Source: LAist | By Nereida Moreno

Regina Costa, Telecommunications Policy Director for the advocacy organization, TURN, provided the following comments on our May 10 radio interview.

-I expect the CPUC to approve the proposal to dismiss AT&T's application. AT&T could not show that there are other carriers who will serve everyone and tried to argue that was irrelevant. That doesn't jive with the law or the CPUC rules and is rightfully being rejected.

-We would not be surprised if AT&T goes to the legislature. AT&T is trying to pitch this as an application to promote broadband. It is the opposite. It is a proposal that would allow them to pick and choose who to serve, leaving entire communities and many neighborhoods that they deem undesirable out in the cold. I sent her the April 24 Earnings Call, and the quote from the AT&T Director, CEO, and President.

-The Administrative Law Judge rightly pointed out that nothing is stopping AT&T from deploying its advanced network right now.

-Californians turned out in droves to the public participation hearings, in person and after waiting hours on the phone. They overwhelmingly said that AT&T is wrong, that there are no alternatives in much of AT&T's territory, and the Commission should reject the proposal.

-The new CPUC proceeding will be very, very important, because it is about universal service - how to ensure that every Californian can receive essential communications services, without discrimination. Discrimination isn't just price discrimination, it is what services are available. And what is meant by basic service. And should it incorporate reliability requirements.

Source: Redheaded Blackbelt | By Sarah Reith

“ ‘AT&T is touting this application as pro broadband,’ [Regina Costa] remarked … But as the judge pointed out, nothing in the application actually does that. There is a lot of could, and would.’…”

AT&T will likely have to continue as the carrier of last resort in California, relieving some anxiety about the future of landlines in rural parts of the state.…

Source: Point Reyes Light | By Ben Stocking

““What AT&T really wants is to stop providing essential telecom service to 99 percent of its service area, without providing a shred of evidence that there are real alternatives,” said Regina Costa of The Utility Reform Network, an Oakland-based consumer group. .”

A judge has issued a stinging opinion recommending that the California Public Utilities Commission reject AT&T’s request to end landline service in California—a move that would leave thousands of West Marin customers without reliable service.

Source: Cal Matters | By Khari Johnson

If fiber optic cables that power internet connectivity were like nerves in your body, middle mile broadband is like the spinal column that acts as a central bundle of nerves while the last mile is like the nerves in your fingers or tips of your toes, said Alexandra Green, an attorney for The Utility Reform Network. She follows developments in the middle-mile broadband program as part of her job. Last fall, advocacy groups like the Utility Reform Network criticized state agencies for excluding historically marginalized communities in Oakland and Los Angeles from the statewide middle-mile broadband installation map while keeping projects in more affluent areas. “Now all of a sudden that $1.5 billion he committed to funding the rest of the projects, there’s no longer a guarantee basically,” she said. “That’s one of our concerns generally: Equitable access for low income Black and brown historically redlined communities.” Green said the planned cuts raise her level of concern for how the state will treat broadband installation projects in those communities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s newest budget proposal calls for $2 billion in cuts to public broadband projects meant to bring high-speed internet to all Californians and close the digital divide. The reduction is part of Newsom’s updated plan to close a $44.9 billion shortfall.

Source: USA Today | By Betty Lin-Fisher

While the rejection is a proposal and still needs to be approved by the commission, Regina Costa, telecommunications policy director for The Utility Reform Network (TURN) in California, said she fully expects the board to approve it. “What AT&T really wants is to stop providing essential telecom service to 99% of its service area, without providing a shred of evidence that there are real alternatives. This includes many areas threatened by wildfires, earthquakes, floods and power shutoffs," Costa said in a press release. "If AT&T gets its wish, it would significantly jeopardize public safety." In an interview with USA TODAY, Costa, who is also chair of the telecommunications committee for the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, said California's proposed rejection of the landline waiver is on top of a recent rejection in Utah for another utility to waive its obligation to provide landlines. "I think it's very important for consumers nationwide,'' Costa said. "I think that would give other states the impetus to look at the same thing."

California utility regulators are proposing rejecting a request by AT&T to eliminate its responsibility to provide traditional landline phone service. That could have implications nationwide, a consumer advocate said. Fewer telephone companies are offering basic landline phone service as the utilities say the copper-wire infrastructure is old and expensive to maintain, and the demand for landline phone service is low as consumers move to mobile and other services.

