PG&E

PG&E’s $200,000 payment to Willie Brown?

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Is PG&E making payments to Willie Brown while he is writing a featured political column for the Chronicle/Hearst?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Earlier today, I sent the following questions to Hearst Corporate in New York, which owns the San Francisco Chronicle. I sent copies to
its Chronicle management and staff. Read my blog below for context, details, and my take on the difference between a real progressive and a PG&E progressive. I’ll keep you posted.

“PG&E has disclosed a $200,000 payment to Willie Brown for
‘consulting services’ for 2007 in its annual report to the California Public Utilities Commission. Now that Willie is doing a featured top-of-the-page political column each Sunday in the Chronicle, I’m curious if he is doing a Chronicle column while still providing ‘consulting services’ for PG&E?

“If so, d oes Hearst have an ethics policy that covers this apparent conflict? Would it at minimum require disclosure of PG&E payments to Willie in this year and previous years and what was the nature of these ‘consulting services?’ I would appreciate a comment. Thanks very much. B3

Click here to read my blog, PG&E and a Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal.

PG&E Lie of the Week

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The latest flyer from the No on H campaign, paid for by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., includes a world-class whopper: Public power, the utility says, will raise your electric rates.

"Your increased bill averaging over $400 is just the price of taking over PG&E," the flyer says.

Nonsense.

The $400 figure has no basis in fact; it’s just a large number PG&E ginned up. The truth is that public-power systems all over California offer lower rates than PG&E. According to a rate comparison put together by the American Public Power Association, Californians who buy their electricity from private companies pay an average of 15.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. Public power customers pay 10.9 cents.

Our own analysis several years ago showed that the city could buy out PG&E, cut electric rates 20 percent, and still run a surplus. (see www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=6634).

Prop. H requires the city to study whether public power would decrease the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and what the financial impacts would be. That study will almost certainly show that public power rates will be lower. Why do you think PG&E is spending so much money to stop it?

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 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?

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

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___

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:

Who is (and isn’t) taking cash from PG&E

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cash 082707.jpg

Besides dumping millions of dollars on influencing the outcomes of elections, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. also doles out a lot of cash to charities – about $18 million a year, which is around one percent of their pre-tax income. It’s a gift from the shareholders back to you, the community that’s making them rich.

The list of non-profits that get grants from PG&E is long and spreads from coast to coast, but most of them are based in and around San Francisco. It’s an interesting thing to look over, for it says a lot about who might have a soft spot for PG&E, and it reminds us of the perennial shills, like the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), which sends members to speak at public meetings against anything PG&E also opposes.

But I was a little surprised to see Brightline Defense Project make the list of grantees in 2007.

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."

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.

Questions for Gavin the Green

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Why did Mayor Newsom recently buckle three times to PG@E? How can he be a “green” mayor and a “green” gubernatorial candidate if he’s scared of PG@E?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last Saturday (July 26), out driving in my car, I was startled to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom on the Progressive Talk Radio Show Green 960 show. He was the host, interviewing Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame, and generally sweating away to appear clean and green, green, green, and green some more.
However, he greened over his recent classics in green self-immolation. So I sent him and the station some questions by email and then on to his press secretary Nathan Ballard. No answer as of blogtime almost a week later.

Dear Gavin,

I was interested to hear you this morning on the Progressive Talk Radio Green 960 program. I am curious to know why, as a purported “green” mayor and a purported “green” candidate for governor, and a “purported” radio host on a green 960 show, you have buckled twice recently to PG&E? The first time you buckled to PG&E and changed your position on the Potrero Hill peakers, allowing PG&E to continue to control the power plant and city energy policy.

The second was your quick and hard rejection of the clean energy initiative. How can you be a “green” mayor if you are buckling to PG&E on the big green issues? I will be posting the questions and answers on my Bruce blog at sfbg.com, so I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks, Bruce B. Brugmann, Guardian editor and publisher

P.S. 1:And now there is a third Newsom instance of buckling to PG@E: Newsom’s five PG@E-friendly appointments to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. None had any public power or community choice aggregation credentials. And Nora Vargas, director of the Latino Issues Forum, was not only considered PG@E friendly, but PG@E between 2004 and 2005 had given $150,000 as part of their community grantmaking.

