Power to the people? Not with this board ...
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
October 14, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco residents are used to getting a jolt at election time and this year’s ballot promises to be no different.
If many of the initiatives and the campaigns behind them seem familiar, it’s because they are, since activists in The City by the Bay seem to think they can wear down the electorate with repeated ballot attempts after previous ones have failed.
Can’t get enough funding for affordable housing through normal legislative channels? Slap it on the ballot. Can’t stop spending habits that leave San Francisco with a whopping annual budget deficit? Let’s hit property owners with a transfer tax.
And so it is with the latest attempt to take over Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s municipal utilities — Proposition H — this time with the happy-face title of San Francisco Clean Energy Act. You’ve seen this act so many times, it’s like the latest staging of “The Chorus Line,’’ a slightly different cast, perhaps, but with all the same time-honored lines.
San Francisco has been wrestling with the idea of public power for almost as long as there’s been electricity, turning down various measures to achieve that goal more than 10 times, the last in 2001. At that time, there appeared to be momentum for a potential change in the power structure, since California residents were rightfully furious over extensive blackouts and onerous price-gouging by utility companies.
But one thing has stopped public power — the thought of handing your electricity switch from a utility company to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — an idea so frightening to anyone with knowledge of local politics that the light always goes out on election day.
This year’s version relies on the promise of “sustainable, cleaner energy’’ attained through a municipal takeover, but it has a rather remarkable admission at its core. Prop. H, if passed, would give the Board of Supervisors the ability to issue revenue bonds for utilities in unlimited amounts, without voter approval. And for a group that treats taxpayer funds as Monopoly money — that is arguably the scariest thing on the ballot.
Now don’t get me wrong — I am no fan of PG&E, as highlighted in many columns over the years bashing it for its corporate greed and contempt. Those are traits the utility giant has worked hard to earn, attributes that public-power advocates have sought to exploit.
And unless you’re a YouTube junkie, you may have missed one ad that attacks PG&E — and it’s a dandy. Two corporate guys from PG&E in suits, walk around San Francisco, pointing to individuals and groups, saying “I’m going to f--- all of them,’’ before getting to the grand finale in which they say they are going to “f--- the whole city.’’ And it’s shocking, and funny, and twisted, but it also reminds viewers that they are trying to do to San Francisco what a lot of supervisors actually have been doing for years.
Most estimates have the cost of acquiring PG&E’s utility distribution supplies around $4 billion, a price that in the current economic climate is a deal-breaker.
Yet the buck wouldn’t necessarily stop there. The measure gives the supervisors carte blanche to issue bonds for any utility, be it water or cable or wi-fi, and the voters would have no say. That’s a power grab worth noting.
Prop. H proponents insist that they wouldn’t take over PG&E’s system unless it has been determined that it’s feasible, based on a study by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. But the City Controller’s Office, which is charged with giving an unbiased estimate of the study, said it would cost $825,000 to $1.75 million, and said that the acquisition of the utility network would cost “billions.’’
Spending billions to save money may seem like a normal course by the standards of today, but I’m not prepared to give that right to a legislative body that has been shown to be erratic, vindictive and often just as arrogant as the corporation it seeks to dismantle.
But count on one thing: If the measure loses, it will be back, with a new campaign offering brighter promises.
Follow The Examiner
