schedule of a festival was built to split the day’s sold-out, 75,000-plus crowd, between two headlining stages on opposite ends of Grant Park: Wilco takes the North End, with Rage Against the Machine bringing up the South. Initially, I considered this one a no-brainer: this is Wilco headlining a sold-out show in their hometown – end of debate.

My cohort and I claimed prime territory during Broken Social Scene’s 6:30 set. BSS’s set was unsurprisingly incredible, laced with rock ‘n’ roll guitar moves, boundless energy, and even some political banter, “You’re not just voting for America, you’re voting for the world.” From our prime BSS ground we could here Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings loud and clear – and we even had a great view thanks to the jumbo screen flanking the PlayStation 3 stage.

Jones gave another sassy showing, pulling men up from the audience to croon to – and to horrify security a bit. Jones even chose to tell us a bit about her history, but first, “I gotta take my shoes off. You know what? Let me get these earrings off, too.”

Enviro-metalists

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"There was this fateful moment where we were like, ‘Fuck this shit! Hippie commune? Black metal band? Let’s do this!’<0x2009>" Wolves in the Throne Room drummer Aaron Weaver says, describing the synergistic beginnings of his group’s music and their 10-acre working farm, Calliope.

WITTR is living every nature-loving hessian’s dream. Not content with the icy, masturbatory satanism of Scandinavian death-metal forebears like Mayhem, or with the politics of the dogmatic punk scene from which they spawned, or about to hold hands and coo "Kumbaya," the three-piece from Olympia, Wash., has united a scathing brand of metal with inspired ecological spirituality. Say what?

To enviro-heads concerned with planetary destruction and nuclear apocalypse, and metalists banging their heads to songs about violent destruction and nuclear apocalypse, the connection is obvious.

"If we had to boil our band down to one thing: we’re just so fucking miserable and pissed all the time about the stuff that is going on in the world, just this wholesale war against anything beautiful or good or whole or pure," explains Weaver by phone from his little house across the courtyard from WITTR’s practice space.

Running counter to the activist tendencies of its punk cousins, the traditional metal scene has generally recoiled from politically correct statements. WITTR blends the two, embracing eco-feminism and radical ecology on a spiritually intuitive level rather than an overbearingly didactic one. Their second, latest album, 2007’s Two Hunters (Southern Lord), creates a dynamic continuum — not unlike nature itself — by pointedly channeling the sorrow and deep rage of a planet in crisis. Bookended by buggy chirps of the witching hour and twittering birds, the four tracks slowly creep with a plodding, atmospheric tension, climaxing in speed-of-light picking, drums to move mountains, and the throat-raking terror screams of Weaver’s younger brother and guitarist, Nathan.

Is this how Mother Earth would sound if she could respond in minor chords and time signatures? WITTR’s lyrics too are one with nature. As Two Hunters‘ 18-minute closing saga, "I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots," goes, "The wood is filled with the sounds of wildness / The songs of birds fill the forest on this new morning / This will be my new home / Deep within the most sacred grove."

Production-wise, WITTR carries through a similar awareness and intricacy, intent on crafting meticulously layered recordings. "The black metal aesthetic is just what we happen to use, but the main goal is to create soundscapes," Weaver says, noting that a typical song has about 20 guitar tracks. Earth producer Randall Dunn gave Two Hunters a palpable warmth, working primarily in analog at Aleph Studios in Seattle, and the band is planning to collaborate with Dunn again on its third full-length, due in February 2009. On it, touring bassist Will Lindsay will take over as the vocalist and second guitarist from new dad Rick Dahlin.

In a sense, WITTR’s devotion to re-awakening an ancient spirit rooted in their home turf is nothing new. Black metal is steeped in bioregional qualities, whether exuding a chilly clime and calling on Nordic deities or reading tarot cards and summoning the melancholy, intense quiet of the Pacific Northwest’s mossy old-growth forests. "That’s always been the explicit goal, to really express the spirit of this place, which has a very specific feel to it," Weaver says. "It’s a really dreamy kind of energy."

So next time you put on WITTR, remember it’ll sound best if you’re snug within a sacred grove — and make sure you have a lunar calendar and a Jepson Manual on hand. As the outfit argues in its band bio — required reading for fans of Derrick Jensen and Burzum alike — "If you listen to black metal, but you don’t know what phase the moon is in, or what wildflowers are blooming, then you have failed."

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

With Ludicra and the Better to See You With

Tues/12, 8 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

SFPUC shuffle

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› sarah@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is arguably the city’s most important commission. It provides water to 1.6 million customers in three Bay Area counties and handles sewage treatment and municipal power for San Francisco. But right now, it lacks a governing body.

Until recently there were no minimum job requirements for its five commissioners, who are all appointees. The only way the Board of Supervisors could block the mayor’s picks for these all-important posts was through a two-thirds vote (that requires eight supervisors) made within 30 days of the selection.

