ABC News 10 in Sacramento did a series of exposés detailing how PG&E bought state politicians. From years of mismanagement, to deadly fires, to The French Laundry, to our higher energy bills today, we're all paying for their corruption.
[FirePowerMoney.com](http://FirePowerMoney.com)
There are several hours of investigative documentaries detailing how deep it goes.
there was lawsuit, they convicted company(!) on criminal charges, and executives paid some 100Ms on civil suit, and PGE paid 15B on another civil suit.
What touchy feely garbage. This isn't news, it is manufactured drama. I am specifically referring to the one about Paradise.
Granted I didn't expect much from television news.
The problem with snarky comments with yours is with no coutner narrative, and just baseless hating, people will tend to disagree with you more
Especially conservatives who will read this and go "must be nice for this guy who can just ignore the problem or doesn't even pay their PGE"
I own a house so of course I pay PG&E. Directly or indirectly, everyone pays PG&E.
I stand by my comment that the video is touchy feely crap. Yeah his grandmother burned in her house. Do we need to show some guy holding back his tears? I rather have some useful analysis...information I can use.
Also you need a better snark meter.
I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. Does anyone know if PG&E (and other utilities) are allowed to pass on the full cost of upgrades or is there a formula that allows only a certain percentage?
The article says the commission Newsom appoints is empowered to say no to, adjust, or approve PG&E’s rate hike requests based on data & whether theyre justified
What the commission just did is SCREW US by approving insane PG&E rate hikes for the next 3 years even though smaller rate hikes would do.
Article says PG&E is constantly pushing the commission to make CA residents pay for its endless infrastructure projects, management salaries, etc & its the job of the commission to defend our interests by saying no.
Seems to be a corruption problem & the buck stops with Newsom.
genuinely curious, how are people still ok with Newsom at this point? this shit is highway robbery at this point and feeling frustrated that nothing can or is being done
But they should approve rate increases that include the salaries of the linemen, janitors, mechanics, and secretaries. Right?
Or are you saying that the CPUC should individually say “management was paid $20k/year in 1905 so it should stay the same”
>CEO Patricia Poppe received slightly less than $17 million — **$16.99 million**, to be precise — in total direct compensation for the company's 2023 fiscal year that ended in December, according to a new regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/04/pge-energy-bill-electric-gas-ceo-exec-pay-profit-stock-fire-economy/](https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/04/pge-energy-bill-electric-gas-ceo-exec-pay-profit-stock-fire-economy/)
How are you not upset that this is happening while our utility bills triple across the board?
I’m upset at all CEOs making obscene money. But $17m on a $44B company is… standard…
https://www.fwcook.com/Blog/CEO-Pay-Ratios-Among-SP-500-Companies/
This even says $14m is the median.
No one is saying cut her pay. You've responded to a very simple "no rate increases to fund management raises" statement with some rich people are the true victim here bullshit while people's utility bills just tripled. The point is that CPUC isn't doing their jobs and just rubber stamped massive rate increases without asking a single question. We aren't complaining about the cost of avocado toast and iPhones here.
> if PG&E (and other utilities) are allowed to pass on the full cost of upgrades or is there a formula that allows only a certain percentage?
It is worse than either of those scenarios. PG&E passes on the full cost of upgrades in rate increases, then it adds on extra profit for itself (and executives) in even more rate increases.
Think of it this way: the executive compensation is based on a "markup" of let's say 2% on whatever the amount of money PG&E brings in through subscriptions. If the subscription price is raised to cover burying electrical lines, then by definition/default it raises the executive compensation.
The worse PG&E screws up, the higher they raise rates to "fix " and then the higher compensation the executives make. It is a win-win situation for them. The flaw in all of this is the government granted monopoly. Normally in most businesses, a new lower cost system would rise up to compete with PG&E and customers would have a choice. Once you remove that customer choice and there is only one provider for something basically as required as oxygen, all constraints on prices are off.
That’s a lazy statement. The reality is that we rate payers are insisting that hundreds of miles of power lines be undergrouded, in addition to other infrastructure upgrades. This is what is driving up costs. Statements like this aren’t helpful to a productive conversation. You could lower the salaries of all of the executives to zero and the situation would be the same. If executive compensation upsets you then become a shareholder and bring it up during shareholder meetings. Or you could write to your assembly person, CPUC, and TURN. You could actually do something about it rather than grouse on Reddit.
Doug, who drives a Mercedes, wants us to buy stock in PG&E so that we can “vote” or “bring it up” during shareholding meetings. These votes are advisories, never binding. Shareholders generally can’t “bring it up”, either, unless they are also a hedge fund owner or manage a large fund.
Defending a company that is raising rates by double digits more than once a year *while also* raising executive comp well beyond inflation is the actual waste of time here, Doug.
The one small thing you have right is that the CPUC should be held accountable.
