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The California Public Utilities Commission has long had a reputation for being far too chummy with the giant investor-owned electrical utilities it regulates — as well as being hostile to lawmakers, activists and journalists trying to understand its decision-making process. But that’s not how the CPUC sees it. In response to a critical Aug. 10 piece on the CPUC by The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, a communications aide to commission President Michael Picker sent an email saying the CPUC was different now than it had been under President Michael Peevey, who left office under a cloud in 2014.
Refreshingly, an email exchange led Picker to agree to meet with the editorial board on Aug. 29. While we appreciated the visit — and the candor that Picker showed in describing the structural reasons why his agency seems so slow-moving and mysterious to outsiders — he wasn’t able to shake our concern that his agency can’t be trusted. That’s not because of a Peevey hangover. It’s because of what’s happened since Picker took over in 2015.
This is exemplified by the agency’s response to the San Onofre nuclear plant scandal under Picker. In 2014, the CPUC approved a plan to assign $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion cost of shuttering the broken plant to the ratepayers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, which jointly own it. A year later, the Union-Tribune revealed that Peevey secretly crafted the deal in an unreported meeting with an Edison executive in Poland in 2013. This led to Edison being fined $16.7 million, the deal being revised, and criminal investigations of Peevey.
It also led the CPUC to request and receive $6 million from the Legislature in 2016 so the agency “can cooperate” with the criminal probes by hiring private attorneys. Documents unsealed by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in 2017 showed the CPUC instead sought to obstruct the probe, fighting the execution of search warrants. A judge blasted the agency’s “inequitable conduct” and said it had not honored a promise to work with investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office.
That was, simply put, an outrageous display of bad faith by a government agency — one that compounded the mistakes of Peevey and Edison. But Picker doesn’t agree. When asked repeatedly about this bad faith, he offered several versions of this statement: “I have to listen to what my attorneys tell me is proper for the courts and particularly when it’s an investigation of the agency. I don’t get to make those kinds of decisions. That’s a legal matter.”
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This is the leader of the CPUC saying there’s nothing he can do about his agency’s deceit toward both the Legislature and the attorney general because those responsible were agency lawyers.
Picker also questioned the accuracy of news coverage that faulted the CPUC’s failure to follow up on wildfire safety rules and the dubiousness of its 2015 sanctions against Pacific Gas & Electric over the 2009 San Bruno disaster, saying, “the news industry is in decline and it’s sad that reporters have to work hard and they don’t always have time to truly understand these massive documents that we prepare.”
The fact Picker met with us shows he is an improvement on Peevey. This quote alone was a revelation: “We are an antiquated body that uses a forum of rulemaking and decision making that is not something people are used to, and I think that is a problem. People will probably always have doubts.”
And he doesn’t plan on defending the CPUC forever. When asked if he’d seek another six-year term, he colorfully said, “No (expletive) way.”
His whole interview is worth reading at sdut.us/picker. It offers insights into him — and how he still circles the wagons to protect an agency that deserves its bad reputation. Trust the CPUC? Not yet.
Mr. Picker was already an apologist for Governor Brown before he showed up at the CPUC. Also, Governor Brown's brother-in-law was a senior attorney at PG&E until his retirement. The next governor ought to clean that Commission out, but like our government in DC, it is a swamp. Don't expect Newson to do it.
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Mr. Picker was already an apologist for Governor Brown before he showed up at the CPUC. Also, Governor Brown's brother-in-law was a senior attorney at PG&E until his retirement. The next governor ought to clean that Commission out, but like our government in DC, it is a swamp. Don't expect Newson to do it.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.