Utility Customers Will Get Screwed Again Over Camp Fire

Documents reveal how California Gov. Gavin Newsom protected PG&E later on the company acquired deadly fires and pleaded guilty to the felony killing of 84 people.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Three days later on Gov. Gavin Newsom historic his 2018 ballot victory, one of his major corporate campaign donors caused a mass killing.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company pleaded guilty in June 2020 to felony involuntary manslaughter for killing 84 Californians in the 2018 Army camp Burn.

PG&E'due south officials walked out of courtroom to go back to work on turning a turn a profit, aided by state policies Newsom crafted to help the company.

"Just the depth of information technology, information technology'due south shocking," said Steve Bradley, a retired Cal Fire dispatcher whose grandmother was killed by PG&East. "Even when they are held criminally responsible, nobody actually takes that responsibility. So what'southward to stop them?"

Bradley's grandmother Ethel Colleen Riggs was among PG&E's 84 felony manslaughter victims.

In the months after the offense, Newsom not only signed new financial protections for PG&E into law, his role hired private lawyers in New York who wrote the legislative language.

Confidential emails and documents obtained by ABC10 reveal the New York constabulary offices of constabulary business firm O'Melveny and Myers drafted AB 1054 in the Leap of 2019, before it was introduced in the state legislature.

The documents were obtained as part of ABC10'southward news serial Burn - POWER - MONEY: How Governor Gavin Newsom Protected PG&E, which investigated how California gave financial protections to PG&E by the country government in the wake of crimes.

AB 1054 resulted in PG&E obtaining official state safety certificates for two burn seasons since the Army camp Burn down.

The police was written past the lawyers under a contract to represent Newsom'south office in PG&Due east'southward bankruptcy, land records show.

After AB 1054 was already signed into law, drafting of legislation was added to an amended version of O'Melveny'southward contract.

Payment records obtained through country transparency laws show O'Melveny billed California taxpayers $iii one thousand thousand during the time when the police took shape.

Investment banking concern Guggenheim too participated in crafting AB 1054 and charged $3.7 million during that fourth dimension.

Adding to concerns about a lack of independence of PG&E's country regulators, the emails reveal that the California Public Utilities Committee (CPUC) was assigned to write sections of AB 1054 by Newsom'southward hired attorneys.

The CPUC, which prosecutors say harmed the Camp Fire criminal investigations, did not respond to a list of written questions for this report.

The agency is refusing to hand over its communications with primal Newsom staffers effectually the time it waived a $200 million fine to aid PG&E exit bankruptcy, prompting ABC10 to file conform nether state transparency laws.

"If the suggestion is somehow I'm influenced by that, you're wrong. Admittedly unequivocally incorrect," Newsom said at a 2019 news conference when ABC10 asked whether he could be a neutral broker of PG&E's bankruptcy. "And there'due south not i thing you can point to during my tenure as governor that would advise otherwise."

"I merely recall that that's naive," said Alice Stebbins, who served as the CPUC's executive director at the time. "Of class it has an influence."

Newsom's staff declined or ignored at least ten interview requests on the PG&E crunch from ABC10, dating dorsum nearly three years to his time as governor-elect.

Staffers for Newsom pointed us to others for comment, including a lobbying group called "Up From the Ashes," which was founded by attorneys for wildfire victims.

"The intent of AB 1054 was to keep utilities solvent if there was a burn," wrote Steve Campora, a burn down victims attorney who is listed as CEO of Up From the Ashes on the grouping'southward government filings.

Campora wrote ABC10 to express concern nigh PG&East'southward stock price falling due to the company's suspected involvement in sparking the massive Dixie Fire, which has become the state'south single largest wildfire at virtually 500,000 acres and continues to grow.

"People need to understand that equally a result of AB 1054, PG&E's financial moving picture will not be damaged by the Dixie burn down," Campora wrote. "The stock price hurts the prior victims because it lessens the coin in the Trust, but [in that location] is no real fiscal danger to PG&E."

Newsom'south office sent a written statement which did not directly answer any of the 18 specific questions ABC10 submitted by electronic mail.