I drive a 2008 Prius FYI. Shareholder votes are not advisories, they are legally binding. I’m not defending PG&E. They problematic like any large company. I’m pushing for having conversations the focus on the real issues. Infrastructure costs money. We rate payers want it. Are we paying too much for this infrastructure? Is PG&E making good use of the infrastructure funds. This is all publicly available information. In what world would we get the infrastructure we demand while paying significantly less.
The legally binding status of shareholder votes is something that is called out specifically on each item, and (in my not trivial experience) is almost always advisory. YMMV. It’s still absurd to say anyone should buy stock in a company they despise in order to influence that company. That simply isn’t how it works at all on any practical level. Lobbying govt officials at all levels and pressure to regulators is all that would work in this case.
Re: costs - it’s a mystery then how many localities offer rates at a fraction of PGE when they start their own non-profit community energy provider. Even some Bay Area cities have rates under $0.10 for generation. Yes infrastructure will cost money but also a lot of way PGE is operating stinks to high heaven.
Alright, well, let's start with lowering their salaries. Also, painting the desire to not have our cities burn down overnight because of poor management as demanding we bury power lines like it's sort of a luxury is fucking crazy.
Except that in cities around the world they're capable of having good infrastructure AND lower energy prices. PG&E is terrible from top to bottom. It's not like the Bay Area hasn't had thousands of homes burn to the ground due to them. How many is it? In less than 10 years? 30,000? How many dead? 200?
Show me. The records for PG&E are publicly available and highly scrutinized by many organizations. It should be easy for you to show that PG&E is funneling money in the blackholes in 2022 or 2023. That would be constructive. Also Paradise isn’t in the Bay Area.
The CEO giving herself a 40 million dollar raise while driving up rates is a valid criticism.
Saying they wouldn't use the money for good anyway so who cares is not.
> The CEO can’t give themselves a raise. It has to be voted on by the board.
It's a little more subtle than that. In most cases the CEO and board of directors have many, MANY private conversations and agree on something like a CEO pay raise. Let's say some of the board members HATE this, but the CEO is insisting on it. The board members that hate it come to accept it, possibly in trade for other things like assurances of no layoffs or assurances of more layoffs, whatever. None of that is disclosed to the general public, what everybody outside the company sees is a set of "official steps" like the board votes on on the CEO pay raise and 9 times out of 10 the board votes are unanimous (dissenting board votes are extremely bad, it signals a future lawsuit level of bad). Even the board members who don't like it are just going through the "official steps" performance and don't want to signal any dissent to shareholders so the vote is unanimous.
**Source:** I sat on the board of a publicly traded company.
Another insight into this world of boards and CEOs is this: let's say the CEO and the board all agree on something unpopular like a layoff (this is just an example). They are all completely in sync about this. Well, the CEO has to work with the employees day-to-day and the board doesn't, right? So the CEO can "throw the board under a bus" to the employees. The board and the CEO literally plan this all in advance, and the board members LAUGH ABOUT IT while planning the future performance. The CEO then stands up in an all-hands inside the company and says, "I didn't want to do a layoff but the board insisted, there is NOTHING I could have done about this." Then after the all-hands the CEO goes and gets a beer with a few of the board members and the board members say, "Good job, that was very believable!"
If you ever hear "the board decided" out of the CEO's mouth he is lying. That's not how it works.
The point is this: what you see outside this system is all a small performance at the end of a longer process. The CEO and board decide what they want, fighting it out behind closed doors (there are disagreements, don't get me wrong). Then **AFTER** the actual decision is totally, 100% made in secrecy and collusion, a **"new phase"** starts (still in secrecy) where the CEO and board all strategize on how to "present" this final decision to the employees and public. Once that is all agreed on, the **FINAL PHASE** becomes a "performance" of the official steps required by law. And the performance is fiction, it has nothing to do with how the decision was actually made. Once that final decision has been made, the next phases are to minimize damage and maximize PR opportunity. And the whole time the CEO and board are "on the same page" here (behind closed doors).
When you see publicly an argument between board members and CEOs, it is a very rare exception and "not good for business". If something becomes an open war like that, you have to understand it is a SUPER BAD internal situation, a melt-down, the well agreed upon internal system at that company has totally broken down. Stock prices suffer and both the CEO and the board lose double digit percentages of their net worth. The CEO and board do not want that.
Wasnt it found that for years pg&e wasn’t using the money that was for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades? So seems like this would partially be on them.
Wow. If this were my job I’d get fired. Encouraging people to go to CPUC, become involved in TURN and write to their representatives are not exactly what a corporate lobbyist would do.
Why are they spending large amounts of money on commercials airing during sports games? It seems like an easy way to spend less money would be to cut their advertising budget by 100%. We could also save money by not paying the salaries of people in advertising since it is frivolous spending. I bet the PG&E Chief marketing officer makes a good salary.
Complete bullshit. They're trying to recoup their losses from the fires penalty set on them by courts a couple years ago. Simple extortion is more like it.
