Sen. Wiener: I’m Introducing Legislation to Let San Francisco Break Up with PG&E After This Weekend’s Fiasco

EXCERPT:

WEINER: "It’s time for San Francisco to break up with PG&E, and I’m announcing new legislation for next year to authorize San Francisco and other cities to break away from PG&E and form their own publicly owned utilities. PG&E is too large, it’s not adequately maintaining its infrastructure, as we saw this weekend yet again with the substation that caught on fire, and it is putting the interest of shareholders about the public interest. It is time for San Francisco to break away. I introduced a bill to do this, to allow San Francisco to break away and to make PG&E a publicly owned utility back in 2020. PG&E, however, is so powerful in California that that bill did not even receive a hearing. San Francisco currently has a petition pending at the California Public Utilities Commission to do evaluation of PG&E so that San Francisco can exercise its right of eminent domain to take over PG&E's infrastructure in San Francisco and create our own public utility. The CPUC, the public utilities commission, needs to move that along. Time is of the essence. It’s taken way too long.”