Here comes the public power initiative!
By Bruce B. Brugmann (Scroll down to see the historic Mirkarimi/Peskin/City Attorney resolution)
Today, at the Board of Supervisors meeting, Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin introduced
a Charter Amendment mandating that the city's Public Utilities Commission create a plan to establish a retail power agency in San Francisco and start the process of kicking PG&E out of City Hall and the rest of the city.
The amendment, as our editorial in Wednesday's Guardian outlines, would "provide the badly needed kick start to get city officials to act on San Francisco's historic mandate for a municipal electricity system."
The move is prompted by the battle over whether the city should replace the ruinous Mirant private power plant with city-owned power plants called peakers at the foot of Potrero Hill. PG&E has quietly orchestrated a major political and public relations onslaught to kill the peakers because they would be what PG&E fears most: city-owned public power.
In fact, as Tim Redmond's blog discloses, PG&E even marched seven lobbyists (yes, seven) into the office of would-be-green Mayor Gavin Newsom, who once personally backed the plan and whose Public Utilities Commission backs the plan. PG&E jacked Newsom around and muscled him into asking for a delay in today's scheduled power plant vote to give PG&E more time to kill the peakers.
The rationale: some sort of vague and ridiculous idea of retrofitting the Mirant plant and keeping the PG&E uber alles status quo.
IF PG&E ultimately loses the peaker vote (and it will be close), PG&E will most likely run a referendum on the November ballot against this dread move to peaker public power. So the Mirkarimi and Peskin move is aimed at putting a counter initiative on the November ballot and breathing new life into the historic battle to enforce the federal Raker Act (which mandated San Francisco have a public power system) and bringing our own cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to the people of San Francisco. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) The initiative would be timed to take advantage of the expected heavy turnout of Obama forces for the presidential election and for the election of supervisors.
The legislative digest sums up the amendment in a paragraph of City Hall legalese:
The amendment is to "address the need to change electricity production, delivery, and use to ensure environmentally sustainable and affordable electric supplies for residents, businesses, and city departments and to require the Public Utiliies Commmission to comprehensively study and determine the most effective means of providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasonably-priced electric service to San Francisco residents, businesses, and city departments."
The amendment was written and signed by Deputy City Attorney Theresa Mueller and approved as to form by City Attorney Dennis Herrera. It was introduced by the president of the board (Peskin) and a powerful supervisor who is obviously running for board president and mayor (Mirkarimi). These references are important: when the public power movement was reinvigorated in the late l990s, it faced a massive lineup of PG&E stalwarts inside City Hall: City Attorney Louise Rennie, Mayor Willie Brown, the PUC executive director and PUC commission, and all the supervisors with the notable exception of Sup. Tom Ammiano.
Mikarimi led the two famous initiative campaigns as campaign manager in 2000 and 2001, which PG&E defeated with muscle, mutli milliions, and staunch daily paper support. Now, Mirkarimi is inside City Hall in a starring role leading the charge for community choice aggregation (CCA) and now a public power initiative. And the whole thing scares the hell out of PG&E.as never before.
.
Hurray! The battle is on!
P.S. PG&E marches in: You can see how PG&E works by seeing who was at the critical May 5 meeting in the mayor's office. No public power people, nobody from the Sierra Club, and no environmental justice activists who are also opposing the peakers (but for understandable environmental reasons.) But standing tall at the secret meeting were seven PG&E lobbyists, led by Travis Kiyota, and such PG&E friendly folks as PUC Commissioner Dick Sklar (remember him?), Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, and a representative from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
PG&E and NRDC arranged to have a timely letter on NRDC letterhead, dated May 12 , come to the supervisors from Robert Kennedy Jr., with ccs to Newsom, President Michael Peevey of the California Public Utilities Commission, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The letter was of course released to the press and the public on the eve of the vote. PG&E, NRDC, and Kennedy had at least one line right: "Where San Francisco ultimately decides to invest its precious energy dollars is a choice that will send a message to cities around the country."