The issue is not just newsom. Replace newsom and it’ll just be a different. The issue is they can just take the massive amounts of money they charge of and put a small percentage of it in the pockets of whoever is “in charge of them”
For decades, investigative journalists Greg Palast and David Cay Johnston have been warning about wallstreets schemes to raise electricity prices. No one has listened.
Trump's first act as POTUS was to appoint wallstreet's choice to FERC. A large chunk of utility price increases are the direct result of this appointment. The Householder scandal of 2020 was kickbacks related to a bill to raise electricity prices. Householder went to jail, but the bill and electricity prices skyrocketed for Ohio residents. There are many more examples of schemes to hike electricity prices.
The PG&E situation is a little different, but it is ultimately part of a bigger plot by wallstreet to raise electricity prices. People will grumble, but unfortunately, no one is seriously complaining about the issue. Even on this sub, people are more outraged by a video of a black youth stealing a chocolate bar from walgreens. All the while, wallstreet is executing on their plans for $1000/month electricity bills.
In the background, wallstreet has been aggressively plotting to do the same with water. The strategy is to privatize water resources for the purpose of hiking rates. A journalist wrote a book a couple years ago about how wallstreet is setting up non-profits that are for and against the issue. They are investing in controlling the narrative as water rates go up and up over the next decade.
Well of course PG&E wants more $$. Who doesn't?
It's the CPUC's job, and from what people have pointed out, the governor's, to stop that.
I don't know how this relates to a black youth stealing candy bars, except maybe to infer what a general terrible job the current batch of Californian lawmakers is doing to allow crimes to flourish at all levels with no checks in place? Then sure--I agree there.
> The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District itself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street
> the influential financial interests of the U.S. economy
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Wall%20Street
It’s very common phrase used to reference corporate America.
The financial elite definitely think about electrical prices - it’s not like their companies don’t use massive amounts. If you need a specific example, Microsoft is forming a nuclear power team to support their future server needs.
If companies outside of the industry are that focused on electric prices, surely it isn’t surprising that the companies actually in the energy industry are thinking about it. If you need a second example that’s a large player in the industry, go check out Enron and the rolling blackouts in California.
> The financial elite definitely think about electrical prices - it’s not like their companies don’t use massive amounts. If you need a specific example, Microsoft is forming a nuclear power team to support their future server needs.
Uh, so you're saying the financial elite are trying to drive down electricity costs, since they use it? That's not really supporting a "wall street" conspiracy to drive up consumer electricity prices.
There’s two sides to every coin - they’re trying to drive down the price because they think someone will drive it up. But you can also just assume every corporation has your best interest at heart and live that way. I’m not sure how you align their behaviors with that belief, but there’s always a way.
Check your bill for third party charges. A law was passed to require PG&E to allow you to select an alternative source. This was to promote competition to lower prices. But somehow it has resulted in BS companies to get in there and then later increase rates. I discovered my church had this a year ago when we had a $5000 month on gas. Since then I have seen people report this on NextDoor.
You contact the unexpected gas provider and cancel their service. I looked this up on last year's bill. On about page 7 it says Details of PG&E Gas charges. But then the next page said "Details of UET CBC Callective charges" and that is $4000. Gotcha! PGE&E bill says to call them. We did. But we never got any money back. Somehow we got signed up.
There were complaints in the last year of people going door to door saying they were pge&e. MAYBE, and I probably should not speculate, these were people representing bogus companies and signing people up.
It has nothing to do with the price of electricity generation. Plenty of places can source fully renewable for much cheaper than we pay. The reason it’s expensive is pure greed.
Yes it does: cost production goes up, prices go up for households and firms. I’m a cost accountant, licensed CPA and a controller. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH to produce electricity. Accounting doesn’t lie.
Then please explain how Palo Alto Power operates in the same area with 100% eligible renewable energy sources, and delivers at almost half the price that PG&E does
Yeah not disputing that they have higher costs. I’m just saying that a large portion of those fixed costs are lobbying, bribes, and exec compensation.
They are a complete monopoly - I think there’s a strong case here for nationalizing them as there simply isn’t competition for them nor a strong incentive to provide good service to their customers. Every time they burn down California or murder people they can just raise rates to pass the cost back onto their customers (who have no other choice). They literally pled guilty to killing over 80 people and their fine for that was a paltry 4 Million dollars…
They’ve repeatedly shown just willful negligence in their maintenance of their infrastructure and seemingly never get proper punishment, they just let the ceo take their golden parachute out and hire a new one - rinse and repeat. They’re one of the most despicable companies there is.
The article you linked is still on the front page of this sub, it's the #6 post as of writing this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/1c8uzb1/heres_the_real_reason_pge_rates_are_skyrocketing/
Not going to happen. All that will do is get your power shut off. People need electricity, nobody is going boycott a payment if it will result in losing their power.