"No governor in California history has done more to hold PG&E accountable and force the company to brand fundamental modify," said the statement emailed by Newsom spokesperson Amelia Matier, which appears in its entirety at the lesser of this article.

Comparisons to other governors are of minimal use.

PG&Eastward was convicted of its first half dozen felonies in 2016 during Gov. Brownish's administration when a federal jury establish PG&Due east guilty of obstruction and breaking federal gas pipeline laws in the deadly 2010 San Bruno Gas explosion.

Just the Military camp Burn was PG&East's outset homicide conviction.

More a calendar month before Gov. Newsom'south part finished drafting AB 1054, Butte County prosecutors announced that PG&Due east was responsible for sparking the Camp Fire and under investigation for criminal manslaughter charges.

'Beyond A BAILOUT'

To victims' families, Newsom's policy response goes well beyond bailing PG&E out. They encounter PG&E being rewarded for crimes.

"If it were me, I would have been in jail a long, long, long time ago. But PG&E gets a laissez passer. Because they're a corporation," Steve Bradley said.

On November. 8, 2018 Bradley collection from the Sacramento expanse toward the town of Paradise, where he used to serve as a volunteer firefighter, hoping to rescue his 96-year-erstwhile Grandma Colleen.

"I'm pretty sure she knew the house was on fire, and she wasn't going to make it out," Bradley said. "I don't talk about it enough, but that really keeps me up at night. You know, was she expecting me? Was she expecting me to be able to get there at the terminal second?"

Steve'south grandmother, Ethel Colleen Riggs, was cremated alive in her laundry room.

"Nobody's taking these things seriously enough," said Meriel Wisotsky, Colleen's daughter. "We are not property these people answerable. And nosotros do have mechanisms to agree them accountable."

The PG&East corporation pleaded guilty to recklessly sparking the Camp Burn down through criminal negligence and to the felony manslaughter of 84 people in the deadliest wildfire in California history.

Some burned to death in their cars trying to run for their lives. Even more never escaped their own homes.

Though the law treats corporations as people, PG&E couldn't be sentenced to the 90 years in prison house the judge said its crimes deserved.

PG&East instead paid the maximum fine of $ten,000 for each manslaughter victim, an amount of money PG&E earns every 17 seconds from its vast state-licensed monopoly over the power supply to 4 out of every ten Californians.

Prosecutors managed to convict PG&E of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter inside ii years of the killings.

"You are a killer corporation," said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey. "You're tagged a killer. That ways something… with regulatory agencies, with governors offices, with legislatures."

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'I DID Non WANT TO SIGN THIS'

Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration responded to the Camp Fire even more than chop-chop than law enforcement could: to write and pass a law protecting PG&Due east's profitability and solvency from its ain wildfire problem by giving the company a piece of paper from the state.

PG&Eastward now has an official country condom certificate.

It'southward the second document the state has given PG&E since the Camp Fire, despite that the visitor has been charged with more than crimes and is under a new homicide investigation for the 2020 Zogg Fire.

"I did not desire to sign this," said old California Public Utilities Commission director Alice Stebbins, the land official who signed PG&Due east's first rubber certificate in 2019. "The bottom line is I was told to sign information technology. You will sign this. Period."

Stebbins says she signed it considering AB 1054 made PG&Eastward's certificate automatic, not because she believed the company had actually become safe.

"I trusted my Governor. I trusted my commissioners. And that was a mistake," Stebbins said in an extensive interview with ABC10.

Stebbins is pursuing a wrongful termination accommodate against the state government. She claims to have been fired over her actions to investigate why $200 meg was missing in the CPUC'south books.

CPUC President Marybel Batjer said there was no missing $200 million and that Stebbins had damaged the bureau's reputation, merely a ProPublica investigation "found that Stebbins was right about the missing money."

The safety certificate gave PG&E and the country'southward ii other major for-profit power monopolies access to a $21 billion state insurance fund, which will partly be paid for past customers through surcharges on their power bills for the next 20 years.

