President Batjer: To order. And we are at 10:04. Everyone,
please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge. (sound cuts out)
Thank you. Please, now, listen to the safety announcement.
Safety Announcer: As you're aware, our number one priority is safety. As
such, we will address certain safety concerns in this venue. In the event
of an emergency, please calmly proceed toward the exits. We have four
exits, two in the rear and one on either side of the dais. In the event we
need to evacuate the building, our assembly point is in the Garden Plaza
area between the War Memorial Herbs Theater and the War Memorial Opera House
on Van Ness. When going out the rear exits, head through the courtyard and
down the front steps, then head south on Venice by crossing McAllister
Street. You'll find the Garden Plaza area on your right immediately after
walking past Herbs Theater. When going out the side exits, after heading
out either exits, you'll find yourself on Golden Gate Avenue. From there,
proceed east, turn south on Van Ness, and walk towards McAllister Street.
After crossing McAllister, the Garden Plaza area will be on your right after
passing the War Memorial Herbs Theater. In the event of an emergency,
Executive Director Alice Stebbins will call 911, and our public advisor,
Alison Brown, is certified in CPR and first aid. Thank you for your attention.
President Batjer: Okay, Thank you. Well, good morning again. We're currently
experiencing the largest public safety power
shut off, known as PSPS, event, to date,
here in Northern California. I understand the impact these events have on every
Californian and deeply share the public's concern regarding this current PSPS
process. The Commission has been closely monitoring the situation. I have asked
Executive Deputy Director Elizaveta Malashenko,
who is head of Safety and Enforcement,
to present a summary of events that have occurred. Elizaveta has been embedded at
the PG&E Emergency Center along with other members of the State Government. The
situation, frankly, has been unacceptable. There are considerations of policy of how
and when that are serious and we need to reconsider and think thoroughly through
them. However, the management of and the response of the company, PG&E, to the
events, to the PSPS, have been absolutely unacceptable. The impacts to individual
communities to individual people, to the commerce of our state, to the safety of
our people, has been less than exemplary. And we have to, this cannot be the new
normal. We can't accept it as a new normal, and we won't. So I have asked Elizaveta
to give us, and all of you, an update. As I said, she's been embedded at the
Emergency Operations center at PG&E. And, um, she will give that presentation after
we take public comment, so if you are here to discuss the PSPS and the process, I
would ask you to stay so you can hear Elizaveta update. So with that, we will now
take public comment. The public can make comments addressing items on the consent
and regular agendas and including items not on the agenda. Please note that there
will not be public comment on any item on the closed session agenda and the
following adjudicatory items which are 44 and 46 on the agenda. Each person who has
signed up will have two minutes to speak. When I call your name, please come to
the podium and may I please ask the members of the public to align themselves so
they’re more easily able to get to the podium in a timely manner. There is a sign
up. There will be a sign held, and there's a monitor here that shows the amount
of time. So please realize that two minutes, you have to speak. There will be a
signal at the one minute mark that gives you time to make your closing remarks.
So with that, and let's see, if you have written comments, however, please bring
them to the Executive Director, Alice Stebbins, who is here in front. Okay, okay,
we'll begin the written comment. Our first member of the public is Sarah Wiltfong.
Sarah Wiltfong: Good Morning, Commissioners.
My name is Sarah Wiltfong and I’m here
on behalf of Los Angeles County Business Federation. Also known as BizFed. We’re an
alliance of over 180 business organizations who represent over 400,000 employers with
3.5 million employees in Los Angeles County.
This represents businesses from large to
small in a wide variety of industries, including
manufacturers, warehouses, refineries,
transportation, construction, housing, entertainment, ports, terminal operators,
restaurants, retailers, and more. As you are
working to implement decarbonization policies,
we'd like to reiterate that sustainability is not just about the environment. It is
also about sustainability of jobs, sustainability
of communities and sustainability of
the economy. We would respectfully ask that as the CPUC looks towards decarbonization,
you take a balanced approach that allows for
multiple technologies and multiple fuels
to compete, and that you keep business as part of the process. We would also like to
request the CPUC come to Southern California
more often. As you are aware, different
regions face different challenges and this gives our members more of an opportunity to
address this Commission on manners important
to them in the areas that they reside.