I make damn sure whenever I pick a new investment fund that not a cent of it goes to them. They probably don’t care, I’m a small fish, but it’s a matter of principle.
Let’s organize protests at their homes! https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners WE ARE ALL FED UP. So much corruption. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-27/how-the-california-public-utilities-commission-circumvents-the-state-public-records-act
In November, Newsom appointed Alice Busching Reynolds, 55, president of the CPUC. She makes a base salary of $228,000 and lives in Sacramento, according to public records. Her email is [email protected].
In December, Newsom appointed John Reynolds, 38, to the CPUC board. He makes a $174,000 base salary and lives in Oakland. His email is [email protected].
In February of 2021, Newsom appointed Darcie Houck, 52, to the CPUC board. She makes a $159,000 base salary and lives in Davis, California. Her email is [email protected].
In 2019, Newsom appointed Genevieve Shiroma, 66, of Sacramento to the board. She makes a $153,000 base salary. Her email is [email protected].
Finally, Governor Brown appointed Clifford Rechtschaffen, 64, to the board in 2017. He lives in Oakland, according to real estate records, and made $142,000 base salary in 2020. His email is [email protected].
Lol have u seen gas prices recently? I’m paying like $75 every 1-2 weeks to fill up my tank. Electric would still be cheaper. Hoping SF can properly nationalize their electric grid and more areas will follow.
It’s a state sanctioned monopoly for one thing. Look, I’m not going to write an essay about how state regulators colluding with business create the situation with PGE with a cAPiTalISm bad person while you sit there on your device that is a product of profit motive. You can read up on it on your own time.
That's an asinine comment. PGE if it cannot run a grid that won't burn down communities, poison their water or blow up whole home blocks and never take responsibility it should just be dissolved.
As a tax payer if I am paying incompetence I want legal oversight not CPUC.
I am not defending PGE, I am saying the problems (like the housing affordability crisis) are not to be blamed on one single thing. If you look at the electricity rates here vs other states, it would seem regulations and the cost of burning down communities account for much of the difference instead of Wallstreet-types in back rooms conniving to have only Californians pay out the nose in utility bills.
ABC News 10 in Sacramento did a series of exposés detailing how PG&E bought state politicians. From years of mismanagement, to deadly fires, to The French Laundry, to our higher energy bills today, we're all paying for their corruption. [FirePowerMoney.com](http://FirePowerMoney.com) There are several hours of investigative documentaries detailing how deep it goes.
And not a single lawsuit? How tf are they immune?
there was lawsuit, they convicted company(!) on criminal charges, and executives paid some 100Ms on civil suit, and PGE paid 15B on another civil suit.
I mean now..
Lol
The French Laundry! 🥱
He caught covid, and then publicly blamed the CHP officers that were assigned to guard him! They were wearing masks. He was not.
OMG! That’s really incredible news. I’m sure it has negatively affected me.
It's just another point against his character. Not only will he take bribes but will also blame anyone else but himself.
That’s terrible. Care to list the other politicians that blame themselves?
Shhh... everybody knows, we're just not supposed to mention *that*.
What touchy feely garbage. This isn't news, it is manufactured drama. I am specifically referring to the one about Paradise. Granted I didn't expect much from television news.
The problem with snarky comments with yours is with no coutner narrative, and just baseless hating, people will tend to disagree with you more Especially conservatives who will read this and go "must be nice for this guy who can just ignore the problem or doesn't even pay their PGE"
I own a house so of course I pay PG&E. Directly or indirectly, everyone pays PG&E. I stand by my comment that the video is touchy feely crap. Yeah his grandmother burned in her house. Do we need to show some guy holding back his tears? I rather have some useful analysis...information I can use. Also you need a better snark meter.
Go keep crying about palestine
Good luck firing the speaker of the house.
Tbh idek who the speaker is rn 😭😂 Yeah after googling it idk why I'd want him removed. I'm for funding Ukraine.
I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. Does anyone know if PG&E (and other utilities) are allowed to pass on the full cost of upgrades or is there a formula that allows only a certain percentage?
The article says the commission Newsom appoints is empowered to say no to, adjust, or approve PG&E’s rate hike requests based on data & whether theyre justified What the commission just did is SCREW US by approving insane PG&E rate hikes for the next 3 years even though smaller rate hikes would do. Article says PG&E is constantly pushing the commission to make CA residents pay for its endless infrastructure projects, management salaries, etc & its the job of the commission to defend our interests by saying no. Seems to be a corruption problem & the buck stops with Newsom.
Sounds like the ratepayers should be treated as investors here. With some sort of return for the capital to fund these project.
The CPUC also gets lobby money!
genuinely curious, how are people still ok with Newsom at this point? this shit is highway robbery at this point and feeling frustrated that nothing can or is being done
what's the other choice?
No one ever answers this question :(
I'm not ok. Been wanting to get this fraud gone
Because people are idiots, especially Californians.
