By Scott Steward
State leadership is about to let utilities gouge you. Three days before the end of the 2022 legislative session, legislators passed AB 205, a utility flat tax introduced by Newsom as a rider. The bill passed without public discussion.
Now, the CPUC is allowing utilities to hit four million ratepayers with a $24/month utility tax. The hardest hit will be those with a small energy footprint, working families and seniors living in apartments and small homes, as well as people with rooftop solar. (Find out more about the STOP THE UTILITY TAX here). (CALL TO ACTION, MAY 9TH IN SACRAMENTO).
The Utility Tax will add to the pain that these four million households are already feeling from never-ending rate hikes, which have increased by over 30% in California in the last two years.
The CPUC is letting the utilities increase taxes, electricity, and gas rates without a cap, which means the pain will only get worse in the years to come. The $24/month tax is just the start. Utilities have made it clear that they intend to raise the utility tax to $80 a month or more.
More than 250 nonprofit groups and 20 legislators supported AB 1999, which would have capped the Utility Tax at a sensible $10/month and pegged any increases to inflation. But Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas pulled the bill out of the Assembly Utility and Energy Commission (that had the votes to pass the bill).
The California coalition for AB 1999 has repeatedly argued that the CPUC's Utility Tax will raise bills for working people and seniors and has already pummeled solar and energy conservation businesses, once a California success story.
But Governor Newsom and Speaker Rivas chose to be utility mercenaries again and squashed the assembly bill before lawmakers could vote on it. Newsom and Rivas have been beholden to the utilities since they bailed out PG&E when PG&E went bankrupt after the Paradise fire. They had the public ownership option and instead used public money to bail out the utilities. Now, our reward is monopoly power, political graft, and a deliberate hit job on the flourishing renewable energy economy.
The California Senate has done no better. On their own volition, without the majority leader's influence, those lawmakers defeated a bill similar to AB 1999 that would have capped the Utility Tax (see how they voted on SB 1326). Dodd is on the Utilities and Energy Committee, and he voted SB 1326 down.
This fight is not over. The Legislature is in session through August and can pass laws to rein in the CPUC. The fact remains that four million households are going to be hurt by this Utility Tax and the outrage is sure to grow.
While we fight this, your city and County Climate Adaptation and Action Plans risk being undermined by contrived utility profit-driven inflation. Distributed renewable energy is more reliable and less profitable and for-profit utilities know it. Instead of acting on this reality, utilities have not made long-foreseen necessary investments in battery backup and grid network capacity that optimizes locally efficient and reliable power. Instead, they have spent $10 million dollars to fill state representative coffers and run campaigns to blame solar rooftops for the need to increase rates (this is part of a larger strategy to blame the solution to cover for-profit windfall and energy security negligence).
The utility-captured CPUC is holding its commissioner meeting in Sacramento on May 9th to "fix" the utility taxes and rates and hand over a windfall to the utilities. California's coalition of voter and equity groups is gathering next Thursday in Sacramento to let the CPUC know we are watching and to tell them you can't raise the basic cost of electricity by 250% for 4 million households.
Register for the event and get more information on the May 9th Sacramento demonstration against the UTILITY TAX https://www.stoptheutilitytax.org/may9
Call Your Senate Representative and Governor
CA Senator Bill Dodd (who is on the Utilities and Energy Committee) did vote NO on SB 1326. It was a vote not to reverse the utility windfall tax. You might let him know about this mistake and ask what his plans are to fix the situation.
Phone: (916) 651-4003
Governor Gavin Newsom: 916-445-2841
You might provide Newsom with the following:
Your public persona is that of a climate champion, but your continued support of the utilities reaping huge profits on the backs of ratepayers says otherwise. Your total disregard for ratepayers, who can no longer afford electricity and the democratic legislative process that has served California well for decades, is appalling.
Do the right thing and allow AB 1999 to be heard. We know you are behind AB1999 being denied a fair and open hearing. We vote and we will not forget.
Davisite 
Leave a comment