By Count Friedrich von Olsen
In the last fortnight, well over half a decade after Southern California Edison engaged in a cascade of mistakes and boneheaded decisions in moving ahead with the installation of defective replacement steam generators in 2010 and 2011 that ultimately resulted in tube leaks, system degradation, the release of radiation and ultimately the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant, two further elements of the crooked deal hatched in 2014 by our crooked governor and his cronies to transfer the lion’s share of the $4.7 billion cost of closing down the San Onofre plant from Edison to that company’s customers played out…
In the first, Maribeth Bushey, an administrative law judge with the California Public Utilities Commission who was looking into the matter relating to having Southern California Edison ratepayers cover $3.29 billion – 70 percent – of the nuclear plant closure cost at San Onofre was hired as a vice president of Advanced Microgrid Solutions, which is essentially a corporate extension of Edison…
In the second, Governor Brown appointed Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra as California Attorney General, virtually assuring that everyone involved in this illegal mish-mash will go unprosecuted…
In 2012 what was supposed to be a routine refueling and replacement of the reactor vessel head at San Onofre resulted in a radioactive leak largely – though not entirely – inside the containment shell and the entire reactor was shut down as a precaution, whereupon an inspection of both of the reactor’s units found premature wear on over 3,000 tubes in 15,000 places, a by-product of shoddy engineering and workmanship during the 2010/2011 steam generator replacement. Company officials, in what was likely the most responsible move they could make and which, to their credit they did make, elected to shut the facility down, permanently. Following that debacle, they set about at once finding a way to minimize the expense of that move, which, if things had been done rightly and properly, they would have borne in its entirety. Instead, they essentially bribed our governor and a whole host of California’s public officials to transfer that burden to Edison’s customers…
Edison plied its case to the California Public Utilities Commission, the members of which are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the governor, that the company – or more precisely it’s stockholders – should not bear the brunt of the plant closure cost. Ultimately, the commission would sign off on an arrangement through which Edison would be free to defray 70 percent of the cost through rate hikes on its customers…
At that time, Michael Peevey was the chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission. Peevey was the former president of Edison, having served in that capacity before he was appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission originally by Governor Gray Davis. He is married to Carol Liu, a Democratic California State Senator who left office on November 30. He is a major mover and shaker in the Democratic Party’s California fundraising machine…
During 2012 and 2013, Peevey was engaged in a secret dialogue with Stephen Pickett, Edison’s executive vice president, and other Edison corporate officers, the gist of which pertained to how Edison might ensure that the cost of the San Onofre plant closure would be transferred to the company’s customers rather than its stockholders. Mr. Peevey, in his role as chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission, was supposed to be looking after the interests of California’s citizens. Instead, he was colluding with the industry he was supposed to be regulating. Over time, a plan evolved. The deal was sealed, essentially, on March 26, 2013, far from Southern California it would turn out, at the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, Poland, where Peevey met with Pickett and hammered out a deal by which utility customers are to pay $3.29 billion of the $4.7 billion in costs for the full shuttering of the plant.