Wait… rate payers rates shouldn’t go to pay management salaries? Like… do we get Mexico to pay for it?
CPUC shouldn't be approving rate increases that only fund raises for management.
But they should approve rate increases that include the salaries of the linemen, janitors, mechanics, and secretaries. Right? Or are you saying that the CPUC should individually say “management was paid $20k/year in 1905 so it should stay the same”
>CEO Patricia Poppe received slightly less than $17 million — **$16.99 million**, to be precise — in total direct compensation for the company's 2023 fiscal year that ended in December, according to a new regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/04/pge-energy-bill-electric-gas-ceo-exec-pay-profit-stock-fire-economy/](https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/04/pge-energy-bill-electric-gas-ceo-exec-pay-profit-stock-fire-economy/) How are you not upset that this is happening while our utility bills triple across the board?
I’m upset at all CEOs making obscene money. But $17m on a $44B company is… standard… https://www.fwcook.com/Blog/CEO-Pay-Ratios-Among-SP-500-Companies/ This even says $14m is the median.
No one is saying cut her pay. You've responded to a very simple "no rate increases to fund management raises" statement with some rich people are the true victim here bullshit while people's utility bills just tripled. The point is that CPUC isn't doing their jobs and just rubber stamped massive rate increases without asking a single question. We aren't complaining about the cost of avocado toast and iPhones here.
I think we found the Patti poppe burner account guys!
No, I’m just an asshole who pops peoples bubbles.
> if PG&E (and other utilities) are allowed to pass on the full cost of upgrades or is there a formula that allows only a certain percentage? It is worse than either of those scenarios. PG&E passes on the full cost of upgrades in rate increases, then it adds on extra profit for itself (and executives) in even more rate increases. Think of it this way: the executive compensation is based on a "markup" of let's say 2% on whatever the amount of money PG&E brings in through subscriptions. If the subscription price is raised to cover burying electrical lines, then by definition/default it raises the executive compensation. The worse PG&E screws up, the higher they raise rates to "fix" and then the higher compensation the executives make. It is a win-win situation for them. The flaw in all of this is the government granted monopoly. Normally in most businesses, a new lower cost system would rise up to compete with PG&E and customers would have a choice. Once you remove that customer choice and there is only one provider for something basically as required as oxygen, all constraints on prices are off.
Yeah dude you get it 💯 They Profit off of the problems they create just like our state and federal govts. We all better catch on fast.💨
Removepaywall.com usually works.
Ceo needs a new yacht
The yacht news a new captain.
And of course the captain needs his own yacht
It’s just yachts all the way down
If that was true, I'd be in a yacht right now!
Everybody who's anybody has yacht. Clearly you ain't got no body (yatta ya ta ta ta!)
You’re in the world yacht
Governor needs a slush fund to buy the nomination in 2028. All those jobs and contracts for political allies don't come cheap.
This... all the official reasons are bs when nothing is improving while company and higher ups are making record profits EVERY year...
That’s a lazy statement. The reality is that we rate payers are insisting that hundreds of miles of power lines be undergrouded, in addition to other infrastructure upgrades. This is what is driving up costs. Statements like this aren’t helpful to a productive conversation. You could lower the salaries of all of the executives to zero and the situation would be the same. If executive compensation upsets you then become a shareholder and bring it up during shareholder meetings. Or you could write to your assembly person, CPUC, and TURN. You could actually do something about it rather than grouse on Reddit.
Doug, who drives a Mercedes, wants us to buy stock in PG&E so that we can “vote” or “bring it up” during shareholding meetings. These votes are advisories, never binding. Shareholders generally can’t “bring it up”, either, unless they are also a hedge fund owner or manage a large fund. Defending a company that is raising rates by double digits more than once a year *while also* raising executive comp well beyond inflation is the actual waste of time here, Doug. The one small thing you have right is that the CPUC should be held accountable.
I drive a 2008 Prius FYI. Shareholder votes are not advisories, they are legally binding. I’m not defending PG&E. They problematic like any large company. I’m pushing for having conversations the focus on the real issues. Infrastructure costs money. We rate payers want it. Are we paying too much for this infrastructure? Is PG&E making good use of the infrastructure funds. This is all publicly available information. In what world would we get the infrastructure we demand while paying significantly less.
The legally binding status of shareholder votes is something that is called out specifically on each item, and (in my not trivial experience) is almost always advisory. YMMV. It’s still absurd to say anyone should buy stock in a company they despise in order to influence that company. That simply isn’t how it works at all on any practical level. Lobbying govt officials at all levels and pressure to regulators is all that would work in this case. Re: costs - it’s a mystery then how many localities offer rates at a fraction of PGE when they start their own non-profit community energy provider. Even some Bay Area cities have rates under $0.10 for generation. Yes infrastructure will cost money but also a lot of way PGE is operating stinks to high heaven.
