Earlier this month California state legislators grilled the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on it’s lax safety oversight and financial problems. President Michael Peevey was caught by a TV investigative reporter at a winery conference, instead of answering questions at a senate hearing in Sacramento: Peeveys Priority: Senate Hearing or Napa Winery? Legislators voted to wipe out the CPUC’s $1.4 billion budget to “force the regulatory agency to justify how it spends its money.”
On Thursday May 23, PG&E customers continue to demand safe utility oversight from the CPUC. President Peevey started off the CPUC business meeting by saying since everyone had been there before he’d skip the safety instructions for the building.
Garril Page, of Marin County was one of a group of PG&E customers who spoke at their business meeting during public comments. She said this:
“Lax oversight and failure to regulate too-cozy utilities… How often does this require restatement before there is corrective action?
It is not Jack Hagan’s military mind we need, but a surgical strike at the head of the CPUC, to stop unsafe, unreliable conditions, abuse of funds and fiscal improprieties.
The public is threatened by deferred maintenance of utility infrastructure, improperly regulated, radiation-spewing devices, overburdened power poles loaded with snooping, profit-producing, data collectors that topple and burn.
The CPUC used bureaucratic box-checking to conceal the number of exploding underground vaults. How will the truth about power pole fires be hidden?
The truth about Smart Meters is being revealed despite the CPUC’s apparent indifference to scientific research and aversion to public testimony.
No amount of a carcinogen is safe, radiation effects are cumulative, the damage is irreversible, and for the privilege of toxic exposure we are charged opt-out fees.
The California Public Utilities Commission: where the public gets burned and corporations get rate increases.”
Bravo Garril! There were many other terrific speakers too.