Between 2011 and 2014, $4.4 million originating with energy companies was donated to the Democratic Party. A considerable amount of that money came from Edison. In roughly the same time period, according to Consumer Watchdog, the Democratic Party infused Brown’s reelection campaign fund with $4.7 million…
An egregious example of this pay-to-skate formula is Southern California Edison’s donation of $130,000 to the California Democratic Party on March 26, 2013, the very day that Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey was in the swanky Bristol Hotel in Warsaw cutting the above-referenced deal with Mr. Pickett…
There are other indicators that our governor is into this up to his neck. Consider that on June 6, 2013, the day before the utility announced it would not seek to restart San Onofre, Governor Brown was meeting with President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Palm Springs. In such exalted company, one might be expected to turn his cell phone ringer off. Not our governor. In the midst of that meeting, Governor Brown received a call from Edison International Chairman Ted Craver. With the two presidents standing by and forced to engage in a little bit of idle chit-chat, Governor Brown took Craver’s call, during which Craver informed him of the decision to close the San Onofre plant for good. According to an email Craver wrote to his board of directors, the governor was supportive of Edison’s plan to douse the reactor. During the call, Craver provided Brown with talking points, to the effect that Edison was “taking the high road” and “insuring system reliability for our customers.” The next day Brown put out a news release in which he was quoted as saying, “Since the San Onofre nuclear power plant went offline last year, energy utilities and the state have worked to provide Southern California with reliable electric power year round.” A coincidence, perhaps…
We now know these things because of the persistent and intrepid efforts of a public interest lawyer down in San Diego – former assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Aguirre. Mr. Aguirre and private investigators working for him unearthed evidence of the Warsaw meeting between Peevey and Pickett almost two years after it occurred. Mr. Peevey’s failure to disclose that meeting is a violation of the law, but he has yet to be prosecuted. Late last year, the commission fined Edison for having engaged in the secret conferences with Mr. Peevey. Edison thought that was the end of it. But many people feel that those secret meetings set up a circumstance that has resulted in customers taking a $3.3 billion hit. Mr. Aguirre’s investigators and others have dredged up some other interesting tidbits…
It seems that our governor has taken an interest, as he should, in matters pertaining to utilities and both the development and delivery of energy in the Golden State. I must report, however, that some of that interest pertains not to making sure that the citizens of California are getting a square deal, but that he is able to cash in personally on the energy bonanza. I have it on the highest authority that last year our governor used his executive power to extract from California’s oil regulating agency maps, geologic surveys and records relating to oil and natural gas reserves beneath his family’s 2,700-acre ranch in Colusa County. Furthermore, Governor Brown has not merely entrusted decisions pertaining to California’s utility companies to the commission but has on occasion pressured commissioners to change their votes. Communications in the form of emails and text messages that have been obtained by lawyers, investigators and journalists show that Governor Brown is told in advance – well in advance – of actions to be taken by the commission. Why and how? Because his right-hand woman, that is, his chief of staff, is Nancy McFadden, who was previously a senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric…
There are indicators that graft has invaded our state government at the highest level…
Governor Brown’s office has steadfastly refused to release his emails, even when they bear directly on issues of public policy such as those involving the California Public Utility Commission. But some of these emails have been obtained indirectly from some of those to whom they have been mailed and communications between others have surfaced, the contents of which raise serious questions about the degree of the governor’s complicity in some shady dealing and his inability or unwillingness to hold commissioners and others who have violated the public trust to account…
Earlier this year, there was a ray of hope. It seemed, for a fleeting moment at least, that the festering circumstance involving the closure of the San Onofre plant was going to be given the disinfectant of some sunlight. In May, due to Aguirre’s incessant importuning, California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine J.K. Sandoval and Administrative Law Judge Maribeth Bushey gave indication that they wanted to revisit the entire matter. Judge Bushey and Ms. Sandoval said the meeting between Michael Peevey and Stephen Pickett gave them pause and they wanted to determine if something untoward went on…
Now comes word that Bushey has been hired by Advanced Microgrid Solutions, an energy-storage start-up with its corporate headquarters in San Francisco. The company was founded by Susan Kennedy, herself a former member of the California Public Utilities Commission as well as the chief of staff to Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and cabinet secretary in the administration of former governor Gray Davis. Advanced Mircorgrid Solutions is a creature of Edison, described variously as an Edison contractor or one of its corporate subdivisions. Bushey is to lead Advanced Microgrid’s legal and government relations divisions. She left her gig with the California Public Utilities Commission in October, prior to the inquiry she had begun in May being completed…
Governor Brown’s appointment of Xavier Becerra, a tried and true Democrat, as California Attorney General coincided with the California Supreme Court’s refusal to take up an appeal on a lawsuit brought by Mr. Aguirre seeking release of 65 known emails that passed between Governor Brown and/or his office and the California Public Utilities Commission regarding the San Onofre nuclear plant. Both the governor and the commission have declined to release those communications. In 2015, Mr. Aguirre brought suit over the matter in San Francisco Superior Court, which agreed to take the case. But the utilities commission sought relief from the appeals court, which agreed with the California Public Utilities Commission and blocked the emails’ release. Aguirre sought review by the California Supreme Court, which denied that petition…
One hand washes the other, it seems. Attorney General Becerra is not going to prosecute our crooked governor. I guess, in a court of law, we can’t prove that our governor is a crook, even though he is one…
Here’s hoping he sues me and the Sentinel for libel. But he won’t do that. Truth is an absolute defense in any libel action. Besides, if he does sue, then we will get to see those emails, which will prove he is a crook…