More: Guillermo Rodriguez, former public relations flak for PG@E, is on the board of the forum (along with two other private private utility executives. Rodriguez left PG@E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which receives gobs of money from PG@E on a regular basis and in return provides “community services” for PG@E.

This, ladies and gentleman, is yet another example of how PG@E exerts its power and uses the mayor to subvert any real moves toward real clean and green power, such as the Clean Energy Initiative. PG@E has used this maneuver successfully for decades: they influence the mayor to make PG@E-friendly appointments to the PUC and then the PG@e-friendly appointees never put a pebble in the path of PG@E or raise serious questions about its illegal private power monopoly. So far, it’s always worked but a new day may be coming. On guard!

P.S. 2:Why doesn’t the station bring on people from the clean energy campaign? Why doesn’t it appear to allow call-in questions on the show (at least I didn’t hear any during my listening time?)

P.S. 3: Alert: Let us know of any PG@E astroturfing and greenwashing as the campaign goes along. PG@E is more worried than ever and it will be spending millions to try to convince San Francisco voters that clean green energy is not for San Francisco. Their propaganda line: leave the greening to PG@E and Gavin the Green. B3

Click here to hear the podcast of the Gavin Newsom Show from Saturday July 26th.

The best story in Guardian history

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Joe Neilands and Harold Ickes describe how PG&E has Hetch Hetchyed San Francisco for decades

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Le me add my own Best of selection to our splendid Best of issue this year. It;s a Guardian story with all the elements of great story: It has drama, intrigue, corruption, a cast of characters from John Muir to Hiram Johnson to Harold Ickes to Mayor Newsom, a classic battle between progressives and conservationists, a breathtaking theft of a major public asset by a private corporation, and a long sordid history that continues to this day in San Francisco.

Three years after my wife and I founded the Guardian in 1966, a UC-Berkeley professor by the name of J. B. Neilands came to our tiny Guardian office and offered me a big story. I quickly looked it over and said, Joe (he was known as Joe) this is an incredible story.

Why can’t you get it published in the Chronicle or the Examiner or another major news outlet? Why me? Why the Guardian?

“Nobody will touch it,” said, shaking his head sadly. “It’s too big a scandal. It’s up to you to publish it. If you don’t publish it, nobody else will.”

And so started the saga of what we came to call the PG@E/Raker Act Scandal, the biggest urban scandal in American history. Joe had buried the lead and put some professorese but he had done the research, he had nailed the story and the culprits, and all it needed was some editing, which I was happy to do. Joe and the Guardian had an astounding scoop which no other local paper would publish then and few publish to this day.

The story appeared in our March 27, l969 edition under the fold on the front page. And we have followed it up through the years with literally hundreds of stories, editorials, cartoons, graphics, and charts. . Virtually everyone who worked in Guardian editorial has covered or researched a piece of this story.

The head: “How PG@E robs S.Fl of cheap power”

The lead: “A few months before he died last year, Frank Havenner sat up in his bed in a nursing home in San Francisco and told me of how the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. swindled San Francisco out of hundreds of millions of dollars of cheap hydroelectric power.

“The story was incredible: PG&E and its political allies had defeated eight successive bond issues to establish a municipal electric system in San Francisco and grant city residents and businesses the benefit of low cost power produced by the city’s Hetch Hetchy water system in the Sierra.

“The result: San Francisco has paid through the nose to PG&E for its power and the city loses about $30 million a year in profits it would get from a public system.”

The key quote: Joe research turned up a magnificent phrase used by then U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in 1944 in support of a city bond issue to buy out PG@E. Said Ickes: “The disgraceful history of the handling of Hetch Hetchy power should place a new verb in the lexicon of political chicanery: ‘To Hetch Hetchy’ means to confuse and confound the public by adroit acts and deceptive words in order to turn to private corporate profit a trust set up for the people.”