Thank you for your consideration of our
comments. We look forward to working with you.
President Batjer: Thank you, Miss Wiltfong. Harper Honan.
Harper Honan: Hi. I would like to open my time
with a letter that I'm reading from a citizen who
lives in Redondo Beach. Meghan Riddle, she writes,
we need more renewable energy and less dependence
upon dirty, expensive, and obsolete forms of power.
We can take the land that these old plants were
utilized for and use it to create renewable energy
plants such as a solar farm and simultaneously
create hundreds to thousands of jobs in the process.
Now I would like to give my own testimony. I
am a nurse. I am a hiker. I am a biker, a surfer,
and most importantly, a mother. And I am a PG&E
customer. These gas plants, keeping them running will
harm not only people like Meghan Riddle who live
near them and all Californians who have seen firsthand
the horrible effects of climate change on our
land. We want 100% renewable energy for our
state. California has historically led the way in
safeguarding our environment. My daughters and I
implore you to invest in renewable energy, and we ask
you to please vote no on extending the life of
these gas plants that pollute our air and rapidly
warm our climate. These gas plants are also poisoning
our oceans, sucking the water from the sea and
discharging it back, causing water temperature rise
and killing marine animals. Most importantly, I
ask that you vote no on these gas plants and set
California on the path to clean energy for her. She
deserves to see the beautiful California that we
have all known. To breathe its fresh air and to
play in its sparkling ocean water and to know all
of its wildlife. It is our responsibility to her.
President Batjer: Thank you. Courtney Burnett. Sorry
if I'm not pronouncing the last name correctly.
Courtney Berman: My name is Courtney Berman, and I'm a community member
from Oakland, California. First, I was going to read a letter from Kitty
Merrill of Oxnard. She says, I worked hard to prevent a new power plant from
being built in Oxnard. The prospect of the Ormond Beach Plant being kept in
operation is devastating. The plant is about three miles from my home and
is located in an area with bad air from pesticides already, as well as a
Superfund site. We don't need extra trouble. Please keep your commitment to
shutting down these ecosystem damaging plants. I would also like to provide
my own testimony as an Oakland resident and a PG&E customer. I'm a mother
of a four year old. I wake up every day concerned about climate change and
its impact for her future. We need to do whatever we can as soon as we can
to stop climate change. This is a real crisis that's happening right in
front of us. Something should have been done about it starting 30 years ago
when we knew that climate change was a danger. I'm really disappointed
in my parents’ generation for not doing more, and I want to do whatever I
can and I expect you to join me and in helping out the future. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Lucia Marquez.
Lucia Marquez: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Lucia Marquez
and I'm a Ventura County resident impacted by the Ormond Beach Power
Plant. I oppose the proposed decision to extend the 401s through
cooling gas plants, but specifically, the Ormond Beach plant. I was
heavily involved in the fight to oppose the Puente Power Plant, which
was also being proposed to be located on the coast of Oxnard. For
years, community members came out to hearings to communicate to the
state how overburdened their community already was by industrial
pollution. On our coast, we have, like, was mentioned earlier, a
Superfund site, factories, over-heavy pesticide use, truck routes from
the neighboring (inaudible), and not to mention that this is an
over-populated, low-income community of color. We were so excited that
rather than approving the Puente Power Plant, the state decided to
invest in new clean energy and not another polluting fossil fuel
project. Please make the same choice today and decide to end the
dependence on dirty energy and regenerate California today. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Kelly Stokes.
Kelly Stokes: Good morning, Commissioners.
My name is Kelly Stokes. I'd like
to start my statement for myself. I also have a letter here to re from Redondo
Beach. But I'd like to say that it's time to shut those gas plants down and start
a new future. We're all concerned about climate change and whole etcetera,
etcetera, of issues. So let's stay with a clean future for California. I'm also
reading a letter for someone who couldn't be here. From Redondo Beach. Her
name is Becky Myers, and she says, being a great grandmother and having witnessed
the multiple changes to our environment, I am extremely concerned about
what the future of our planet holds for the generations to come who will
inherit it. Unfortunately, are ignorant, unconscionable leadership in the Oval
Office is not helping either. What my great-grandchildren are learning in school
defies our government's irrational actions, and they're well aware that we
are not socially conscionable being the biggest polluter on the planet. What
pains me the most is that we do possess the technology but refuse for the sake
of short term financial gain and power to use it. It is paramount that this
immoral attitude will change if we want to survive on this planet. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Gwen Chang.