Source: KQED | By Alix Soliman, Guy Marzorati, and Kevin Stark

Right now, in California, if you use a lot of electricity, you pay more. If you live an energy-efficient lifestyle, you pay less. Sylvie Ashford, an energy analyst for The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, said that won’t change. The group supports the new fixed rate, which Ashford said will incentivize people to convert to clean energy. “Consumers report one of the biggest barriers to buying electric vehicles and electric heat pumps to be the high and rising cost of electricity,” Ashford said. “When it becomes 8% to 10% cheaper on each kilowatt hour, your operating costs on your electric vehicle or your electric heat pump become that much more competitive with polluting gas alternatives.” Ashford said that while fixed rates are a good first step, the state must do more to address California’s skyrocketing electricity fees, like keeping utility revenue requirements and shareholder profits in check.

Starting late next year, most California residents will see a new fixed charge of up to $24.15 on their monthly electric bill. In exchange for the new charge, the price of electricity will drop by between 5 cents and 7 cents per kilowatt hour.

Source: KCRA TV3 Sacramento | By Lysee Mitri

The regulatory agency that oversees PG&E, the California Public Utilities Commission, has said there are other more affordable ways to mitigate wildfire risk. And consumer advocacy organization, The Utility Reform Network, agrees. "We're trying to balance getting the safest, greenest electricity and gas that we can get to our California customers at the lowest possible price," said Katy Morsony, a legislative and assistant managing attorney at TURN.

PG&E's proposed four-year budget includes spending nearly $6 billion to bury 2,000 miles of power lines by 2026. It would add about $3.40 to a typical residential bill each month. The CPUC is considering two alternatives to PG&E's plan. Instead of burying 2,000 miles of the electric grid, one scaled-back proposal would allow the company to bury 200 miles of lines and another would allow for 973 through 2026.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle | By Julie Johnson

“Customers have hit the breaking point and have passed it,” said Matthew Freedman, an attorney for ratepayer advocate group The Utility Reform Network, which supports the fixed charge plan. “People who live in the Central Valley have taken it on the chin as rates have gone up.” “You have to start somewhere,” Freedman said. “Doing nothing is a bad choice.”

California regulators are set to vote Thursday on a major change to utility bills that could raise costs for some residents already burned with soaring rates, while lowering costs for others. The California Public Utilities Commission will decide whether to approve a $24.15 fixed charge on utility bills in exchange for lowering the per-unit price of electricity. The rule would apply to customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

Source: Capital & Main | By Aaron Cantu

“Simply requiring that hydrogen be produced using renewable resources, without any additional criteria, will not achieve” statewide decarbonization goals, warned Matthew Freedman, renewables attorney with The Utility Reform Network, who testified about hydrogen before the California Assembly. Even if the electricity used to make hydrogen comes from solar or wind, Freedman said, it could pull clean power that’s now being used elsewhere on the state’s power grid. Without an ample supply of clean energy, power plants burning fossil fuel gas would likely have to make up the shortfall.

A plan by California business groups to accelerate a hydrogen industry has gained ground after two state Senate committees approved legislation to create a renewable energy sector nearly from scratch. Hydrogen associations, including investor-owned gas utilities, car manufacturers and oil conglomerates, are now promoting the bill and weighing what regulations to put in place. As the bill moves through the Legislature, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is lobbying the U.S. Department of the Treasury to get a break from emission restrictions on hydrogen production while state agencies, at times, have echoed the talking points of the hydrogen industry itself. California was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for a $1.2 billion hydrogen hub investment, and companies could benefit from an additional $10 billion in tax credits, proponents of the measure said.

Source: NPR Marketplace | By Janet Nguyen

“Other than to say untold millions, we don’t know because it’s very hard to document it. Utilities don’t want to let us know,” said Mark Toney, executive director of the California consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network.

Late last year, PG&E ran ads about its decision to bury 10,000 miles of power lines underground as a safety measure against wildfires. The company spent up to $6 million on TV ads like these over the past couple of years, The Sacramento Bee reported. PG&E asked the California Public Utilities Commission for a taxpayer-funded “fire risk mitigation account” to cover those costs, The Bee reported. When asked for comment on its advertising practices, a PG&E spokesperson stated that the company advertises to share with its customers what it’s doing “to improve safety and reliability.” “The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) allows the recovery of some costs related to safety communications on television. If not, then the costs are covered by shareholders,” the spokesperson stated. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to determine how much of your money utilities are spending on advertising.

Source: The San Francisco Standard | By Kevin V. Nguyen and Kevin Truong

Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, said just like property taxes and insurance costs, utilities are becoming a more significant part of the operating cost of homeownership. “A mortgage for the most part is predictable over time; you can budget for that,” Toney said. “The one thing you know about a utility bill is that it will escalate year after year.”