“I need not repeat the scandalous story thas has given birth to this new verb, but I would remind you that the last chapter of it has not been written. The pledge that the people of San Francisco, with full knowledge, made to their government has not yet been redeemed.” Ickes was making the point that San Francisco was in violation of the public power mandates in the federal Raker Act that and he had sued the city in federal court to force the city to bring its Hetch Hetchy public power to establish a public power system in San Francisco. .

A key Examiner editorial quote: Joe even found the Examiner, then a strong supporter of the dam and public power, stating that “It is a wrongful and shameful policy for a grant of water and power privilege in the Yosemite National Park Area to be developed at the expenditure of $50 million by the taxpayers of San Francisco, only to have its greatest financial and economic asset, the hydroelectric power, diverted to private corporation hands at the instant of completion; to the great benefit of said corporation, and at an annual deficit to the city of San Francisco.” (The Examiner of William Randolph Hearst was of course referring to PG&E. Hearst later switched sides, as a result of getting a chunk of money from a PG@E-controlled bank, but that is another story that a Hearst biographer and the Guardian have previously disclosed.)

Joe asked James Carr, then San Francisco’s general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
when the city would enforce the Raker Act. Carr replied to Joe, in a letter 5l years after the Raker Act passed as the Magna Carta of public power, that it was ‘premature to discuss municipal distribution of power in San Francisco.'” Joe concluded: “In March, 1969, it still is.”

Well, in July of 2008, according to PG&E and Mayor Newsom,
it still is.

Click here to read the original Joe Neilands Guardian story on the PG&E/ Raker Act scandal.

PG&E’s PUC appointee

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The Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors voted Monday to forward the appointment of Nora Vargas to the SF Public Utilities Commission, without recommendation. The three supervisors on the committee (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty) all expressed concern that Vargas’ lack of experience with local politics and public utilities issues might be a setback should she fill the seat.

Vargas is director of Latino Issues Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, with offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. LIF works on healthcare reform, educational issues, and consumer rights for immigrants and Latino populations. Vargas would fill the ratepayer advocate seat on the PUC.

Vargas, when questioned by the Rules Committee, said she felt confident of her ability to act independently of her appointing authority, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and that she would put ratepayers and consumers first. When asked if she’d be able to push back against powerful entities like Pacific Gas and Electric, which takes an active interest in many things the SFPUC control, Vargas cited her experience advocating on behalf of ratepayers at the California Public Utilities Commission.

We know PG&E likes to spread their money and influence throughout the city. In this case, between 2004 and 2006, PG&E has given $150,000 to Latino Issues Forum, as part of their community grantmaking.

This is the same kind of giving that would presumably end should San Francisco voters approve the Clean Energy Act this November. “We no longer will be contributing to San Francisco’s non-profits and service organizations,” PG&E’s Brandon Hernandez told a June 27 meeting of the Rule Committee, at which they voted to put the Clean Energy Act on the November ballot. The measure calls for San Francisco to move toward 100 percent clean and renewable energy, possibly through public construction and ownership, thus putting PG&E out of business in this city.

Additionally, Guillermo Rodriguez, Jr., former public relations flak for PG&E, is on the board of Latino Issues Forum (along with two other private utility executives.) Rodriguez left PG&E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which also receives lots and lots of PG&E’s money on a regular basis.

Vargas’ appointment to the SFPUC is up for approval by the full Board of Supervisors at today’s meeting, along with Newsom’s four other appointments – Ann Moller Caen, FX Crowley, Francesca Vietor, and Dick Sklar. Sklar, at the last PUC meeting, withdrew his candidacy for the seat.

Summing up SF’s historic rally for clean energy

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By Bruce B. Brugmann and Janna Brancolini (Scroll down for Jean Dibble’s photo essay of the rally and comments by the speakers)

It was a historic rally Tuesday on the City Hall steps to kick off the third initiative aimed at bringing clean energy and public power to San Francisco.

As our photo essay shows, there was a formidable and diverse array of politicians and environmental and social justice organizations lined up with their signs and speeches to support the measure.

Five supervisors, including the board president, spoke at the rally (Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano, Bevin Dufty, and Gerardo Sandoval) and then went into a board meeting in City Hall and hours later voted with two other colleagues (Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly) to put the pioneering initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The vote was 7-4, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michaela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Jake McGoldrick voting against. The rally and the vote were cannon shots heard round the city, the state, and the nation.