Gwen Chang: Good morning, commissioners. I'm here today to voice my opposition
to the 401s through cooling gas plants, specifically the Orman Olant,
because it directly impacts Oxnard, a frontline community. We need to
prioritize the voices and well-being of frontline communities because too often
where the ones that end up bearing the burden of environmental and health
decisions. Gas overburdens our communities with poor air quality, risks of
explosions and ignitions. It's costly and it's no longer a reliable energy
source. Gas isn't getting any cheaper. And we all know that every time we
go to the pumps to fill up our cars, and renewables really are the way of
the future. And as technology improves, those costs are going down as well.
So I want to see investments in new clean energy. Not in fossil fuels. And
I want to see a just transition to renewables that really benefits our
communities and includes us in the growing renewable energy industry for
more economic opportunities. I want to see clean air and healthy communities
being valued and viewed as a fundamental right for all people. Depending on
dirty energy is dangerous. And we need to regenerate California. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Erica Ruiz.
Erica Ruiz: Hello. My name is Erica Ruiz, and I am a
community member from San Bernardino, California. I'm here in
opposition of the gas plants. Especially the Ormond gas
plant, which causes targeted harm to the community of Oxnard.
Like residents of San Bernardino, the residents of Oxnard
are subjected to environmental racism at the expense of the
fossil fuel industry. They are forced to breathe in toxins
on a daily basis that puts their health at risk. These
plants are part of a bigger issue that continues to plummet
us deeper into the global climate crisis while putting
our health at risk all the time. It is irresponsible to
even consider their continuation and shows the industry has
always prioritized over our livelihoods. We need to see
investment in new clean energy because our communities deserve
clean air to breathe. Depending on dirty energy is dangerous,
and we need to regenerate California now. Thank you
President Batjer: Thank you. Lenin Curry.
Lenin Curry: Good Morning, Commissioners. My name is Lenin Curry.
I'm currently a community member from Riverside, California.
I'm here to oppose the proposed decision to extend the 401s
through cooling OTC gas plants. Specifically to oppose the
Ormond Gas Plant as it relates to the particular harm of Oxnard
and EJ Community. As an Inland Empire resident, I stand in
solidarity with the OXnard community and their urgency to see
investments in new clean energy, not fossil fuels. As our region
similar rises in similar struggles with more than 100 days of
bad air quality, this is an opportunity for the Commissions and
the electricity providers to provide critical investments and
clean alternatives. As you move forward with this decision
process, I urge each and every one of you to picture the communities
of color pressed by dirty energy. Picture individuals like
my sister who have asthma rates tied to conditions with fossil
fuel usage. It is time to regenerate California now. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Brenda Huerta.
Brenda Huerta: Good morning, members of the of the Commission. My name
is Brenda Huerta, and I'm a community member in Riverside. Fires in gas
plants affect the life of communities, especially communities of color who
are the most vulnerable in these situations. This is a longtime danger to
public health and climate. That's why I oppose the Ormand Plant because of
because of its direct harm to Oxnard and also an EJ community. It's time
communities like Oxnard and the IE have clean energy and start working against
environmental racism that affects the communities of color. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Florencia Garcia. Miss Garcia?
Florencia Garcia: Good morning, Commissioner.My
name is Florencia Garcia. I came from
Wilmington, California. We drove for many
hours with other community members because we
want the four power power plants close by 2020. No later. Gas is polluting everything
and destroying the planet. We cannot delay. Shut down the power plants now. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Court Smith.