That changed June 3 when voters approved Proposition E. The board placed this legislation on the ballot in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s "without cause" firing of SFPUC former General Manager Susan Leal last year, and his reappointment this spring of Commissioner Dick Sklar, a former SFPUC general manager whose anti–public power tirades and rudeness to SFPUC staff was at odds with the goals and values of the board’s majority.

Prop. E’s passage required that the current SFPUC be disbanded by Aug. 1, set minimum qualifications for future nominees, and stipulated that new commissioners cannot take office until at least six supervisors confirm the mayor’s picks.

Newsom responded by renominating Sklar, along with two other incumbents—former PUC President Ann Moller Caen, and F.X. Crowley, who works for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Newsom also nominated two newcomers — Nora Vargas, executive director of the Latino Affairs Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, and Jell-O heiress Francesca Vietor, director of the city’s Department of the Environment from 1999 to 2001.

Kicked to the curb in this preliminary shuffle was David Hochschild, a solar advocate who steered the SFPUC away from building peaker plants and toward retrofitting the aging Mirant power plant. Also ousted was E. Dennis Normandy, whom Mayor Frank Jordan appointed in 1994.

On July 29, the board unanimously approved Caen and Crowley, and seemed inclined to favor Vietor, though she has yet to appear before them to answer questions.

But they rejected Vargas after Sups. Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty expressed misgivings about her lack of experience with local politics and the SFPUC, not to mention concerns about the $150,000 worth of community grants PG&E gave to Vargas’ Latino Issues Forum between 2004 and 2006.

And Sklar withdrew his nomination before the board could vote on it, apparently aware that the seven votes against his nomination last time meant he was destined to fall short of the new requirement.

These initial changes have led Leal to believe that Prop. E is already having the desired effect. "The rules before meant that the supervisors had 30 days to come up with eight votes, and that’s a very tough thing to do," Leal told the Guardian. "The fact that Dick Sklar had to get six votes, when he barely got four votes in February, is why he withdrew his name. And if you look at the way the supervisors handled the process last time around, this time they seem more vested in it."

Newsom has not yet forwarded any more picks to the Board, so the makeup of the body that will govern the SFPUC until August 2012 is still undecided. But it’s likely that the first matter of business for the new SFPUC will be responding to board recommendations that are sure to flow from an August hearing into CH2M Hill’s study on the feasibility of retrofitting Mirant’s Potrero units 4, 5, and 6.

Leal believes the retrofit plan is "sketchy at best."

"I think that trying to retrofit a 1973 plant is like one former PUC commissioner thinking you can repair the 50-year-old digesters out at the southeast wastewater treatment plant," Leal told the Guardian, referring to Sklar’s equally unpopular attempt to block a costly but necessary rebuild of the SFPUC’s sewage digesters.

"To me, this is Mirant and PG&E still deciding whether there will be something polluting in the air," Leal added.

On July 22, at its last meeting before being disbanded, the Sklar-led SFPUC voted to rescind its former plan to build a new peaker power plant in the city’s southeast sector, and to instead pursue the Mirant retrofit.

Sup. Bevan Dufty notes that a retrofit of this kind "hasn’t been done anywhere else in the world." Board President Aaron Peskin observes that, "unlike the peaker plan, which was subjected to thousands of pages of analysis, the retrofit plan was cooked up behind closed doors with no public hearings."

Noting that Mirant only needs a building permit to keep operating at the site, Peskin says that is why he joined Sups. Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, and Dufty in introducing legislation to require conditional use permits of future power plants.

"ATM machines, bakeries, and restaurants need conditional uses, so why not power plants?" Peskin said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi believes the peakers and retrofit are competing as the lesser of two evils, which is one reason why he and Ammiano wrote the fall ballot measure called the Clean Energy Act, which would create ambitious goals for renewable power. Mirkarimi told us, "There needs to be a robust campaign for a third plan that combines a transmission-only mandate and a strong renewable energy mechanism that compensates for the Mirant shutdown."

Cleaner power, cleaner money

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OPINION Nine months ago neighborhood leaders from the Potrero Hill and the Bayview districts were invited to stand and applaud at a press conference at Mirant’s Potrero Power Plant. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle: "One of the state’s oldest and dirtiest power plants … could shut down as soon as 2009, city leaders announced…. The mayor said the signing represented ‘an important day in the history of the city.’<0x2009>"

But now that signed agreement to close Mirant — through a decade-long effort to have the city run its own power-generating "peaker plants" as a replacement — is itself on the verge of extinction. Mayor Gavin Newsom, a probable candidate for governor and choosing political expediency over cleaner air, reversed field and claimed that the cleanest way to close Mirant … is to keep part of it running. And a number of environmental activists backed him up, claiming that the city-owned peaker plants would bring more pollution to southeast San Francisco than retrofitted combustion turbines at the Mirant plant.