Susan Leal, former general manager of the SF Public Utilities Commission, made her first public appearance since her dismissal by Mayor Newsom, at the urging of PG&E, for her moves toward public power. The Sierra Club, which fought the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park a century ago and still wants to tear the dam down, was standing tall with the group (John Rizzo).

All in all, it was one of the most impressive starts to a tough initiative campaign that i have seen in 42 years of covering City Hall for the Guardian. More: having covered the clean energy/public power beat since l969 and our first expose of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, I think this initiative and this emerging campaign has an excellent chance of winning in November. Remember: when the public power movement revved up in the late l990s, it faced a PG&E-friendly mayor (Willie Brown), a PG&E friendly City Attorney (Louise Renne, whose husband worked for a downtown law firm getting big PG&E money) and a PG&E-friendly Board of Supervisors (only Tom Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman were pro-public power) and had to go around City Hall by going the route of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) ala the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (MUD). This time around, the board turned against PG&E and the city attorney’s office drafted the initiative for the board president and an emerging mayoral candidate.

The November ballot is filled with the juicy issues that bring out the voters: Obama, seven supervisorial races, and a raft of good initiatives aimed at dealing with major city problems (an affordable housing plan, two new tax plans focused on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, a big bond act to rebuild San Francisco General hospital, and the green energy and public power plan.) This time around, clean energy and public power are in the news and the media carried the story widely. PG&E is more worried than ever before and is already launched an early carpet bombing campaign and setting up astroturf and greenwashing operations allegro furioso. And their operatives are out and about and lurking everywhere. On guard!

The Jean Dibble photo essay

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Julian Davis, campaign chair, leads off the event and introduces the speakers.
The group stretching across the steps from left to right: representatives from the SF Green Party, the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash Network, the Sierra Club, Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, Julian Davis of San Francisco Tomorrow, John Rizzo of the Sierra Club (speaking), Mirkarimi,
Sierra Club, Green Action, Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash, League of Young/Pissed Off Voters, more Sierra Club, Global Exchange, Power Vote, and League of Young Voters. (Not pictured in this photo were some l5 people from ACORN.

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Another overview of the group with Davis at the microphone.

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Assemblyman Mark Leno: “Jimmy Carter predicted 30 years ago that by 2000 we could be down from 40 per cent dependence on foreign oil to 20 per cent dependence. We didn’t listen. Instead we were up to 60 per cent by 2000 and now we’re pushing 70 per cent…This measure will take our fate out of PG&E’s hands and put it into the hands of our communities, who have a profound stake in providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasononably priced electric services.”

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Former PUC General Manager Susan Leal: “This initiative is about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their ratepayers…It’s 167 miles (from San Francisco) to Hetch Hetchy (valley.). The first 140 miles of movement is cheaper than the last 27 miles because PG&E controls it. There’s an economic piece and an environmental piece. We have the technology–geothermal and solar trough. How are you going to move that power? We aren’t going to be able to make it (financially) because PG&E jacks up the rates on the last 27 miles. In 20l5 they’re jacking them up again…this is taking back what is ours.”

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Sup. Ross Mikarimi, co-author of the initiative: “This is not a ‘hostile’ take over,”he said. This is a “meaured way to make the city l00 per cent green and clean in 20 years. This act mandates a feasibility study on how we can provide green and clean energy…otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

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Sup. Aaron Peskin, board president and co-author of the measure: “It’s a very profound thought. This is a time when people (and San Francisco) can change the destiny of the planet…As goes San Francisco, so goes California. As goes California, so goes the nation.”

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Sup. Tom Ammiano, author of two previous public power initiatives: “This issue has a sordid history….500 missing ballots (in the first election), where did they go? …It involves environmental justice. Some have called the (green movement) the Queenhouse effect.” He then said PG&E is avaricious, immoral, and takes homophobic measures. “It wants to shoot the messenger.” He concluded, “This is our time. We’re going to win. We’ll keep the lights on for years.”

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Sup. Bevin Dufty: PG&E’s utility undergrounding system is “an example of PG&E mismanaging things.” He said people in his district were without electricity for 24-48 hours. “This is a referendum for change.”

