Goliath will shrug

San Diego attorney Maria Severson wrote a letter today (November 12) noting that both the California administrative branch (governor's office) and judiciary (Judicial Council's Governmental Affairs Office) have stepped in to stop reforms of the California Public Utilities Commission passed by the legislative branch (the state legislature).

The Judicial Council of California is the rule-making arm of the state court system. It is headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Thus, Severson addressed her letter to Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, chief justice and head of the Judicial Council of California.

First, Severson noted the collusion of CPUC officials and investor-owned utilities. The 2010 explosion in San Bruno leveled a neighborhood and killed eight people, yet CPUC commissioners, as revealed in emails, helped Pacific Gas & Electric get administrative law judges who would be soft on the utility. Then, Southern California Edison and the then-president of the CPUC (a former president of Edison) huddled in secret meetings so that ratepayers would have to pay $3.3 billion for mistakes that management made at the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant.

These two well-publicized cases led the legislature to pass much-needed reforms, such as one giving persons the ability to sue the CPUC in superior court — and not be forced to go to the appeals court, which could refuse to hear the case. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the reform legislation in October.

Also, it has now been discovered, the Judicial Council's lobbyist wrote to Anthony Rendon, a state Assembly member, in May of this year, opposing a key CPUC reform bill. Senior attorney Daniel Pone said in the letter that superior courts don't have the money to take on the extra burden of CPUC cases (even though a new courthouse for San Diego has been announced, which will take bushels of money). Pone's letter found other reasons to oppose reform of the CPUC.

Severson poses several questions in her letter. "Some ask, was the Governmental Affairs Office's lobbying against the utility reforms undertaken at the behest of the utilities?... Many believe the CPUC has become an arm of the private utilities, and that the CPUC reaches its decisions in secret conversations between the CPUC and utility officials and executives."

Severson doesn't say it, so I will pose the question: Are the administrative and judicial branches secretly helping the CPUC and the investor-owned utilities to help them wiggle off the hook on their redolent activities that would never be approved by an honest judicial system? Is there a quiet arrangement so that this will never get to court?