How can that be, when even conservative estimates admit that the newer city-owned turbines run 30 to 35 percent cleaner than the 40-year-old Mirant turbines?

The answer is money.

The argument goes like this: the city-owned peaker plants are funded by $273 million in revenue bonds and a contract with the state’s Department of Water Resources that runs until 2015. After that, the debt remaining on the bonds would require the city to run the peakers for more hours and many more years of operation than retrofitted combustion turbines at the Mirant plant. The Mirant proposal would be financed by reliability contracts from the state’s Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) that essentially pay for the turbine capacity, not actual operation. That means fewer running hours, and no potential cost to the city’s budget. Therefore, the Mirant retrofit is less polluting, and the generators can be shut down sooner.

That’s been a persuasive argument so far, and it has stopped further consideration of the city-owned peakers. But the argument misses one important fact and one critical question. The fact is that the city-owned peakers don’t cost $273 million anymore; Cal-ISO agreed in June that the fourth peaker plant (to be located at the airport) wasn’t necessary, leading to savings of more than $110 million.

There’s an even more important question: why don’t we finance the city-owned peaker plants using Cal-ISO’s reliability contracts instead of the bonds and the DWR contract? Apparently no one at the Mayor’s Office, the Public Utilities Commission, or the environmental groups supporting the Mirant retrofit has asked this question. Yet it provides the cleanest answer to the dilemma of the peaker plants — it would give us the cleanest machines, under city control and policy, so they can only run when absolutely necessary and we can shut them down as soon as possible.

At the end of the day the proposal for a Mirant retrofit isn’t really about a retrofit at all — it’s a proposal to keep the city’s energy future in the hands of others. The choice facing us — at City Hall, in the environmental community, and in the neighborhoods — is between being smart about our energy policy or handing over that policy to a corporate boardroom in Atlanta.

Tony Kelly

Tony Kelly is president of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association.

PG&E’s first big lies

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle reported Aug. 2 that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is almost certain to miss the state’s deadline for increased renewable energy generation. It’s a pretty modest goal: 20 percent of the company’s electricity is supposed to come from renewable sources by 2010. But PG&E is nowhere near on track.

But the company is well on its way to spending a record amount of money to block San Francisco voters from passing the Clean Energy Act, which would allow the city to develop renewable energy on a schedule that would meet much more aggressive goals. A political front group funded by the utility has already mailed out or paid operatives to place on doorknobs tens of thousands of flyers packed full of lies about the proposal. It’s the earliest we’ve ever seen a full-scale ballot campaign get underway — the election isn’t until Nov. 4. By then the barrage of PG&E misinformation will reach a fever pitch.

So it’s not too early to start evaluating the campaign rhetoric and exposing the most ridiculous of the lies.

PG&E is starting out with four basic themes that will probably form the center of the fall campaign. The main attack will be economic — the measure, PG&E will say, is too costly for these tough economic times.

The information the company’s flacks are putting out is so blatantly inaccurate that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. Here’s what the utility is saying:

•<\!s> The Clean Energy Act will cost $4 billion and raise electric rates by $400 per household. That’s based on two complete fallacies, and even by PG&E’s standards, this has to go down as one of the worst lies in local political history. For starters, PG&E is assuming that the city will decide to buy out its old local distribution system (that’s not mandated in the Clean Energy Act; there may be smarter ways to get into the renewable energy and public power business). But even if the city did buy the system, there’s no way it would cost close to $4 billion. The state Board of Equalization appraises utility property every year, and PG&E’s own appraisers participate in the discussions. Last year the BOE concluded that all of PG&E’s local property — including a big downtown office building — was worth about $1.2 billion. PG&E, to our knowledge, has never attempted to have that figure (and thus its own tax bill) increased to $4 billion. Without the office building, which the city would have no need to buy, the actual distribution system is probably worth closer to $800 million — putting PG&E’s number off by a factor of five.

The $400 per household figure is based on the cost of paying off $4 billion in bonds — but all the Clean Energy Act does is give the supervisors the ability to issue revenue bonds. Unlike typical general obligation bonds, the revenue bonds would not be backed by taxpayers, and would be repaid by the money the city would make selling retail electricity. And the only way the supervisors would move to take such a dramatic step as an eminent domain action to seize PG&E’s distribution system is if the figures show that the city can pay off the bonds without raising electric rates.

•<\!s>The act would give the supervisors a blank check to issue bonds without voter approval. Actually, it would just give the board the same authority the Port Commission and the Airport Commission already have — the ability to issue revenue bonds — just revenue bonds — to fund renewable energy and utility projects. If the projects make no sense economically, investors won’t buy the bonds anyway. So only well thought-out projects with a clear revenue stream are even possible. Lots of public agencies have this authority, and it’s rarely misused.