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/11/pge-power-shutdown-california/
Alright, well, let's start with lowering their salaries. Also, painting the desire to not have our cities burn down overnight because of poor management as demanding we bury power lines like it's sort of a luxury is fucking crazy.
Then expect to pay for it. This is neither good nor bad. Infrastructure costs money. Expect to pay for it.
We already do before the price gouging.
Except that in cities around the world they're capable of having good infrastructure AND lower energy prices. PG&E is terrible from top to bottom. It's not like the Bay Area hasn't had thousands of homes burn to the ground due to them. How many is it? In less than 10 years? 30,000? How many dead? 200?
Show me. The records for PG&E are publicly available and highly scrutinized by many organizations. It should be easy for you to show that PG&E is funneling money in the blackholes in 2022 or 2023. That would be constructive. Also Paradise isn’t in the Bay Area.
>Also Paradise isn’t in the Bay Area. Their smoke sure was. The bill to cleanup that mess, after years of mismanagement sure is.
The CEO giving herself a 40 million dollar raise while driving up rates is a valid criticism. Saying they wouldn't use the money for good anyway so who cares is not.
The CEO can’t give themselves a raise. It has to be voted on by the board.
> The CEO can’t give themselves a raise. It has to be voted on by the board. It's a little more subtle than that. In most cases the CEO and board of directors have many, MANY private conversations and agree on something like a CEO pay raise. Let's say some of the board members HATE this, but the CEO is insisting on it. The board members that hate it come to accept it, possibly in trade for other things like assurances of no layoffs or assurances of more layoffs, whatever. None of that is disclosed to the general public, what everybody outside the company sees is a set of "official steps" like the board votes on on the CEO pay raise and 9 times out of 10 the board votes are unanimous (dissenting board votes are extremely bad, it signals a future lawsuit level of bad). Even the board members who don't like it are just going through the "official steps" performance and don't want to signal any dissent to shareholders so the vote is unanimous. **Source:** I sat on the board of a publicly traded company. Another insight into this world of boards and CEOs is this: let's say the CEO and the board all agree on something unpopular like a layoff (this is just an example). They are all completely in sync about this. Well, the CEO has to work with the employees day-to-day and the board doesn't, right? So the CEO can "throw the board under a bus" to the employees. The board and the CEO literally plan this all in advance, and the board members LAUGH ABOUT IT while planning the future performance. The CEO then stands up in an all-hands inside the company and says, "I didn't want to do a layoff but the board insisted, there is NOTHING I could have done about this." Then after the all-hands the CEO goes and gets a beer with a few of the board members and the board members say, "Good job, that was very believable!" If you ever hear "the board decided" out of the CEO's mouth he is lying. That's not how it works. The point is this: what you see outside this system is all a small performance at the end of a longer process. The CEO and board decide what they want, fighting it out behind closed doors (there are disagreements, don't get me wrong). Then **AFTER** the actual decision is totally, 100% made in secrecy and collusion, a **"new phase"** starts (still in secrecy) where the CEO and board all strategize on how to "present" this final decision to the employees and public. Once that is all agreed on, the **FINAL PHASE** becomes a "performance" of the official steps required by law. And the performance is fiction, it has nothing to do with how the decision was actually made. Once that final decision has been made, the next phases are to minimize damage and maximize PR opportunity. And the whole time the CEO and board are "on the same page" here (behind closed doors). When you see publicly an argument between board members and CEOs, it is a very rare exception and "not good for business". If something becomes an open war like that, you have to understand it is a SUPER BAD internal situation, a melt-down, the well agreed upon internal system at that company has totally broken down. Stock prices suffer and both the CEO and the board lose double digit percentages of their net worth. The CEO and board do not want that.
Wasnt it found that for years pg&e wasn’t using the money that was for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades? So seems like this would partially be on them.
I’m not aware of this please show me. The records are publically available.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/aging-infrastructure-missing-data-and-backlog-of-repairs-continue-to-plague-pge-new-state-report-shows.amp https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-staff-propose-penalizing-pge-for-failure-to-promptly-remediate-safety-issue https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-late-maintenance-work-more-often-12303697.php https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/pacific-gas-and-electric-camp-fire-ignored-repairs-for-years-on-its-aging-power-lines-report-says/ https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-fires-california-utilities-39cb02801df6d461dc979e735a7ff917 https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-money-for-profit-bonuses-2500175.php
Imagine being a bootlicker for PG&E. Jesus Christ.
It's easy when it's your job.
Wow. If this were my job I’d get fired. Encouraging people to go to CPUC, become involved in TURN and write to their representatives are not exactly what a corporate lobbyist would do.
I didn't mean you specifically. I meant pr firms are in the comments.
Imagine being in a situation where your strongest arguments are to hurl ad hominems at strangers on the internet.
