California lawmakers have a radical idea for lowering electricity bills

Canary Media ^ | 7 August 2025 | By Jeff St. John

[cuz1961]

....The bills — Senate Bill 254, sponsored by Sen. Josh Becker, and Assembly Bill 825, sponsored by Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, both Democrats — aim to lower electricity costs for Californians. Both include provisions that would force the big three utilities to accept public financing.... .

[cuz1961]

"would force the big three utilities to"

Ahhh. More demcommies political RAPE

Forcing things on people and companies.

[cuz1961]

Nothing good comes out of East Beijing

( formerly known as Sacramento)

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

They don’t call it Excremento for nothin’.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[citizen]

demcommies - I call 'em Commiecrats.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Jeff St. John is a typical journalist who knows nothing of public utility rate regulation. Even though it is a public process. There is no guaranteed profitability. There is an attempt to allow the utilities to earn a rate of return on the capital invested in these incredibly capital-intensive businesses that will be sufficient to attract investors (blue-haired old ladies and conservative institutional investors.) You could not pay me enough money to be in the regulated utility sector in CA - those folks are abused nine ways from Sunday.

[Tell It Right]

Agreed. The article states that bonds should be used to fund the utilities. But that’s just wishful thinking of magic money coming in, with no real cure to the real problem of sky high costs in an over-regulated industry. There’s only so much magic bond money that can come in before you run out of it too.

[Mogger]

Soooo... With this brilliant idea, your electric bill goes down, but your tax bill goes up much higher, to pay not only the utility companies, but the politicians and bureaucrats now skimming off their portions??

[Leaning Right]

[johniegrad]

This is just another step toward government ownership of the utilities.

[gitmo]

Then they will have to give people money to pay increased electric bills.

[nuke_road_warrior]

So the State would use $15 billion in taxpayer’s money to “save” $4 to $5 per month on the average residential customer’s electricity bill. This of course to “solve” a problem created by the government itself by limiting new power generation to unreliable solar and wind. The mind doth boggle. Of course the end result will be a state takeover of private utilities and still no more electricity for AI servers, electric car charging stations, and all electric new construction. Comrade Lenin would be proud.

[lowbridge]

“California lawmakers have a radical idea for lowering electricity bills”

Just like they had radical ideas to lower the homeless rate, the crime rate, the costs of health care and insurance, lowering inflation, lowering grocery bills, lowering gas prices... right?

[Fresh Wind]

LOL!

[Robert357]

Wow, so much is left out of this article.

As the article points out in the case of PG&E the State has mandated extensive investments in both renewables and in “modifications of assets to mitigate wildfires.”

As a former electric utility executive, I would like to offer a few points to ponder.

First, in the case of the PG&E bankruptcy associated with wildfires, a PG&E person told me in a trip to California that a big part of the cause of the fire was that the utility just “re-energized” a transmission line after a fault. Standard practice at the utility I was part of, was to first “patrol or visually inspect” a faulted line, prior to re-energizing it. If you don't you can start fires or kill people.

The second major topic is what kind of bonds and who will issue them. I have flown to NYC to make presentations to bond rating agencies and to various major cities to answer questions about bonds from large institutional municipal tax exempt bond buyers. There are generally two types of tax exempt bonds that municipal governments issue. One is a “full faith and credit” bond and the other is a bond backed by a certain “revenue stream.”

One needs to understand federal law 26 U.S. Code § 146 - Volume cap. “b) Volume cap for State agencies

“....For purposes of this section—
(1) In general

The volume cap for any agency of the State authorized to issue tax-exempt private activity bonds for any calendar year shall be 50 percent of the State ceiling for such calendar year.
(2) Special rule where State has more than 1 agency

If more than 1 agency of the State is authorized to issue tax-exempt private activity bonds, all such agencies shall be treated as a single agency.....”

So, the State even if it creates a special agency for the funding as suggested in the article is limited in the total amount all such agencies can issue tax exempt bonds. That means this plan will dilute the ability of other state agencies to issue such bonds. Those other agency's reduced borrowing will harm infrastructure rebuilding in other areas of the state. (Rob Peter to pay Paul)

If the bonds are backed by a revenue stream (say from an electric utility such as PG&E that filed bankruptcy) the bond rating agencies and the institutional bond buyers are going to look closely at how reliable the projected revenue stream is. The only thing going for revenue municipal bonds issues by some California agency to finance electric utility infrastructure is........they are exempt from California state income tax. Ah and that if bonds were sold in the volume necessary would reduce revenues for the State Government of California.

It is so good when legislatures come up with “solutions” that create unintended consequences. (/sarcasm)

[Drew68]

California is in dire need of something like Doge at the state level.

There's just so much money that gets siphoned away by various NGO grifters, with much of it getting kicked back to Democrat politicians to keep the grift going.

[mikey_hates_everything]

It may lower electric bills (not really) but state taxes will cover the rest and politicians will have a new money skimming source. Sacramento is going to rape middle-class Californians even more with higher taxes to cover it all.

[deport]

Then they will have to give people money
to pay increased electric bills.

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

Yep just cycling the money thru differing
accounts. Rulers prevail regardless of the
gov’t structure. A free and open society is
a thing of the past if it ever was one.

Round’em up-ride’em in work starts at 7am.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

This of course to “solve” a problem created by the government itself by limiting new power generation to unreliable solar and wind.

The next thing you know, Kalifornia will mandate huuuuge offshore ships, with huge propellers on their decks, to generate wind for the wind farms on Kalifornia soil. How the ship-born propellers will be fueled is........under discussion.

Some Kalifornia democRATS say they will pay for all this with money generated from the Kalifornia Super Train now under development.

[PAR35]

This is just another step toward government ownership of the utilities.

Big banks and big industry against Dennis Kucinich and his fight to keep the municipal power provider out of the hands of the profiteers. "Power to the People" as the billboard said.