San Diego Gas & Electric is arguably the least unpleasant of the state’s three large investor-owned electric utilities. As a federal judge said of Pacific Gas & Electric in 2022, the company is not a big corporate felon who has “perpetuated crime.” We didn’t launch a secret plan to make ratepayers pay too much for shutting down the broken San Onofre nuclear power plant. plant. SDG&E benefited, but that was the job of Edison executives.
But SDG&E’s sky-high bill rates, huge profits, support for controversial rules changes for homes with solar panels, and shifting the $379 million cost of the 2007 wildfires to ratepayers Amongst its failed attempts to do so, SDG&E is a piñata in local buzz circles. Complaints about utility are as common as chatter about the Padres.
Therefore, the Power San Diego Coalition’s effort to replace SDG&E with a municipal utility within the city limits should have been a no-brainer. In fact, the group didn’t even come close to its goal of gathering 80,000 verified signatures so voters could consider the takeover in the November election. About 31,000 signatures were provided to the county voter registrar’s office on Tuesday.
Organizers tried to clarify the situation by saying that, under the city charter, the City Council likely submitted enough valid signatures to allow the measure to be placed directly on the ballot.
But what does it really mean? The petition failed because San Diegans have an even lower opinion of City Hall than SDG&E. Power San Diego did not have reliable answers to the basic questions many residents asked. Can the city really trust the power company with even the bare minimum ability to operate?
Yes, communities like Anaheim and Sacramento have found success with such public projects. But this has little to do with San Diegans contemplating three decades of civic wrongs. A disastrous event in which their elected leaders purchased a dilapidated Ash Street office tower. Their lack of pension funds is foolishness. A ballot measure that is legally destined to cut off pension benefits for most new employees. Their “smart streetlight” program was later revealed to be a mass surveillance system. Or this year’s abysmal decision to pay up to $4.5 million to get a consultant’s recommendation on rates for garbage collection and recycling services, among the most mundane civic issues imaginable.
Given this history, questioning the creation of municipal public utilities was simply not possible. They were mandatory. A cane to keep you from falling.