An analysis from Redfin found that the salary necessary to afford a median-priced home in the Bay Area is $404,332 a year, a nearly 25% increase from the year before. A scan through Zillow confirms that math—the average price for a single-family home remains stubbornly well over $1 million. Paying for the upfront price of a home is still a buyer’s primary concern. But now, because of factors mostly outside of homeowners’ control, auxiliary costs—like utilities, property taxes, home insurance and maintenance work—are threatening to overtake already hefty monthly mortgage payments.

Source: NBC Bay Area | By Jaxon Van Derbeken

PG&E rates are clearly insane right now,” says Matt Freedman, an attorney with the ratepayer advocacy group TURN. He says one reason is our rates pay for things other than the cost of producing power. His breakdown indicates ratepayers pay six cents per kilowatt hour for wildfire efforts – including undergrounding power lines -- six cents more to subsidize solar and two cents on top of that for low-income subsidies. “Low-income customers in PG&E service territory are really facing a crisis of affordability,” Freedman says. “We saw 180,000 customers disconnected for nonpayment last year, and about a third of PG&E low-income customers are late in paying their bills right now.”

With the hefty increase so far this year, PG&E’s rates are now approaching those of Hawaii, a state with the unfortunate distinction of having the most expensive power in the nation. Hawaii has long paid the highest of any state for power – in part because as an island nation, oil must be shipped in from as far as Libya and Argentina. The cost to generate power accounts for about half the average 41 cents per kilowatt hour price Hawaiian customers pay, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Source: SF Chronicle | By Emma Stiefel

Mark Toney, Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network, believes it’s unfair that Poppe made $17 million while PG&E customers suffer from historic rate increases. Poppe received about $3 for each of the 5.5 million PG&E electricity customer accounts, though her pay does not come directly from customer rates. Her total compensation was over three times the $5.4 million PG&E's highest-paid executive vice president received in 2023. “Customers have a right to be upset that the PG&E board and investors are willing to pay so much to the CEO and other executives in the face of record-breaking bills,” Toney told the Chronicle. “​​Anyone who’s paying a PG&E bill is unhappy about this.”

PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe took home $17 million in the 2023 fiscal year, including her $1.4 million salary and $11.8 million in stock awards. That was up by nearly $3 million from 2022, when she made $14.1 million in compensation. While critics believe this hearty pay package is uncalled for amid soaring energy bills, PG&E has argued that they are paying market rate for top talent.

Source: Legal Planet | By Ruthie Lazenby

Sylvie Ashford of the Utility Reform Network, in response to a question about whether the fixed charge increases utility profits: “This fixed charge does not increase utility revenue or profit in any way. If it did, we would oppose it—we’d be the first ones to oppose it. The costs are determined in other proceedings and that’s where the major effort needs to be. We want other parties to please join us in the general rate cases and pay attention when the utilities are asking for billions and billions of dollars because that’s where the rate increases are coming from; that’s where the record profits are coming from; and that’s what has to be kept in control to stop these absurd rate increases that are far outpacing inflation and have one in five California households in utility debt.”

Electricity rate design is unavoidably technical. It also has huge implications for equity, climate change, and ensuring a grid that works. Rate design can be used to promote many different goals, from efficiency to bill stability, but it always entails distributive decisions. Rate design determines how we distribute the costs not just of electricity, but of the shared system that provides that electricity. 

Source: Associated Press | By Adam Beam

“Only at PG&E would (Poppe’s) attempts at brand rehabilitation be considered a ‘safety message,’” said Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network. “This blatant misuse of ratepayer funds is exactly why we need SB 938 and its clear rules and required disclosures for advertising costs.”

California lawmakers on Monday rejected a proposal aimed at cracking down on how some of the nation’s largest utilities spend customers’ money. California’s investor-owned utilities can’t use money from customers to pay for things like advertising their brand or lobbying for legislation. Instead, they’re supposed to use money from private investors to pay for those things.

Source: The Mercury News | By George Avalos

Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group, was skeptical that PG&E will rein in the pace of monthly bill increases. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Toney said in an interview about Poppe’s comments. “The prices are so doggone high now they would need to come down significantly to make a difference and make them affordable.” “I find it very hard to believe PG&E, given that the company has a dozen rate increases currently in front of the PUC,” Toney said. “There are a host of proposals that will all impact customers.”

“We see a future where customers’ bills can start to come down,” Poppe said in response to questions from this news organization about fast-rising ratepayer costs, after an event PG&E hosted in Richmond. The surprising comment struck some reform advocates as too good to be true.