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Sup. Gerardo Sandoval: “As we’re leaving office, a lot of us want this to be our crown jewel. ..Government works. Government works well because government is better able to assume risk. There is still a lot of risk in renewwable energy, investments, and so on. The private industry is not going to take that risk. It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.”

10.jpg
Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, said that children in our schools were affected by the ramifications of PG&E’s monopoly.

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John Rizzo of the Sierra Club: “(Al) Gore said the future of civilization is at stake. Gore’s challenge is a moral one–one that we’ve embraced in San Francisco.” He said that “renewable energy and the green movement will change the world’s economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

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Another overview photo.

13.jpg
Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters: She warned of PG&Es propaganda campaign claiming to be green. “Take a step back and think about where they’re investing. PG&E is not investing one dollar in renewable energy beyond state mandates and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.
PG&E is one per cent solar, one per cent wind, and 98 per cent hot air.”

Nicholas Perez, my l4-year-old grandson from Santa Barbara, attended the rally with his dog Charlie.
Early on, as the speakers warmed up on PG&E, Charley summed up PG&E’s position eloquently. He made a timely deposit on the sidewalk in front of the rally. (Nicholas cleaned it up quickly.) Much more to come,

B3, still watching the fumes from the Potrero Hill power plant from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill, courtesy of PG&E and Mayor Gavin Newsom

P.S. Incidental question: how can Newsom pretend to be the “green” mayor and be the “green” candidate for governor when he buckles under to PG&E so ignominously? He’s buckled twice to PG&E, first by flip flopping on the Potrero Hill peakers, then on coming out so strong and so quickly against the Clean Energy Act initiative.
Brugmann’s Law: you can’t be a “green” mayor or a “green” anything if you knuckle under to PG&E on the big green issues.

P.S.: A tip of the Potrero Hill martini glass to the seven supervisors who defied PG&E and voted for clean energy: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Bevin Dufty, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval. Sophie Maxwell, and Chris Daly.
The opposition four will be known from now on as the PG&E Four (Sean Elsbernd, Carmine Chu, Michaela Alioto-Pier, and (gulp) Jack McGoldrick). Jake? Jake? What happened to you? Can you please explain? It’s not too late to change your position.

What the candidates need to tell us

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EDITORIAL The traditional kick-off date for fall campaigns is Labor Day, but in San Francisco, the candidates for supervisor have been in full campaign mode for months now, and some of the races are beginning to take shape. As political groups start making endorsements, it’s worth looking at what’s at stake here — and what the candidates ought to be talking about.

For starters, it’s going to be a crowded fall ballot, and there’s the potential for a broad progressive coalition to come together around a clear agenda for the future. Among the proposals headed for the ballot are an affordable housing plan, a green energy and public power measure, two new tax plans that focus on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, and a huge bond act to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital. All of the progressive candidates should be backing those measures and working together for their passage.

But the candidates also need to offer long-term solutions to the serious problems facing San Francisco. This is a city under enormous pressure, and unless some dramatic policy changes take place, San Francisco will continue its rapid slide toward becoming a city of and for the very rich.

A few items that ought to be on every progressive candidate’s platform:

•<\!s>The city’s energy future. The fall ballot measure, the Clean Energy Act, will lay the groundwork for a sustainable local energy policy, although the supervisors will have to aggressively push the key element: creating a city-run electric utility. As long as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. controls the local grid, San Francisco will never meet its environmental goals. Rates will remain high, conservation will be an afterthought, and PG&E will resist any type of renewable program it doesn’t control. The candidates need to make clear that they’re committed to a full-scale public power system and tell us how they will move the goals of the Clean Energy Act forward.

•<\!s>The housing crisis. San Francisco’s housing policy today is utter insanity. If it continues, the city in 10 years will look nothing like it does now. The middle class will be gone. Families with kids will be a vanishing species. Tens of thousands of people who work in this city — and keep its economy going — will be forced to live far away. Fancy new towers filled with millionaires will destroy entire neighborhoods and displace the city’s remaining blue-collar jobs.

