bills Archives - California Political Review

PG&E bills could cost $840 a year more by 2030, California watchdog says. The utility disagrees

June 25, 2026 By Julie Johnson Leave a Comment

On a crisp, spring morning last year, Pacific Gas and Electric chief executive Patti Poppe stood near crews replacing an old power pole on a residential street in Ingleside. She was there, in a hard hat and vest, to deliver a message Californians had been waiting years to hear: Electricity bill relief was coming.

Poppe flipped through a notebook where she’d scribbled charts illustrating the company’s latest spending proposal, which will shape energy bills through 2030, and made the case that while the utility is asking the state permission to collect more revenues, customers, she vowed, would be spared from the kind of major bill hikes that hit in recent years.

“I’m begging you,” Poppe said to the Chronicle. “Tell the story: Bills will be flat.”

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But in a forecast disputed by PG&E, the California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office estimated that typical household bills could jump by $444 annually in 2027. By 2030, the total bill increase could reach $840 for a year.

That estimate suggests that the years ahead could outpace the shock of 2024. On the heels of catastrophic wildfires linked to PG&E and amid rising inflation, average households that year paid roughly $443 more compared to the year before.

Mary Flannelly, public advocates office spokesperson, said in an email to the Chronicle that PG&E and other utilities have “veered too far away” from the central budget process, which undergoes significant vetting and review, and are too often going back to regulators for rate increases through procedures meant to “to be used infrequently and for truly unanticipated costs.”

“The overall trend is upward and will continue to outpace inflation,” Flannelly said.

But PG&E representatives disputed the public advocates office forecast and said the company estimates more modest changes.

Next year, PG&E estimates that bills will increase by $128 annually for average households with gas and electric service. The company hopes to raise roughly $1.2 billion more from customer bills next year, but at the same time it is also cutting some costs, including operating expenses and certain temporary wildfire measures – netting out at an average bill increase of just over $10 per month.

Going forward, although the forecasts are less sharp, PG&E forecast that average residential bills would rise by another $119 annually in 2028, $126 in 2029 and an additional $133 in 2030.

Click here to read the full article in the SF Chronicle

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: bills, Electricty, PG&E

Disappearing bills: More than 2,300 bills died without a vote in the last two years

December 6, 2024 By Sameea Kamal Leave a Comment

We know how legislatures work: lawmakers introduce bills, debate on them and vote yes or no.

Right?

Not exactly. Of the 2,403 bills that died in the recent two-year session, CalMatters’ Digital Democracy data found just 25 failed because a majority of lawmakers voted “no.”

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Most of the remaining bills disappeared through procedural tactics that leave little trace of responsibility for the policy decisions. Rather than vote no, lawmakers typically find ways to sideline bills they don’t want, causing them to fail when they don’t meet procedural deadlines.

“Allowing bills to die behind closed doors for reasons that are never made known publicly runs contrary to the purposes of having an open, transparent and accountable government,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause.

Bills can disappear in various ways:

The number of bills that died through the notorious “suspense file” was 1,045. That’s where the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees send bills that the ruling party would like to avoid, either for cost or for political reasons.
The number of bills that disappeared because a committee chair never brought them up for a hearing totaled 668, while another 274 had at least one hearing, but were not taken up by a second committee or by the floor.
Twenty-seven bills died because a majority of legislators did not vote, which counts the same as a vote against the bill.
There were 364 bills withdrawn by authors.

Another 166 bills, in addition to the 2,403, were introduced, but they were just used as placeholders for budget negotiations and were never intended to pass through the Legislature.

Lawmakers introduce nearly 5,000 bills each two-year session and nearly all that proceed to a public hearing or floor vote will pass. As Digital Democracy reported earlier, Democratic legislators voted no less than 0.5% of the time in 2024. They sent 2,252 bills to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vetoed 189 of them, more than seven times as many as the Legislature voted down.

CalMatters provided the data to the offices for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, who both pointed to the many bills that do go through public discussion and votes.

“It’s important to highlight that the vast majority of proposals and bills experience thousands of hours of public discussion and testimony, with legislation often receiving multiple hearings, across both houses, in addition to several thoughtful written analyses and, ultimately, thousands of up-or-down votes from lawmakers,” said Nick Miller, spokesperson for Rivas.

McGuire, in a statement to CalMatters, said policy measures “are carefully considered by Senators from both parties who are accountable to voters and neighbors back home. As is the case every year, not all bills will have the votes necessary to move forward – it happens to all of us.”

But for some who invest time and money into lobbying on legislation that disappears, the process can feel like a black hole.

City of Stanton officials, for example, tried for months to lobby for Assembly Bill 2646, which sought to reinstate some authority for law enforcement to address solicitation — a long-standing issue in the city. That bill responded to a law passed in 2022 that decriminalized loitering for purposes of prostitution. The law was meant to protect transgender Californians, women of color and victims of trafficking from being unfairly targeted by law enforcement.

