Forum… Or Against ’em

Count Friedrich von Olsen

By Count Friedrich von Olsen

How is some of California’s taxpayers’ money being spent? On high priced lawyers who are constructing criminal defenses for corrupt current and former California Public Utilities Commission members who are the targets of criminal investigations. How much money is being used in this way? The best estimate at the moment is $7.4 million. And what is the money being used for? The California Public Utilities Commission members under the microscope hope it will prevent a full-blown investigation from transitioning into a prosecution, the end result of which would very likely be that commissioners or some commission staff members would end up in prison…
It is edifying to see how the arrangement for legal services evolved. Initially it was done in secret, when the commission retained the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton for $49,000, just $1,000 below the $50,000 amount that triggers an examination of the expenditure by other state officials, including the Department of General Services and a public approval process. That $49,000 paid for a few minutes more than 55-and-a-half hours of legal services, given that Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton charges $882 per hour. Eventually, the arrangement for legal services became a matter of public record, and Michael Picker, the commission chairman proved unabashed about extending the contract with Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. At present, California taxpayers have paid the law firm at least $7.39 million to represent various members of the California Public Utilities Commission…
The California Attorney General’s Office initiated a criminal investigation relating to the California Public Utilities Commission in 2014. In 2015, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge authorized three search warrants stemming from that investigation. One part of the investigation involves looking into how former board chairman, Michael Peevey, a former Southern California Edison president, traveled out of the country to hold a secret meeting with Edison officials at the swanky Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, Poland, where he cut a deal with Edison whereby Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric ratepayers were consigned to coughing up $3.3 billion, roughly 75 percent of the cost of shuttering the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which grew inoperable because of Edison’s technical mismanagement of that facility…
Another relates to Dr. Tim Brown, who from 2011 until early 2014 was a senior scientist in the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California at Irvine and was also serving as a consultant to the Energy Commission in drawing up a map for determining the best locations for hydrogen refueling stations throughout the state to serve the hydrogen fuel cell cars which are soon to become commercially available. After serving as the architect of the “hydrogen highway,” Tim Brown resigned his position and then formed a company, First Element Fuel, which tapped into the hydrogen station grants being handed out by the Energy Commission, reportedly to the tune of $10 million…
A third investigation relates to what happened up in San Bruno, where a pipeline blast killed eight people there in 2010. When the City of San Bruno filed a lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), San Bruno lawyers during the discovery process came across a cache of internal PG&E emails as well as exchanges with commissioners and commission staff that indicate there was something less than an arm’s length relationship between the commission and PG&E. In particular, San Bruno officials consider some of the communications between commission member Mike Florio and PG&E to be a “smoking gun,” showing that PG&E was dictating California Public Utilities Commission policy and that Florio was involved in a conflict-of-interest under California law. An indication that there is substance to San Bruno’s suspicions is the manner in which PG&E fire the officials demonstrated to have had the cozy relationship with Florio…
Nothing has happened to the commission members, largely because the high priced lawyers paid by taxpayer dollars are putting stumbling blocks in the way of anyone, including investigators and journalists seeking public documents relating to the commission, thereby making sure that the commissioners will never be held to account let alone be punished for their criminal neglect and betrayal of the citizens they were sworn into office to protect…

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