The affordable housing ballot measure is a good first step, but much more is needed. Solutions aren’t easy, but they start with one premise: the city doesn’t need any more housing for the rich. Affordable-housing programs that set aside, say, 20 percent of new units for non-millionaires are a losing game because they accept as reality the prospect of a city where 80 percent of the residents are millionaires.

San Francisco needs a comprehensive policy that forces the city to meet its General Plan goals, which call for 64 percent of all new housing to be available at below-market rates. We need to hear how the candidates would make that happen.

**The structural budget deficit. San Francisco is a wealthy city, but there’s never enough money in the budget for the level of services residents want and need. With the exception of the rare boom years, the city has always had a revenue shortfall. Sup. Aaron Peskin’s two tax measures could bring in another $50 million per year — no chump change by any means. But the city needs about $200 million more per year to make the numbers balance. The candidates need to talk about where that will come from.

**The Muni meltdown. You can’t have a transit-first policy without effective transit, and Muni’s in trouble. Budget cuts are a big part of the problem, but the city needs a modern transit program — and that’s barely even on the drawing board. How are the candidates going to fix one of the city’s most important services? Will the candidates support the long-overdue completion of the city’s bicycle network and other bold efforts to decrease reliance on the automobile?

**The war on fun. As the city gets richer, it gets more uptight. Street fairs are under attack. Clubs are facing police crackdowns. Permit fees and red tape are making it almost impossible to hold events in Golden Gate Park. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has a ballot measure to make some of the permitting easier, but what are the candidates going to do to end the Gavin Newsom–era attack on arts and entertainment?

There’s much more: The police aren’t solving homicides. Small businesses feel utterly ignored by City Hall. The Planning Department is run by developers. The list goes on. And the next Board of Supervisors will need to address all those issues. Over the next few months, the candidates that want the progressive vote need to give us some clear explanations of where they stand.

Ammiano: PG&E opposes queen energy

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

PG&E joins the right wing on opposition to queen energy. Forget it.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano.) B3

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Back in 2001, San Francisco came within 500 votes of approving a public power system in an election marred by lingering evidence of fraud. Ballot boxes were removed from the Department of Elections (under a bizarre, never-documented threat of anthrax poisoning) and box tops were later found floating in the bay. I still think we actually won that election. And it’s hard to see how we could have done it without organized labor.

The Central Labor Council backed public power. Service Employees International Union Local 790 poured resources into it. The labor-environmental coalition that came together around building a city-run system that would rely on clean energy was unprecedented.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. knows this. That’s why the company is trying mightily to keep labor from backing this year’s Clean Energy Act. And at the center of that battle is Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief political consultant and close advisor, Eric Jaye.

The Clean Energy Act, as we point out on page 5, would give the city control of its energy future and put San Francisco at the forefront of national efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It also opens the door to public power — and Jaye has been hired by PG&E to try to keep the supervisors from putting it on the ballot, and to defeat it if they do.

He has a powerful weapon to use: labor’s determination to pass a giant bond act to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital.

A billion-dollar bond act is a tough sell, and harder still during a recession. Labor is also making a big push for progressive supervisorial candidates in Districts 1, 3, and 11. And the labor council director, Tim Paulson, tells me that he really wants to keep the city’s disparate and sometimes fractious labor unions united around those goals.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, PG&E’s union, will oppose any public power measure, any time, no matter what it says, and IBEW walked out of the labor council in 2001 over the issue. Now Jaye is telling labor people that the Clean Energy Act (and other issues that are "crowding" the ballot) may undermine public support for the hospital bond. "I have an early poll showing that these other measures have a negative impact on the hospital," Jaye told me. "I have been pointing to that fact and asking if we really need to do [the Clean Energy Act] this year."

John Whitehurst, who is running the SF General bond campaign, says his polls show that there was no correlation between an affordable housing set-aside measure and the hospital bonds, and presumably the same is true of the Clean Energy Act. On the other hand, he says, "if Jaye runs a campaign that says ‘Gee, the city can’t do anything right,’ it could create problems for the hospital measure."

