Posted on 11/17/2018 2:58:26 PM PST by NoLibZone
California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a measure allowing utilities to bill their customers to pay for future legal settlements stemming from devastating 2017 wildfires.
Brown announced Friday he'd signed the bill, which is aimed at preventing bankruptcy for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The massive utility faces billions of dollars in liability if investigators determine its equipment caused the Tubbs Fire that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 22 people in Santa Rosa last year.
The measure is the most hotly contested part of a wide-ranging plan to reduce the growing threat of wildfires.
(Excerpt) Read more at krcrtv.com ...
the big utilities (gas, electric, phone, and traditionally railroads) have run Californcation for years and years and years
through a notoriously corrupt, controlled regulatory commission...
and through political control or payoffs to the legislature and big influences in the executive suites too
SNAFU, same as its been forever there it seems....
“money talks, bs (consumer protection, honesty, integrity) walks”.
Ohhhh i am. Calaveras County just got 25 million for Butte fire ,were asking for 300 lawyers got most of it.
California is getting raped and then being billed for the lubricant.
Perfect. Now PG&E can raise their rates sky high.
L
Making it easier sounds good. But will it really be easier? I will look to see if I can find details.
How does this “...reduce the growing threat of wildfires”?
So they can pay all the illegals that are working for them
This Fing Moombeam is a crazy communists Democrat. Hope this will be reversed.
That didn’t take long! Sheesh.
Reminds me of the case recently thrown out of court in California where some cities were suing the oil and gas companies for global warming. The judge said there is no way to measure the damages especially when you consider the incredible human advancements we have made thanks to the industrial age. You want to go backwards and punish them when without them there would still be horse and buggy, no computer imaging or processes to detect and treat cancer - you name it. There is no question humankind has benefited by the industrial age.
Now this one sure is interesting. I am surprised they got a bill passed through the assembly and state senate so fast. But that’s only part of the amazement here. And here too I am at a loss to what the damages are or may be. Homes were lost but how many people were uninsured or underinsured? It would have been more efficient to pass a law giving them immunity from suit unless they could prove gross negligence. Part of having electricity and the industrial age includes these risks. And home owners are usually required by their banks to have insurance to cover accidents like this.
What about suing your neighbors? Or the fire department? Too many flammable bushes. I live in an area where the fire dept is very vigilant about making sure I keep the vegetation cut back. Certain plants are an absolute no-no according to them; years back I had to pull them by their roots (they came with the property - I didn’t plant them).
How much of a kick-back is Brown, and his Dem cronies getting from the utility companies?
I was remiss not to note the loss of life. That sure is a tragedy.
No strategy to combat California wildfires is complete without the exiling of Jerry Brown to central Africa.
Well what exactly would be a perfect solution here?
1) Let govt pay for it and/or subsidize insurance
2) let the utility companies go bankrupt?
3) Let them pass costs on to consumers?
Any other choices?
All utility services maintain a brush-clearing operation along their easements, partly to assure easier access, and also to prevent the accumulation of the very fuel that feeds these wildfires, once started. Because of the very stringent requirements put on the various utilities in California, and the miserly rate increases to keep up with many rising costs, some of this easement maintenance has been deferred or neglected for purely financial reasons, a most logical fiscal response to the business conditions forced upon them.
Yes, there is a history of continued and long-term neglect of the responsibilities of keeping the brush cut and otherwise protecting the utility lines, but a decision forced upon the management of the utilities services by the dictates of the state government.
So Governor Brown’s casting a crumb to the PG&E management is an example of too little, much too late.
What is the alternative? To have PG&E go bankrupt? How will that help anyone if they go bankrupt?
Unless PG&E has been proven to be grossly negligent or been engaged in willful misconduct, there should be limits to their liability.
Sh*t happens: That’s why you have insurance.
In the case of California “ Sh*t happens” = Jerry Brown and Rat government happens.
California Billionaire’s and Extremely Wealthy Saved at Taxpayer Expense by Moonbeam.
“California is getting raped”
Klai is a whore. They were never raped.
That really is a fairly accurate analogy.
That bullet train to nowhere would have paid for a lot.
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