The bill was pulled before it reached one of the first stages: a policy committee hearing. The Speaker’s office declined to comment on why the bill was pulled.

“I was deeply disappointed to learn that the bill will be killed without being granted a hearing,” Republican Assemblymember Tri Ta, the bill’s author, said via email. “Every bill deserves to be heard and voted on, ensuring a fair and transparent legislative process.”

Stanton City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn said that while they were open to hearing from opponents to figure out a workable policy, the process was frustrating for a smaller city that doesn’t have the resources to lobby heavily on state legislation.

“We don’t get to go represent our community members before [legislators], who then have the discretion to either agree to move it along or not,” she said. “That is unfortunate, because we’re supposed to be providing that vehicle to our community to express their concerns, and it feels like that’s getting left out.”

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: bills, California Politics, Legislature

California electricity prices now second-highest in U.S.: ‘Everyone is getting squeezed’

May 3, 2024 By Julie Johnson 6 Comments

North Beach resident Serena Satyasai never thought much about her utility bill, but that was before February when California’s electricity prices rose to become the highest in the contiguous United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Satyasai’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bill jumped by about $100 compared with the same month last year. Like many of PG&E’s 5.5 million customers, she’s having to rescript her monthly budget around these rising costs.

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A pack of New England states have historically had some of the nation’s highest electricity prices (the federal government doesn’t track rates but rather calculates prices using customer counts, sales and revenue data) due to factors such as a shortage in natural gas pipeline capacity plus the region’s reliance on costly fossil fuels to generate electricity.

But California has joined them in the past 10 years, leapfrogging with Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to periodically hold the title as the most expensive state for electricity usage in the lower 48. (Even though Californians pay a high amount for each unit of electricity, their total bills tend to be lower than other states in the Northeast and South due to the West Coast’s relatively temperate climate.)

Click here to read the full article at the SF Chronicle

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: bills, California Politics, Electricity

PG&E utility bills are about to soar in California. Here are the details

November 2, 2023 By Julie Johnson 4 Comments

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is poised to hit customers with a major hike to monthly bills in January, an increase that comes amid an unprecedented rise in utility rates for Californians over the last decade.

In the last eight years, average monthly residential bills for electricity and gas combined jumped by $86.51 — from $154.52 in January 2016 to $241.03 in January 2023, according to data from PG&E obtained by the Chronicle.

And average bills are about to rise even further — by $25-$31 in January — depending on how state regulators vote Thursday.

Residential rates for electricity in California have far outpaced the rate of inflation as electricity prices have risen to be more than twice the national average in the last 10 years. In its latest quarterly report, the Public Advocates Office at the California Public Utilities Commission said rates rose about 92% for residential customers between January 2014 and September 2023.

“It just keeps going up,” said Jerrie Groves, a 33-year-old single mother in Bakersfield who said her PG&E electricity bill averages about $500 each month. “It is the biggest stress and the highest bill I have.” (Bakersfield is close to the southernmost point of PG&E’s service territory.)

Utility bills are becoming a greater burden for PG&E customers like Groves, who works at a Costco food court and has four children ages 9-14. Groves said she has tried to minimize her family’s electricity use, but with four children, it’s a challenge.

“It doesn’t seem to matter what I try to do, like not run the AC — it’s still super high,” Groves said.

Historically, utility rates generally kept pace with inflation, but that began to shift in 2013, according to the CPUC. And catastrophic wildfires have driven costs even higher for PG&E and its customers since 2021.

PG&E is allowed to recoup certain costs for operating expenses and capital expenditures from its customers, including key wildfire response and prevention projects. So far, some of the biggest wildfire-related expenses passed on to customers have been tree-trimming programs and wildfire liability insurance coverage, according to the CPUC.

PG&E has slashed its vegetation management program as part of the company’s effort to curb costs. But with its new budget, PG&E is preparing to spend billions of dollars to strengthen thousands of miles of power lines in regions where the risk of wildfires is high by either burying power lines or insulating bare wires.

State regulators Thursday will decide how much PG&E can spend on these programs and others.

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the big bump in rates in 2024 should be an anomaly, and PG&E expects to keep future rate increases “at or below” the rate of inflation. The company is trying to reduce costs wherever possible — for example, in 2022, the company cut operating costs by 3%, she said.

“We understand the impact of any rate increase on our customers, and we are committed to completing critical safety and reliability work as cost-efficiently as possible,” Paulo said.

Some California lawmakers worry the rising cost of electricity in California is undermining the state’s effort to phase out natural gas by encouraging greater reliance on electric vehicles and appliances.

State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, said he and others in Sacramento are discussing how the state might intervene to lessen the amount utility customers pay for statewide programs, like transmission line construction and utility subsidies for low-income households. Some money could come from the state’s general fund, for example, or from a bond.

“Proportionally, a small part of our rates is actually distributing and moving energy around — a lot of it is wildfire costs,” said Becker, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee’s Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy.

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Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: bills, California Politics, Electricity