Would Eric Jaye threaten the SF General bonds (which his client, Gavin Newsom, strongly backs) to keep labor from backing public power? He insisted to me that he would never do that, and that he and the mayor fully back the bonds. But PG&E, I think, cares nothing about the hospital — or the city — and will do whatever it can to scuttle this measure.

So will labor be intimidated by the threat of divisiveness (from the IBEW) and the political scare tactics from PG&E — or will labor leaders tell the mayor to knock it off?

Newsom and the Clean Energy Act

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EDITORIAL A progressive measure that would make San Francisco one of the greenest cities in the nation will be on the ballot this fall. It’s designed to lower energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote green-collar jobs. It has all the elements that Mayor Gavin Newsom has been talking about in his high-profile speeches, press conferences, and celebrity appearances. It’s a perfect vehicle for a mayor who wants to stand out as a candidate for governor of California. It has the backing of some of Newsom’s close allies, like state Sen. Mark Leno.

That’s why Newsom ought to support the Clean Energy Act.

The charter amendment, sponsored by Sups. Aaron Peskin and Ross Mirkarimi, seeks to make San Francisco more energy independent. It sets ambitious goals for renewable energy and would put the city on track to create its own public power system. It’s not a radical measure — in fact, it’s milder than we would have liked. It doesn’t mandate an immediate takeover of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s facilities. It doesn’t turn the Public Utilities Commission into an elected body. And no matter what lies PG&E puts out, it won’t raise electric rates or cost the taxpayers money.

It does, however, mandate that the PUC look at the best ways to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city comes from renewable resources. By 2040, that number should be 100 percent. And the evidence from across the nation shows that the best way to promote renewable energy is to shift from private control of utilities to public power.

Again, that’s hardly a radical notion: more than 2,000 cities in the United States have public power. Palo Alto is among them; so are Alameda and Santa Clara. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides reliable service to Sacramento County at rates 30 percent below what PG&E charges customers in adjoining areas — and SMUD has one of the best records in the nation for promoting conservation and renewable energy.

Of course, the very existence of any sort of plan to consider energy alternatives for San Francisco seems to terrify PG&E. Already the giant private utility is pulling political strings and retailing outrageous lies to try to scare the supervisors away from placing the charter amendment on the ballot. And we expect to see a savage, multimillion-dollar campaign against the measure this fall.

That’s because PG&E wants no hint of competition, no chance that the city might actually consider the benefits of public power. It’s no secret why. When you look at the facts, compare how public and private systems have fared in the past decade, and line up the financial figures and the prospects for sustainable energy policies, public power wins.

The biggest misinformation PG&E is putting out these days involves the cost of creating and running a public power system in San Francisco. The company is throwing out numbers like $4 billion, and suggesting that the taxpayers would be on the hook for all of it if the city tried to take over the company’s system.

For starters, there’s nothing in the Clean Energy Act that requires a takeover. It might turn out to be more prudent, for example, to slowly build a new city-owned infrastructure. More important, if the city did decide to buy out PG&E’s wires, poles, and meters, the cost would be nowhere near what the company is claiming.

How much is the system really worth? Well, one way to find out is to check the assessed value, the figure the state uses for property-tax purposes. And as Amanda Witherell reported July 2 (see "The dirty fight over clean power"), the state says all of PG&E’s property within San Francisco city limits is worth only $1.2 billion — and that includes the company’s downtown office complex, which is worth at least several hundred million. So the actual cost of the system might wind up at less than a quarter of what PG&E claims.

And none of that money — none — would come from taxpayers. The PUC could issue only revenue bonds, backed by future electricity sales, to finance any buyout or construction. No tax money would ever be in play. And our past analyses have consistently shown that the city could buy out PG&E’s system, cut electric rates, and still wind up with a sizable surplus every year.

Newsom is aware of all of this, and has said that he’s willing to consider supporting public power. Now there’s a measure heading for the ballot that would also mesh with all of the mayor’s environmental goals. The only argument against it is that PG&E — in the past a backer of the mayor — doesn’t want it to pass.

Newsom needs to support the Clean Energy Act. If he doesn’t, it will demonstrate that he lacks the backbone to stand up to special interests — and has no business running for governor of this state.