The fund is designed to embrace the price of amercement when utility-caused wildfires burn homes or kill people, the very expenses PG&East blamed when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"I think that's obscene," Wisotsky said. "Their response was how can we deal with this in such a way equally to still make a lot of money for our shareholders?

"When you've just killed a whole bunch of people, I actually don't think that should be your number one consideration. And it obviously is."

'SAFETY AND ACCOUNTABILITY' OR 'UTILITY STABILITY?'

When Newsom signed AB 1054, his office touted it as a "wildfire safety and accountability" pecker.

In individual, emails show legislative staffers referring to it more than bluntly: "the governor'southward bill on utility stability."

AB 1054 said the CPUC "shall consequence a prophylactic certification" if it received the necessary paperwork from PG&E.

The law did non brand a power company's actual safety operation a factor, which is why PG&East has been able to obtain safety certificates for two burn seasons in a row despite the fact that its ability lines have been blamed for causing large wildfires every year since 2017.

ABC10: What did PG&E have to do to earn this [safety] certificate?

STEBBINS: Nothing.

ABC10: Did information technology have to trim trees?

STEBBINS: Well, they should take,

ABC10: Merely no?

STEBBINS: No.

ABC10: Did they have to go out and inspect their hooks and supervene upon old equipment to go the certificate?

STEBBINS: (Indicates not.) They should have.

The ease with which PG&E has obtained two safety certificates in the face of new wildfires is alarming to safety advocates, including the CPUC'south own Public Advocates Office.

"For the extensive benefits that a company gets from having a safe certificate, it should come with the accountability," said Nat Skinner, the head of safe for the Public Advocates Office. "[The safe certificate] makes it harder to hold the utility accountable."

Beyond access to the $21 billion insurance fund, the benefits PG&Due east receives for its safe certificate are twofold.

Starting time, if PG&E's ability lines spark a fire while information technology has a document, the visitor is presumed to take acted "reasonably," which ways it is entitled to bill customers for the cost of wildfire damage unless a challenger proves the company acted unreasonably.

2nd, even if a challenger is successful in proving the utility acted unreasonably, the certificate caps the amount of wildfire harm that can be taken out of shareholders' profits.

"If this had been in place during the 2017, 2018 and 2019 fires, PG&Eastward shareholders would have been on the hook for virtually $4 billion dollars, not for the tens of billions that they've ultimately ended up paying out," Skinner said.

ABC10: They could cause some other Military camp Fire potentially and not have to go broke this time?

STEBBINS: Yes.

ABC10: Why on globe would nosotros want to cap how much the utilities would have to pay back to the wildfire fund if they were incorrect in causing the fire?

STEBBINS: To protect the utility. That's the only reason why.

The lawyers working for Newsom crossed the word "cap" out of an early draft of AB 1054 and replaced information technology with "limit" instead.

'CERTIFICATION REQUIRED PAPERWORK, Not SAFETY Performance'

To earn the safety certificate, AB 1054 simply required PG&East to bear witness four things on paper: a wildfire plan, an agreement to work on company safety civilization, a visitor condom committee, and board-level reporting to the CPUC on safety bug.

Weeks before it was introduced in the legislature on June 27, 2019, a draft version of AB 1054 from June 12 besides would accept created a 5th requirement: that PG&East receive a positive safety "determination" from regulators.

Two days after, Newsom's hired attorneys watered that down in a rewrite: the safety "determination" became a mere "staff recommendation."

By the time lawmakers saw the bill, the requirement for a review of condom "compliance" was gone from the prophylactic certificate section requirements in the bill.

The emailed argument from Newsom'southward office pointed to several of AB 1054's other provisions, including a one-time requirement for PG&E to spend money at shareholder expense on condom projects.

PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric were collectively required to spend $5 billion of shareholder money on safety projects, a fraction of the corporeality of money AB 1054 allocated to the rubber certificate plan.

U.S. Commune Court Judge William Alsup, who supervises PG&E's federal probation, says the company should have already been spending that coin over the past years instead of "robbing" prophylactic budgets to pay bigger dividends to shareholders.

The statement from Newsom's office also pointed to a split bill, SB 350, which provides an outline for a state takeover of PG&E tied to a vi-step process of "enhanced" oversight from the CPUC.

