Prop 16-PG&E’s Public Option Perplexelectric plug pix

You’ve got to hand it to the ad boys over on Beale Street. The day they realized they could not compete in the marketplace against cheaper community rates must have been a sobering moment. Seems PG&E’s monopoly is threatened by Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in Marin and San Francisco counties. Since Sacramento’s SMUD continues to provide cheaper power to the capitol building itself and provides money for community welfare as well, the CCA competition has befuddled the PG&E lobbyists in Sacramento. They were unable to wine and dine the elected representatives to get their anti-competition legislation passed the old-fashioned way.

While PG&E can’t compete in the marketplace, they’ve proved they can outspend opponents at the ballot box. So, what they couldn’t accomplish in the domed halls of Sacramento, the bright guys in the caverns of Beale Street’s Madvertising Department seek to accomplish via a new multimillion-dollar campaign cloaked in the trappings of voter’s rights, to assure that their monopoly continues in perpetuity, the real purpose of Proposition 16.

In a way the initiative has underscored the “public option” fight in Washington, where well-paid lobbyists squelched public demand for an alternative solution to health care outside the insurance lobby. In California, led by the venerable ratepayers rights organization TURN (Toward Utility Rate Normalization) the right of ratepayers to buy cheaper (and usually greener) power known as Community Choice Aggregation survived the legislative process. Additionally, this PG&E funded initiative casts an unflattering light on the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to maintain their stranglehold on the public by spending unlimited amounts of money in elections. Recent reports estimate that PG&E has spent $35 million for TV, mail and every other contrivance known to campaign consultants.

As a “Voters Rights” campaign, Prop 16 contradicts itself. The basic premise of “voters rights” is one man, one vote. By requiring a two-thirds majority Prop 16 seeks to impose the view of the minority of voters on the majority, rather than the majority rule usually associated with “voters rights.” Hundreds of junk-mailers touting “voters rights” will soon be in our mailboxes aiming to gloss over that disparity, but it remains a fatal flaw in the legislation. There are better ways to protect the minority than making permanent changes to the state’s constitution.

Community Choice Aggregation may or may not be the best alternative energy solution and we do not intend to tackle that complex question in this commentary. We think that is best left up to local governments assessing their available resources. Questions like this should be presented by elected officials at publicly noticed hearings, complete with public hearings that allow free flow of information from both sides and followed by a vote of representatives who will have to answer for their choice at the polls.

What is most troubling about this obviously misleading campaign is the misuse of the citizen initiative process. Originally conceived to break the railroad monopoly by the great Californian, Hiram Johnson, at a time when the Assembly and Senate of California were in the grip of the moneyed interests, the right of citizens outside the legislature to originate legislation is sacrosanct—too important to be interfered with. Proposition 16 seeks to establish a monopoly, not by citizens without access to their elected officials, but by a corporation seeking to prevent competition. Here a multi-billion dollar corporation clearly subverts the process, pouring $35 million into gathering signatures to place this initiative on the ballot, and to assure its passage.

PG&E should spend the millions they extract from the ratepayers to improve service and compete in the marketplace with alternative sources of energy, not at the ballot box. We join the Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, LA Times and most other newspapers in the state in questioning this unprecedented assault on voters. No on Proposition 16.

May 2010