By Count Friedrich von Olsen
We are nearing the end of the 16-year-in-total reign of Jerry Brown as California Governor. Add to that the eight years he spent as California Attorney General [not to mention his two terms as Oakland mayor] and there is grounds to assert that he has proven the most influential of California politicians ever in its 168-year history. His competition for this title would include John Weller, governor and U.S. senator; John Downey, governor, lieutenant governor and assemblyman; James Gillett, governor, congressman and California state senator; Hiram Johnson, governor and U.S, senator; George Perkins, governor, U.S. senator and state senator; Leland Stanford, who was both governor and U.S. senator; Pete Wilson, both governor, U.S. senator and the mayor of San Diego and a member of the California Assembly; Governor Brown’s own father, Pat Brown, who was governor, California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney; Goodwin Knight, who was governor, lieutenant governor and a Superior Court judge; Earl Warren, governor, Alameda County district attorney, California attorney general and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; Ronald Reagan, governor and president of the United States and Richard Nixon, U.S. president, U.S. vice president, U.S. senator and congressman. If he is not the most influential California politician ever, Jerry Brown is among the top four or five…
Readers of this column know that I am not much of a Jerry Brown fan. Sure, despite his being a Democrat, I was enthusiastic about the prospect for a new beginning he represented when he was first elected governor back in 1974, based largely on the hope that as a 30-something newcomer he would prove to be an energetic and open-minded innovator. I was largely disappointed. As a shipping magnate, I was a bit concerned about his election as mayor in Oakland, as occasionally – very occasionally – one of my ships must harbor, offload or take on cargo at the Port of Oakland. I weathered the storm of his eight years in office as Oakland mayor. I was not particularly enthusiastic about his time in office as California attorney general. I’ll say this much for him: he didn’t indict me. Then again, I don’t think I merited indictment. Unfortunately, I am less than convinced that Jerry Brown has not been deserving of being indicted himself. Recently more has come to light that confirms me in my suspicions with regard to the motivation of California’s 34th and 39th governor…
We learned late last week that the California legislature, which is dominated by Democrats in both the upper and lower houses, has rejected Governor Brown’s efforts to push through legislation that would shield electrical utilities from a major portion of financial liability for wildfires. This year’s legislative session ends next week, on August 31, and time has run out on a yet amorphous bill proposed by Governor Brown which would have left to the discretion of judges how much utilities would have to pay when their equipment causes wildfires. The proposal was to greatly compromise the current California standard that holds electrical utility companies entirely liable for the costs of fires brought on by sparking or other ignition related to power lines, generators, dynamos and whatnot. On August 9 there was discussion and debate over the proposal in the legislature. The consensus among a sizable contingent of the lawmakers was that what Governor Brown is asking for would provide utility companies with so much legal and financial insulation that it would disincentivize their maintaining the good condition and safety of their equipment. The rationale that Governor Brown had in proposing the legislation was that the way current California law holds utilities accountable and responsible for the damage from fires resulting from their equipment malfunctions even in those instances where they followed safety rules can be extremely onerous in terms of cost to those companies and might result in either the companies raising their rates on their customers to astronomical levels, or going bankrupt, or both. Part of the reasoning for the proposed new law is that climate change is a contributing factor to the phenomenon of increasing wildfires, so holding the utility companies to the current standard might be a form of scapegoating…
There is a chance that the legislature will take the matter up next year, at which point Governor Brown will no longer be governor…
That is probably a good thing. I perceive a good degree of self interest on the governor’s part here, self interest that runs contrary to the public interest. He has a track record on such things related to California utilities and its energy industry, does our governor…
After Southern California Edison engaged in a series of errors by installing 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, our governor hatched a crooked deal in 2014 to allow 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. At that time, Michael Peevey was the chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission. Mr. 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, who had been Governor Brown’s chief of staff during his first go-round as governor in the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Peevey is married to Carol Liu, who was a Democratic California State Senator from 2008 to 2016. Mr. Peevey is a major mover and shaker in the Democratic Party’s California fundraising machine…
During 2012 and 2013, Mr. 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 Mr. Peevey met with Mr. 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 Governor Brown’s reelection campaign fund with $4.7 million…
On March 26, 2013, the very day that Mr. Peevey, in his capacity as Public Utilities Commission president was in the luxurious Bristol Hotel in Warsaw cutting the above-referenced deal with Mr. Pickett, Southern California Edison made a donation of $130,000 to the California Democratic Party Then, less than three months later, 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 the midst of such exalted company, did our governor turn his cell phone ringer off? Nope. In the middle of his dialogue with two of the most powerful men on the planet, Governor Brown received a call from Edison International Chairman Ted Craver, who is apparently pretty powerful himself. With the two presidents standing by, Governor Brown took Mr. Craver’s call, during which he was informed of the decision to close the San Onofre plant for good. According to an email Mr. Craver wrote to his board of directors, the governor was supportive of Edison’s plan to douse the reactor. During the call, Mr. Craver provided Governor Brown with talking points, to the effect that Edison was “taking the high road” and “insuring system reliability for our customers.” The next day Governor 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.” This was no coincidence…
In 2010, a gas pipeline in San Bruno burst, killing eight people in the accompanying blast. The City of San Bruno filed a lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and the city’s 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, who was appointed by Governor Brown, and PG&E to be a “smoking gun,” showing that PG&E was dictating California Public Utilities Commission policy and that Mr. 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 fired the officials demonstrated to have had the cozy relationship with Mr. Florio. Note that Pacific Gas & Electric is a major – supermajor – Jerry Brown campaign donor…
There has been an ongoing criminal investigation into the California Public Utilities Commission for almost four years now over some of the commission members’ backchannel dealings with utility executives. It has gone on so long that several of the things being investigated now fall outside the statute of limitations. Nothing has happened to the commission members, in some measure because high-priced lawyers paid for by the taxpayers put stumbling blocks in the way of anyone, including investigators and journalists seeking public documents relating to the commission. And someone is protecting these miscreants in the backrooms of government. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was appointed by Governor Brown and is one of his firmest political allies. Together, they and other figures in our government have it all locked up, making sure that the commissioners will never be held to account nor punished for their criminal neglect and betrayal of the citizens they were sworn into office to protect…
And those who are being protected have not been given immunity from prosecution simply because they are our governor’s political allies. Governor Brown does not want people mucking around too deeply into issues involving utilities and energy policy in the Golden State and how licensing of energy projects is carried out. In 2015, he 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…