A takeover is nowhere close to being triggered and so far, this policy has resulted in PG&E being required to file more paperwork with the CPUC.

'WHO'S GOING TO STOP It?'

PG&Eastward's wildfire victims watched in dismay equally the visitor connected to spark large wildfires.

Every twelvemonth since the 2018 Camp Fire, the company'southward power lines have been named as the cause of major fires that burned homes.

One, the 2020 Zogg Fire, killed four people. The victims included an 8-year-former girl, Feyla McLeod, and her mother Alaina.

They burned to death trying to escape the burn in a pickup truck.

"They should non have had to go through that. No one should accept to go through that," said begetter and husband Zach McLeod. "They had so many hopes and dreams and nosotros have so many plans and we don't become to exercise that at present."

Shasta County prosecutors launched a homicide investigation and say criminal charges will be filed against PG&E and perchance people who work at that place past belatedly September.

PG&E continues to engage in criminal thinking, says former CPUC commissioner Catherine Sandoval, who teaches utilities law at Santa Clara University.

"When you've got a person who'due south an addict they gotta admit first that they accept a problem. Then PG&E needs to showtime admit that it has a problem. Instead their instinct is to say 'no, no nosotros got it, '" Sandoval said. "They need an intervention."

ABC10: Have they gotten an intervention?

STEBBINS: No.

Instead of intervening, victims meet the state regime playing the role of enabler: The land government has washed the same affair PG&E has: prioritized profits over safety.

"The affair is that PG&East's attitude makes us all suffer, whether we're aware of information technology or non," Meriel Wistotsky said. "If yous don't call back information technology's affecting you, it's simply because it hasn't slapped y'all correct in the face the fashion it does when it's somebody that you love who's lost."

 Meriel points out the crunch causes damage beyond PG&E'southward killing of her mom and all the others.

It'southward blackouts on windy days.

Information technology'due south higher power bills, even in Southern California.

Information technology'south toxic compounds in our air that did impairment scientists may never fully understand.

Wisotsky urges Californians to "hold our governments responsible… and not accept these piece of cake answers, not accept this idea of letting people get away with[out] taking responsibility."

"If the politicians aren't going to listen to me or the other survivors, who are they gonna listen to," Steve Bradley asked. "Who's going to stop it?"

********************************************

Beneath is the entirety of a written statement sent in answer to our reporting by the Governor's Function, sent via e-mail July 30 by deputy printing secretary Amelia Matier:

"No governor in California history has washed more to concord PG&E accountable and force the company to make fundamental modify. Governor Newsom has used every tool at his disposal – passing strict new safety requirements, tying PG&E executives' compensation to the utility's safety record, creating new protections for PG&Due east customers, demanding a public utilities committee investigation into the company, forcing PG&Due east's investors to pay billions for prophylactic improvements, and establishing a mechanism to hold PG&Eastward ultimately accountable by authorizing its dissolution and takeover if it fails to adhere to the strict new safety requirements and follow through on its commitment to compensate victims. The state'due south actions accept resulted in sweeping governance and operational reforms at PG&E, including a newly constituted lath of directors, and billions of additional benefits to ratepayers, victims and the people of California, ensuring the visitor emerged from defalcation in a position to make massive upgrades necessary to evangelize prophylactic, reliable, make clean electricity, and to swiftly compensate victims."

Editor'due south note: The original version of this story independent an incorrect spelling of the name of law business firm O'Melveny & Myers. The spelling has since been corrected.

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► Sentinel More than FIRE - Ability - MONEY:
Every bit California's wildfires keep to break records due to overgrown forests and climate change, the state faces some other crisis. The biggest power company is a bedevilled felon with a tendency to spark new fires. PG&Eastward is guilty of America's largest corporate manslaughter case. Experts say PG&E has avoided accountability for its crimes and worried the ability company volition kill over again. But how did we get here? Tin anyone strength PG&E to exist safer?

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Source: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/newsom-pge-protection/103-65ca1d41-8efe-45b4-87bc-0cdecc714378

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