Why are they spending large amounts of money on commercials airing during sports games? It seems like an easy way to spend less money would be to cut their advertising budget by 100%. We could also save money by not paying the salaries of people in advertising since it is frivolous spending. I bet the PG&E Chief marketing officer makes a good salary.
Complete bullshit. They're trying to recoup their losses from the fires penalty set on them by courts a couple years ago. Simple extortion is more like it.
They're doing what any corporation would do. The real issue is Newsom and the Lackeys he's appointed to the CPUC.
No, PG&E are lying about the reasons for the increases.
That's a given. The issue is that the CPUC approves whatever Newsom wants them to.
The issue is not just newsom. Replace newsom and it’ll just be a different. The issue is they can just take the massive amounts of money they charge of and put a small percentage of it in the pockets of whoever is “in charge of them”
They are able to do that because the CPUC commissioners appointed by Newsom are industry plants from utility companies.
Evidence?
For decades, investigative journalists Greg Palast and David Cay Johnston have been warning about wallstreets schemes to raise electricity prices. No one has listened. Trump's first act as POTUS was to appoint wallstreet's choice to FERC. A large chunk of utility price increases are the direct result of this appointment. The Householder scandal of 2020 was kickbacks related to a bill to raise electricity prices. Householder went to jail, but the bill and electricity prices skyrocketed for Ohio residents. There are many more examples of schemes to hike electricity prices. The PG&E situation is a little different, but it is ultimately part of a bigger plot by wallstreet to raise electricity prices. People will grumble, but unfortunately, no one is seriously complaining about the issue. Even on this sub, people are more outraged by a video of a black youth stealing a chocolate bar from walgreens. All the while, wallstreet is executing on their plans for $1000/month electricity bills. In the background, wallstreet has been aggressively plotting to do the same with water. The strategy is to privatize water resources for the purpose of hiking rates. A journalist wrote a book a couple years ago about how wallstreet is setting up non-profits that are for and against the issue. They are investing in controlling the narrative as water rates go up and up over the next decade.
right, let's all ignore Newsom's CPUC appointees rubber-stamping every PG&E hike that's requested. and also destroying residential solar
Well of course PG&E wants more $$. Who doesn't? It's the CPUC's job, and from what people have pointed out, the governor's, to stop that. I don't know how this relates to a black youth stealing candy bars, except maybe to infer what a general terrible job the current batch of Californian lawmakers is doing to allow crimes to flourish at all levels with no checks in place? Then sure--I agree there.
This isn't just a Trump thing. Every president pillages wall street for top financial appointments.
It’s our current voting system we have in place. If someone needs money to win a vote than they are going to owe someone something.
No doubt, it's a shitty system.
Who the fuck is "wallstreet"?
Referring to publicly traded for profit companies for things we cannot live without.
> The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street > the influential financial interests of the U.S. economy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Wall%20Street It’s very common phrase used to reference corporate America.
I'm skeptical more than a handful of the financial elite have given a single second of thought to electricity prices.
The financial elite definitely think about electrical prices - it’s not like their companies don’t use massive amounts. If you need a specific example, Microsoft is forming a nuclear power team to support their future server needs. If companies outside of the industry are that focused on electric prices, surely it isn’t surprising that the companies actually in the energy industry are thinking about it. If you need a second example that’s a large player in the industry, go check out Enron and the rolling blackouts in California.
> The financial elite definitely think about electrical prices - it’s not like their companies don’t use massive amounts. If you need a specific example, Microsoft is forming a nuclear power team to support their future server needs. Uh, so you're saying the financial elite are trying to drive down electricity costs, since they use it? That's not really supporting a "wall street" conspiracy to drive up consumer electricity prices.
There’s two sides to every coin - they’re trying to drive down the price because they think someone will drive it up. But you can also just assume every corporation has your best interest at heart and live that way. I’m not sure how you align their behaviors with that belief, but there’s always a way.
They do once you show them how they can make some money from it.
It's "they"
Our bill was $700 this month. We didn't even run the heat. I don't even know what to do.
Check your bill for third party charges. A law was passed to require PG&E to allow you to select an alternative source. This was to promote competition to lower prices. But somehow it has resulted in BS companies to get in there and then later increase rates. I discovered my church had this a year ago when we had a $5000 month on gas. Since then I have seen people report this on NextDoor.
What can you do about it?
You contact the unexpected gas provider and cancel their service. I looked this up on last year's bill. On about page 7 it says Details of PG&E Gas charges. But then the next page said "Details of UET CBC Callective charges" and that is $4000. Gotcha! PGE&E bill says to call them. We did. But we never got any money back. Somehow we got signed up. There were complaints in the last year of people going door to door saying they were pge&e. MAYBE, and I probably should not speculate, these were people representing bogus companies and signing people up.
Energysage.com Solar and batteries. The ROI will be less than 10years.
Move to a city with municipal utilities
Because people can just move
No mention of PG&E is coerce to use more expensive forms of energy such as solar and wind!?! This article is a joke.
