San Francisco 8, PG&E 3

AND SO CITY Clerk Gloria Young, formerly of public power Palo Alto, called the roll on one of the most historic votes in San Francisco history.

Sups. Tom Ammiano and Sophie Maxwell, who had put up the earlier public power-lite charter amendment, did the right thing and voted for the new-and-improved version that would make the measure on the November ballot public power-heavy. Then came Sup. Matt Gonzalez, who last week forced the supervisors to devise a compromise proposal, and then Sup. Aaron Peskin, who listed a batch of public power cities that did well during the energy crisis, and then Sups. Gerado Sandoval, Jake McGoldrick, Mark Leno, and Chris Daly. Sup. Tony Hall voted against the measure – but he had provided the key vote and a key argument last week to help Gonzalez win his compromise. Sups. Leland Yee and Gavin Newsom voted against and said nothing, knowing the tides were running against them.

The vote was 8-3, sending the measure into battle against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. with a nice show of force and an even nicer display of last-moment unity. It was a major victory for the public power forces, in particular for Gonzalez, a Green Party member who claimed he had gone "moderate" to craft his compromise proposal.

He is quite right. The language that allows the city to issue revenue bonds to acquire PG&E's grid is in fact moderate and sensible. Even city power czar Ed Smeloff, who originally argued against including such acquisition language, says it's reasonable because it says the city can only issue bonds if the sale will not result in a customer rate hike that raises electricity rates higher than PG&E's. It also requires a feasibility study, approval by the supervisors, and other reasonable hurdles.

A key point of the measure is that it will give the city the necessary leverage to fight the Mirant Corp.'s plans to expand its Potrero plant and to deal effectively from now on with PG&E. The city will finally have the ability to finance new power generation of its own (hopefully depending heavily on renewables), to enter into long-term power contracts, and to take over the grid if it makes financial sense. That will give the city a tremendous amount of control over how power from any plant inside or outside San Francisco is shipped through the city, and the city will have standing to argue to the California Energy Commission that the Mirant plant is not needed and not welcome, that the city can do the job.

The next step is for city officials and the public power people to work together to enlarge the public power coalition to beat PG&E. Then the city can move ahead full force to contract out for renewable power, to build its own plants, to plan its own energy future, and to bring its own cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to its citizens and businesses after all these years. Meanwhile, the supervisors should push Smeloff and Mayor Willie Brown to fully oppose the Mirant expansion, by passing an ordinance laying out the city's official opposition and doing everything possible to stop it. The bugles have sounded, the battle is on.