Source: The OC Register | By Teri Sforza

The largest group getting intervenor comp, by far, is TURN. It requested $26.4 million between 2020 and early 2024, and was awarded $24.8 million. Over that time, it has saved Californians hundreds of millions of dollars, its accounting shows. In a typical year, its legal staff of 12 attorneys and five policy analysts work on about 100 proceedings at the PUC. For example, TURN recently: Helped win a ruling preventing SDG&E from recovering $514 million from customers that it spent on wildfire mitigation before a reasonableness review by the PUC. Helped win a ruling preventing Edison from recovering $85 million from customers that it spent on tree trimming in non–high fire risk areas. Helped win $400 million in savings for PG&E, SCE, SoCal Gas and SDG&E ratepayers by getting PUC to reduce “Cost of Capital” profit rates (more on that in a minute)…

Electric rates, gas rates, water rates — they go up. And up. And up. Policing these regularly scheduled consumer agonies — or rubber-stamping them, as critics often charge — is the job of the California Public Utilities Commission. This powerful regulator is charged with ensuring that rate hikes and policy decisions are fair and justified

Source: Hawai’i Public Radio | By Savannah Harriman-Pote

Still, securitization may not be a bad deal for ratepayers, said Mark Toney, the executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a California-based consumer advocacy group. "Just think about the difference between the people who got their home loans at 3% or less and people today who are having to pay 7% or more. The same house, your payments are double what they are. So it's kinda like that, it's the same principle," Toney told HPR. But Toney added that ratepayers should never be on the hook for utility negligence. If that’s the case, he said “there has to be a guarantee that shareholders reimburse the ratepayers in real time.” The Utility Reform Network has been involved in one of the largest securitization cases in the country with Northern California electric utility PG&E, which took out $7.5 billion in ratepayer bonds to pay costs related to the 2017 California wildfires. However, he said, California law does not allow a utility to make ratepayers pay for wildfires started due to the company's negligence. "If you look on a PG&E bill and you open it up when it comes in the mail, you will see a line item that talks about repaying the bond as a bill, but there will be a bill credit for the exact same amount, which represents the shareholders reimbursing the ratepayers in real time."

The brushfire that destroyed Lahaina last year was one of 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023 that cost a billion dollars or more in damages. Electric utilities face increasing expenses related to extreme weather events like hurricanes, ice storms and wildfires. Several utilities, including Hawaiian Electric, have eyed ratepayer-backed bonds as a possible avenue to recoup some of those costs.

Source: Communications Daily | By Adam Bender and Jimm Phillips

Possibly facing the end of the federal affordable connectivity program (ACP), theCalifornia Public Utilities Commission should quickly modify grant rules to ensureservice stays affordable, said The Utility Reform Network in petitions Friday andMonday. “We don’t have the luxury of time here,” said TURN Telecom Policy Analyst LeoFitzpatrick in an interview Monday. TURN sought changes to grant rules for the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) broadband infrastructure account in a Friday petition in docket R.20-08-021. In a Monday petition (docket R.20-09-001) along similar lines, TURN and the CPUC’s independent Public Advocates Office suggested changes to the CPUC’s federal funding account (FFA), which uses broadband funding from the U.S. government. In both cases, TURN asked the CPUC to pause making awards until it updates rules to account for ACP’s end and to direct applicants to amend already filed applications.

Reprinted with permission of Warren Communications News, Inc. and Communications Daily, 800-771-9202, https://warren-news.com/ and https://communicationsdaily.com/

Source: CalMatters | By Julie Lynem

Legislative maneuvering aside, affordable energy and climate advocates like Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, believe that placing a cap on utility rate hikes is just one part of the solution. Regulators should also require utilities to exercise fiscal discipline on spending, he said. Utilities, Toney explained, should not be given a “credit card with no limit and a guarantee that someone else is going to pay.” TURN is backing the Utility Accountability Act, a sensible bill that would prohibit utilities from using funds collected from ratepayers to pay for advertisements, political activities or membership dues of trade associations engaged in lobbying. It would also require utilities to document and disclose their spending. By increasing the cost for using electricity, “that’s not rewarding people for good behavior,” Toney said.

Unaffordable housing, high transportation and health care costs – it’s hard enough to get by in California without also worrying about cranking up the air, turning on the stove or simply keeping the lights on. But that’s what concerns many Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers who cannot afford to pay their soaring utility bills. As of February, more than 1 million of them were behind on payments.