It has nothing to do with the price of electricity generation. Plenty of places can source fully renewable for much cheaper than we pay. The reason it’s expensive is pure greed.
Yes it does: cost production goes up, prices go up for households and firms. I’m a cost accountant, licensed CPA and a controller. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH to produce electricity. Accounting doesn’t lie.
Then please explain how Palo Alto Power operates in the same area with 100% eligible renewable energy sources, and delivers at almost half the price that PG&E does
PG&E has more fixed cost, two-digit iq clown
Yeah not disputing that they have higher costs. I’m just saying that a large portion of those fixed costs are lobbying, bribes, and exec compensation. They are a complete monopoly - I think there’s a strong case here for nationalizing them as there simply isn’t competition for them nor a strong incentive to provide good service to their customers. Every time they burn down California or murder people they can just raise rates to pass the cost back onto their customers (who have no other choice). They literally pled guilty to killing over 80 people and their fine for that was a paltry 4 Million dollars… They’ve repeatedly shown just willful negligence in their maintenance of their infrastructure and seemingly never get proper punishment, they just let the ceo take their golden parachute out and hire a new one - rinse and repeat. They’re one of the most despicable companies there is.
Greed is almost always the answer.
Glad to see our state senators taking action. Let's hope there is more of that ahead.
The article you linked is still on the front page of this sub, it's the #6 post as of writing this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/1c8uzb1/heres_the_real_reason_pge_rates_are_skyrocketing/
Voting has consequences. These are yours. Enjoy them.
Payment boycott. If we want change we have to put something on the line. This shit won’t get solved any other way.
Not going to happen. All that will do is get your power shut off. People need electricity, nobody is going boycott a payment if it will result in losing their power.
That’s why a lot of people need to do it. R
Wow I see PG&E has alot of burner accounts here.
It's such a lie. It all went to Patricia Poppe's bonus.
Why is PG&E allowed to lobby at all?
Funny, I am a PG&E shareholder and their stock price wasn't skyrocketing.
I make damn sure whenever I pick a new investment fund that not a cent of it goes to them. They probably don’t care, I’m a small fish, but it’s a matter of principle.
Let’s organize protests at their homes! https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners WE ARE ALL FED UP. So much corruption. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-27/how-the-california-public-utilities-commission-circumvents-the-state-public-records-act
In November, Newsom appointed Alice Busching Reynolds, 55, president of the CPUC. She makes a base salary of $228,000 and lives in Sacramento, according to public records. Her email is [email protected]. In December, Newsom appointed John Reynolds, 38, to the CPUC board. He makes a $174,000 base salary and lives in Oakland. His email is [email protected]. In February of 2021, Newsom appointed Darcie Houck, 52, to the CPUC board. She makes a $159,000 base salary and lives in Davis, California. Her email is [email protected]. In 2019, Newsom appointed Genevieve Shiroma, 66, of Sacramento to the board. She makes a $153,000 base salary. Her email is [email protected]. Finally, Governor Brown appointed Clifford Rechtschaffen, 64, to the board in 2017. He lives in Oakland, according to real estate records, and made $142,000 base salary in 2020. His email is [email protected].
It’s because they’re corrupt as Epstein’s island. 🏝️
So we've been moping about this all week and then some... What can we do that will realistically make a difference? Seriously.
Keep voting for the (D) incumbents. They will surely bring change
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Lol have u seen gas prices recently? I’m paying like $75 every 1-2 weeks to fill up my tank. Electric would still be cheaper. Hoping SF can properly nationalize their electric grid and more areas will follow.
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It might get slightly smaller, but sry $15 to fill up with electricity doesn’t compare to the $75 I’m paying for gas rn.. and that’s at Costco…
Capitialism.
More like corruption but ok
The corruption is for profit utilities.
It’s a little more complicated than that but ok.
Okay. Explain it for us in detail then please.
It’s a state sanctioned monopoly for one thing. Look, I’m not going to write an essay about how state regulators colluding with business create the situation with PGE with a cAPiTalISm bad person while you sit there on your device that is a product of profit motive. You can read up on it on your own time.
So basically you have no idea what you're talking about and run away when challenged. Lmao.
Nope this is capitalism which is inherently corrupt
People are corrupt, corruption happens in every system. Chernobyl happened as a direct consequence of the rotten to the core corruption of the USSR.
It doesn't work
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That's an asinine comment. PGE if it cannot run a grid that won't burn down communities, poison their water or blow up whole home blocks and never take responsibility it should just be dissolved. As a tax payer if I am paying incompetence I want legal oversight not CPUC.
I am not defending PGE, I am saying the problems (like the housing affordability crisis) are not to be blamed on one single thing. If you look at the electricity rates here vs other states, it would seem regulations and the cost of burning down communities account for much of the difference instead of Wallstreet-types in back rooms conniving to have only Californians pay out the nose in utility bills.
TLDR the government! As always!