Prop 16 lawsuit

The Sacramento Bee is reporting on a lawsuit, filed by a consortium of public utilities and led by Sacramento MUD, that is alleging PG&E intends to choke off electric utility competition in California. I'd say that's implicitly true, what with their $34.5 million campaign for Proposition 16, but the plaintiffs are alleging that Peter Darbee, the Chairman of Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., has acknowledged this goal as the monopoly's explicit motivation behind the June 8 ballot proposition. This is fairly dubious. Robert Cruickshank of Calitics hits the nail on the head, writing "Prop 16's practical effect would be to choke off competition and protect PG&E's existing monopoly across much of Northern California...making it very difficult for a majority of voters to create a public power district or community choice aggregation that can help deliver renewable power to localities." Even more dubious is that PG&E is financing their campaign for Prop 16 with ratepayer funds, and while others are free to disagree with me, I see this as using Californians' money against them.

I can't help but draw the analogy to private health insurance companies and their vendetta against the public option last year. Both campaigns demand that their private-sector, monopolistic (or oligopolistic, as with health insurance) practices are superior to anything the public sector could offer. So why should they be afraid of a little competition? Of course the answer is to protect shareholder profits, no evil motivation by any stretch. But power--like health insurance--is a public good, and PG&E's ratepayers are also citizens of California and thus deserve the choice of renewable, local power if they want it.

We'll find out about the outcome of the lawsuit. Hopefully it will prevent me from having to vote no on Prop 16 by removing it from the ballot completely. Until then, I will continue my own small campaign for more choice and competition in California.