•<\!s>Electric rates would go up. Nonsense — every public power city in Northern California has lower electric rates than San Francisco. PG&E has some of the highest rates in the nation. Public power is always cheaper.

•<\!s>The city will lose $20 million in tax revenue. Yes, if the city were to take over PG&E’s distribution system, the city would no longer collect the tiny pittance it currently gets as a franchise fee. The fee is the lowest in the state and among the lowest in the nation (and is set in perpetuity). The revenue from a public power system would more than make up for that loss.

PG&E is terrified by this proposal, so nervous that it started a massive campaign months before the election. There will be more lies coming, most of them attempts to scare the voters into thinking that the Clean Energy Act is expensive and risky. We’ll debunk them as they come along. In the meantime, the supervisors ought to hold hearings on these issues, particularly the cost issue, and ask the Board of Equalization’s experts to come and testify — so that PG&E’s lies can be exposed to the broadest possible audience.

Extra! Extra! Exposing PG&E’s Big Lies

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

For connoisseurs of PG&E’s Big Lies in political campaigns, the company’s early massive carpet bombing against the Clean Energy Initiative is most revealing. They are panicked.

Most likely, PG&E will not attack the fundamental premise of the pioneering measure (after all, clean and renewable energy is in this year). But, as our editorial this week notes, PG&E’s theme is to try and scare voters into thinking that the Clean Energy Act is too risky and too expensive in these difficult times. (The last time out, PG&E just used the phrase “too risky, too costly.”)

And they use just plain Big Lies, repeated endlessly in mailers, ads, astroturf campaigns. The reason they often get away with the ads is that they spend millions of dollars to push them and the local media retails them allegro furioso and does little to correct them. and even, in the case of the San Francisco Chronicle, just leaves the initiative out of the news and has yet to do a decent story or insert the local clean initiative angle on their energy stories.
For example, take David Baker’s otherwise creditable front page story in the Saturday (Aug. 2) Chronicle, “”Utiliies To Miss Energy Deadline, PUC says providers are failing to harness 20% from sun, wind.”

Baker doesn’t says nothing about the initiative, which sets ambitious goals for renewable energy. He didn’t quote its sponsors (Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin). He didn’t talk to any of the campaign leaders (chair Julian Davis, the Sierra Club’s John Rizzo et al). He didn’t point out that other studies, including one for the California Energy Commission, gave higher marks to public utilities. Why did he ignore the hottest issue on the fall ballot that tied directly into his story? I put the question to him in an email. No answer.

The point: since the local mainstream media don’t correct PG&E’s Big Lies, we’ll do so on a regular basis. .
Let us know if you spot one we haven’t covered. On guard, B3

P.S. A Potrero Hill martini to Matthew S. Bajko, who corrected a PG&E whopper in the Bay Area Reporter blog.
He noted that PG&E got “glowing media coverage” for its $250,000 shareholder donation to the campaign to defeat Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ban on the November ballot. The news, he said, was “just the latest in a string of pink steps the company hs taken this summer.”

However, he reported that the pro-gay moves “strike some San Francisco officials as suspect, as the company is locked in a fierce battle with state and local officials over two similar clean energy bills on the fall ballot.”
Some are questioning “PG&E’s altruism in the marriage fight” to shield it from the company’s “homophobic smear campaign” this spring against openly gay Assemblyman Mark Leno in his successful primary victory and that PG&E was behind the mayor’s ouster of Susan Leal as general manager of the PUC.

And he did what Chronicle reporters have not done: called the Clean Energy Campaign for comment. Spokesperson Julian Davis had a good one, “I think addition to greenwashing, PG&E is engaged in gay washing.”

PG&E’s gaywashing

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Nice piece in the BAR by Matthew Bajko about PG&E’s efforts to make nice to the queer community — just as the company faces a huge battle over a Clean Energy Act that could lead to public power.

There’s no question that PG&E needs to do some work buffing its popularity in the LGBT community, particularly after funding a homophobic mailer attacking Assemblymember Mark Leno.

“I think in addition to greenwashing, PG&E is now engaged in gay-washing, given their inappropriate attacks on Assemblyman Mark Leno,” Davis told the Bay Area Reporter last week. “I think there is pretty resounding resentment in the gay community for PG&E’s tactics. It is kind of obvious they are trying now to court favor in a community they offended with their unsavory tactics.”

I think Leno has another good point: PG&E is going to spend maybe $10 million fighting the Clean Energy Act — and is giving all of $250,000 to support same-sex marriage:

“I would think our community might feel we have been significantly shorted by their $250,000 contribution,” said Leno.

We’ll see more of this — PG&E giving money to environmental groups, PG&E giving money to neighborhood groups and nonprofits, PG&E giving money to politicians …. whatever it takes to buy favor for a corrupt utility that can’t even make the basic state goals for renewable generation.

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