The tipoff: nowhere do the PG&E supporters, including the Chronicle editorialists who suddenly took a down-with-the-peakers stand yesterday, nor the Examiner, with a wimpy story today on Newsom's sudden change of plans, mention those dread three letters that divulge the secret agent at work (PG&E) nor that dread phrase that tells what the secret agent is really up to (killing public power.) C'mon, folks, this isn't that hard to figure out. Is there some law somewhere that says the local media can't cover what PG&E is doing to perpetuate the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and once again kill public power? (See "The Shame of Hearst" in previous Guardian and blog items.)
On guard. The pubic power forces are once again moving up to the front lines, muskets at the ready. B3 (who sees the fumes from the Mirant plant every minute of every day from my Potrero Hill office window)
Click here to read Mirkarimi and Peskin's recent Charter Amendment.
Click here to read Redmond's recent blog, PG&E offers Newsom a blank check
Click here for this week's PG&E editorial.
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Comments (3)
Great News! But The Peakers Aren't Public Power...
It is excellent news that Mirkarimi and Peskin are going to take this power plant lemon and make some sun-shiny lemonade out of it.
And that is exactly how we should gain public power, by taking it back to the voters, not by building fossil fuel power plants. Dirty power isn't public power because it's bad for the public.
I'll conclude with the same challenge that I offered Tim Redmond on the politics blog -
What public power?
A polluting plant that will be spending the next 18-30 years attempting to pay itself off and just break even, if we're lucky? And if natural gas peaks and permanently spikes in price (as oil has) during that 18-30 years (which is highly likely), San Francisco will lose tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars because the plant will -never- pay itself off.
A few years ago, R.W. Beck did a study showing us how we could take over PG&E's power lines and -make- hundreds of millions of dollars for San Francisco, not lose tens to hundreds of millions. Your peaker version of 'public power' would do the latter, while continuing to pollute the Bayview for decades. And if by setting a bad example to the world, it contributes to a continuing global climate crisis without end; the Bayview will end up under water.
This isn't public power - it's public debt - along with decades of public pollution and potential eviction by flood.
Eric Brooks
San Francisco Green Party
Sustainability Working Group
Posted by Eric Brooks | May 13, 2008 06:15 PM
reposted from the politics blog, since eric did too.
eric,
jeez.
come on and face the facts: PG&E is way WAY better at this stuff than you are.
while your colleague joshua arce was talking big and writing: "At some point this admittedly complicated issue must become a serious policy discussion, and I think it finally has," and while he claimed that your work was "the most important catalyst for turning the City around on this issue." the FACT was that PG&E was (effectively) pushing what they always push - a continued monopoly on local power generation.
they used you as a cover, they are STILL using you as a cover, and you are only too willing to be that for them.
so face the fact: they are USING you, and playing you for chumps.
you have never faced the engineering reality: the state ISO requires local power generation.
you have never faced the other engineering reality: the peakers are cleaner than the Mirant plant.
and you aren't facing the political reality: PG&E owns this issue at city hall until there is a united front against them.
if there could only be a unified effort to get PG&E out of the electricity monopoly, THEN we could work together to push them out for good, build a sustainable energy future, and retire the peakers before they are ever turned on. instead, you are shielding PG&E and protecting their power monopoly, at the expense of the people of Potrero Hill and the Bayview. get a clue.
Posted by factcheck | May 13, 2008 08:04 PM
'factcheck' why don't you reveal who you really are and tell us all what you yourself are doing to promote public power and green energy, and to get PG&E out of the City. (My guess is that you are doing little or nothing. Otherwise you would openly reveal yourself instead of taking hyperbolic cheap shots from the side lines.)
The organizations I am involved with helped found the Community Choice Energy Alliance to fight for large scale renewables and public power at the same time, while kicking PG&E out of the energy game.
And PG&E isn't playing anybody, they are (in their eyes) just cynically taking advantage of circumstances. The coalition we founded last year to stop the peakers finally started getting some traction with the Board of Supervisors recently and it was only then that PG&E started turning on the juice.
And as I have said before, PG&E's meddling has actually made it harder, not easier to stop the peaker plants. We would be happy to see them sit this one out.
cheers
Eric
Posted by Eric Brooks | May 14, 2008 12:07 AM