A kickoff press conference on the Clean Energy Act will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 22 on the steps of City Hall.

Don’t kill the peakers — yet

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A GUARDIAN EDITORIAL

The supervisors are meeting a day late this week, thanks to the San Francisco Examiner’s screw-up, which means that a key vote on the city-owned combustion turbines, or peakers, will probably come Wednesday, July 16. The mayor, with some environmental backing, wants the board to kill the city peakers and leave Mirant Corp, a private power company, with the responsibility of generating extra electricity in San Francisco during peak use periods. That’s the worst possible scenario.

We recognize the contradictions inherent in any city plan to construct new fossil-fuel generation plants. San Francisco ought to be moving away from any energy solution that increases carbon emissions, and if the city wants to simply ban any facilities that burn anything to generate electricity, we would by sympathetic.
But that’s not the choice here. The mayor (and Pacific Gas and Electric Company) want to continue using natural-gas-fired turbines to generate electricity in southeast San Francisco. They just want a private company, not a public agency, running the plants.

And we’ve seen no legally binding, written guarantee that Mirant will close its big, polluting Unit 3 under the deal.
There’s some dispute about whether Mirant will operate cleaner peakers than the city, but there’s no dispute about the fact that a private company will be far less accountable than a city department that will soon by run by commissioners who must be approved by the supervisors. And if the city kills the peakers, it will have no leverage at all over what Mirant might be required to do.

The supervisors need to leave their options open here and hold off on killing the public-power peaker plan until the public can see, review, and participate in hearings on binding agreements for the future of Mirant’s plant. As Potrero Hill activist Tony Kelly, who has been working on this issue for years, put it in an email to us:
“I have to emphasize that a vote in favor of the CTs tomorrow doesn’t have to lock the city into the CTs; there’s already an amendment to the ordinances giving the city an out in case another program (Mirant retrofit, or transmission only) turns out to be better. However, if tomorrow’s ordinances fail, or are tabled, then the CTs go away as an option. That’s the problem.

Because it really looks like the PUC will formally rescind the public CTs next Tuesday, in their last act of defiance and corruption; and that will kill the public CTs, and then Mirant holds all the cards to do whatever it wants to do from then on.”

Again: We’re open to a solution that involves neither the city-run peakers nor Mirant. But we’ve been around long enough to know that when the mayor, PG&E and a private power-plant owner are mucking around with energy policy, you have to be very, very careful before you trust what comes out of the discussion. We don’t trust Mirant for a second, and the supervisors shouldn’t give up the city’s leverage too early.

Mirant plant staying open?

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San Francisco’s proposal to install several combustion turbines, or “peaker” plants, in the southeast neighborhoods has created a firestorm of protest, particularly from environmentalists who don’t want the city building any new fossil-fuel plants.

I get that. I also know that PG&E has its dirty little fingers in the public-policy pie. And that makes it more complicated.

The lastest proposal, which comes out of the mayor’s office, calls for Mirant Corp. to retrofit its own peakers, clean them up, run them on natural gas, and put that power into the grid so the city doesn’t have to build its own plants. The argument is that Mirant’s peakers would be cleaner than the city’s, and might run less often.

I’ve always thought that leaving Mirant in control is a terrible idea. If we want to tell the state that we aren’t going to build any new fossil-fuel plants, then let’s stick to it, and rely entirely on renewables (at the possible risk of brownouts in high-use periods). But I don’t trust Mirant for a second — and I don’t think the mayor has any legal guarantee that Mirant will do what it says it will.

All that said, I got an interesting communication this weekend from Joe Boss, who’s a Potrero Hill activist. He and Tony Kelly are worried that the Mayor and Mirant will wind up creating the worst possible scenario: The big Mirant plant, with its smokestack and pollution, will continue to operate for the forseeable future.

It’s admittedly a bit of a speculative scenario, and a lot of things would have to go wrong for it to happen. (Among other things, Mirant, which loses its permit to use Bay water for cooling at the end of this year, would have to invest in a big new air-cooling system.) But it’s worth putting out there as the supervisors prepared to decide on the fate of the city peakers.

You can read Boss’s perpective after the jump.

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