Source: KRON4 Bay Area | By Rob Nesbitt
Pacific Gas & Electric customers could see their bills increase next year by as much as $5.50. That’s what the utility company sent to the California Utilities Commission for approval yesterday. PG&E says that prices are going up because their investors expect to be compensated when providing the utility company with funding. For many customers however, that’s a less-than-satisfactory reason for raising already high rates.
On Thursday, PG&E sent a request to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) asking to increase customers’ bills by $5.50 a month. If approved, the rate hike would take effect in January 2026. That doesn’t sit well with Executive Director of the Utility Reform Network, Mark Toney. “I am absolutely stunned that PG&E would ask for such a huge increase in their profits for shareholders,” Toney told KRON4. Toney says the changes to your electric bills would give PG&E the highest profit rate of any utility company in the country. “The CPUC should reject the increase that PG&E is asking for,” he said. The proposed increase would come on top of the $3 a month increase that customers are experiencing this year. The Utility Reform Network wants to see changes to PG&E equipment, not monthly bills. “Insulate your overhead power lines, because it only costs one fifth of burying them underground and that’s going to save rate payers money,” Toney said. Toney says that this request for a price increase is just one of about 10 that the CPUC has on their desk from PG&E.
Source: The Los Angeles Times | By Melody Petersen
Mark Toney, executive director of the Utilities Reform Network, called the idea of permanently capping shareholders’ liabilities for fires “completely unacceptable.” “There needs to be a cap on ratepayers’ liability,” he said.
As a criminal investigation into Southern California Edison’s actions before last year’s deadly Eaton fire continues, the state’s for-profit utilities are lobbying for legislation that would protect their shareholders from paying for future catastrophic fires they cause.
Source: PBS KVIE | By Aaron Leathley
“If we’re going to have a cap on shareholder liability, I understand that … but I also want to see a cap on ratepayer liability,” Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, said. “So the question of course (becomes), who pays over the cap? … That is the hard question.”
Three times in two weeks, members of the Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee and Insurance Committee have convened executives and experts to discuss the cost of fires. The hearings mark a reopening of the topic after a deal between the Assembly, Senate and Gov. Gavin Newsom that would’ve limited utility executives’ compensation after their company’s equipment sparks a fatal wildfire fell through at the end of the legislative session about two months ago.
Source: KQED | By Katherine Monahan
Regina Costa, who directs telecom policy for TURN, lives in rural Sonoma county and says the money the federal government is offering is not worth it. “It’s a bad deal and this is a deliberate effort on the part of the Trump administration to tie our hands. Out of all states in this country, California has the most to lose."
Governor Gavin Newsom has until tomorrow to decide whether California will take $1.42 billion in federal broadband money that comes with a catch: a Trump administration’s provision attached to the funds would bar the state from enforcing many of its own consumer protection rules for about 14 years, including a ban on throttling fire fighters’ data.
Source: Communications Daily |
In a letter Tuesday in docket 26-120, the Rural County Representatives of California, the Utility Reform Network and Communications Workers of America repeated their arguments that AT&T’s wireless service for those customers isn't as reliable as their current service. The groups also said AT&T’s reliance on the national broadband map to prove the reliability of its service ignores flaws in the map.
A coalition of consumer advocacy organizations said this week that the FCC should review its prior automatic decision to approve AT&T’s request to discontinue copper wire service to 184,000 California customers.
Source: DigWatch | By Karla Prudencio Ruiz
In a 16 October 2026 statement included in Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society resource collection, the Utility Reform Network (TURN), alongside telecommunications experts, consumer advocates, and labour representatives, urged Newsom not to accept the funding unless the disputed requirement, known as Condition 50, was removed.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is facing renewed calls to reject conditions attached to $1.42 billion inUS federal broadband funding, amid concerns that accepting the money could restrict the state’s ability to enforce net neutrality, affordability, and public-safety protections.
Source: Broadband Breakfast | By Kate Keith
The Utility Reform Network (TURN), joined by telecommunications experts and consumer advocacy groups,said Oct. 21 that California should not accept $1.42 billion in federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding without removing Condition 50.
Consumer advocates say a federal grant requirement could limit California’s oversight of broadband providers. California consumer advocates are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject a federal broadband funding condition they say could limit the state’s ability to enforce consumer protections for internet and phone service.
Source: PIRG | By Jenn Engstrom
At the very least, the CPUC should reduce PG&E’s gas pipeline replacement spending proposal by 60% as suggested by The Utility Reform Network.
Utility companies should provide us with energy that is clean, safe, and reasonably priced. Yet instead of making it easier for customers to choose safer, cleaner energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s biggest power company, is proposing to spend more than $3.8 billion on gas pipeline replacement over the next four years—the kind of infrastructure that, if we’re smart, California won’t need for much longer.
Source: KUCOIN |
The Utility Reform Network Executive Director Mark Toney expressed concern that remaining PG&E customers would absorb more grid maintenance costs, particularly wildfire expenses. PG&E distributes wildfire costs, including underground power lines, across the utility's entire customer base regardless of where the work occurs.
San Francisco wants to acquire Pacific Gas & Electric's electricity grid within the city and supply residents directly. PG&E provided the utility's first valuation on Tuesday, seven years after San Francisco initially offered to buy the grid. PG&E valued the assets at $13.9 billion, roughly quadruple the city's $3.4 billion estimate from April. PG&E says San Francisco should pay an additional $8.6 billion for separating the grid and preventing rate increases for customers outside the city. Those estimates would put the total expense of establishing public power above San Francisco's entire annual budget.
Source: Politico | By Noah Baustin
“What I worry about is that the cost of maintaining the grid, particularly the wildfire costs, will be spread to the remaining customers [of PG&E],” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group. That’s why Toney wants the CPUC, while it’s developing its estimate for San Francisco, to avoid any potential shift of costs onto remaining customers.
San Francisco wants to take control of Pacific Gas & Electric’s power grid in the city. The utility says that’ll cost residents an arm and a leg, and maybe their whole pocketbook too. Seven years after San Francisco first made an offer to PG&E to purchase its electricity grid so it could provide power to residents itself, the utility on Tuesday, for the first time, put a price tag on its electricity equipment and property.
Source: Mercury News | By George Avalos
Mark Toney is on a mission to keep electric and gas bills down. That decades-long goal has made the consumer advocate one of PG&E’s toughest critics and that of its utility siblings. Since 2008, Toney has served as executive director of TURN,The Utility Reform Network. The post has put Toney in a unique position to challenge California’s biggest electric, gas and telephone companies.
Overall, customers are worse off since the bankruptcy. There are upsides and downsides. One upside was AB 1054, which ensured that ratepayers could not be charged for damage from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires. (PG&E caused fatal wildfires in 2017 that destroyed large sections of the California Wine Country and also caused a deadly fire in 2018 known as the Camp Fire in Butte County that destroyed the town of Paradise.)