Court Smith: Good morning. My name is Court Smith and I
have lived in Southern California my entire life, and I am a
member of the youth led climate movement, Sunrise, of our hub
in the Inland Empire in California. And I oppose the proposed
decision to extend the 401s through gas cooling plants in
Alamitos, Ormond Beach, Redondo Beach and Huntington Beach. I
especially opposed the Ormond Gas plant because it poses a
threat to an already disadvantaged community that has been
organizing for years to shut this plant down. I want to see
investments in new clean energy, not fossil fuels. Natural
gas is still a fossil fuel and burning it will still cause
harm to our environment through methane emissions. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculated that
methane disrupts the environment at a magnitude 84 times more
powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period and calculated
that methane is 34 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a
heat trapping gas over 100 year timescale. The proposed
decision to extend these gas plants will slow California down
from meeting the clean energy goals set out by SB100 last year
to ditch all fossil fuels by 2045. That includes ditching
fossil fuel gas. California policy from 2010 plans to phase
out all OTC gas plants, including gas and nuclear, because
of the massive environmental health costs, environmental and
health costs of these plants. OTC plants use millions of
gallons of ocean water to cool plant equipment, each, and these
plants also emit thousands of tons of greenhouse gases and
methane and pollutants, especially into the communities along
their fence lines. Depending on dirty energy is dangerous,
and we need to regenerate CA now. We want renewables, battery
storage, demand response and contracts for imported renewable
based electricity to be explored as options instead of
keeping OTC plants in operation. Thank you for your time.
President Batjer: Thank you. Abram Gastelum.
Abram Gastellum: Hello, Good morning. My name is Abram Gastelum, and
I'm a community member from the Inland Empire in Riverside, where we've
had 100 straight days of bad air. It's ridiculous that the Commission is
considering extending the phasing out of OTC plants despite the immense
detrimental damage to nature, communities and lives these plants are
already guilty of polluting. The proposed extension of these plans for
the sake of bridging resources, despite the severe environmental and
health impacts these plants currently impose, is reflective of little
regard to communities that are directly impacted by dirty energy. In
particular, the Ormond plant continues to harm the disadvantaged community
of Oxnard, where residents are especially harmed by the pollution as
they fight for a cleaner future, a cleaner future that looks bleak if
the Commission extends the life of such gas plants. As a concerned
resident of California, I want to see investments in new clean energy
sources, not fossil fuels that cause direct harm. Depending on dirty
energy is dangerous. And we need to regenerate California now. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Evelyn Mendez.
Evelyn Mendez: Good morning. My name is
Evelyn Mendez. I am here to stand with the EJ
communities that continue to feel the burden
of gas. We drove here over seven hours because
I have a one year old daughter who deserves a lot better than this. We oppose that the
proposed decision to extend the four OTC gas
plant, specifically the Ormond plant, since
it directly affects the EJ community. Oxnard
Beach is already filled with one of the most
dangerous smokestacks. Being from a community
that similar impacts is why we are standing
with the Oxnard. And we need to invest in new
clean energy and not fossil fuels. Depending
on dirty energy is dangerous. And we need to regenerate California now. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Gabriella Mendez.
Gabriella Mendez: Good morning, Commissioners. I'm here
from Southern California. As a member of an EJ community. I'm
here to oppose the extension of three years for the four gas
plants, specifically the Ormond Beach gas plant. As we're
standing with the Oxnard community as they are also an EJ
community. And being aware that we are in a time crunch as we're
on our way to 100% clean energy by 2045. And given that the
IPCC report has given us 12 years to make these changes, we are
in the limit. And, you know, passing this decision would only
take us steps back. Right? You know, Commissioner Randolph,
I urge you to pull back on your decision, as you have also
visited the Inland region. And you have seen, you know, you
witnessed the impacts of what EJ communities face on the daily
basis. And that is the Oxnard is facing. That's what the
rest of California will be facing. And that's what the world
will be facing if we don't take these steps now. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Catalina Sheen. Catalina? Thank you.
Catalina Sheen: Good morning, Commissioners. My name
is Catalina Sheen, I came from Wilmington, California,
with other community members who drove many hours to come
and tell you, please shut down these four power plants.
They are unneeded. We need clean energy. Not gas powdered
duty plants. Wilmington has a lot of pollution. Many
people are very sick with asthma and cancer. We need clean
energy. Shut down this plants now, please. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Alicia Rivera.
Alicia Rivera: Good morning. My name is Alicia Rivera. I
came from the community of Wilmington, California, where we
have five refineries and most of the oil extraction sites
in all of Los Angeles. People in every household has asthma
and someone who has died of cancer, and they have tumors.
And we were very excited that the four power plants were
going to be shut down by next year. We can't afford to be
breathing this terrible vicious air that is killing people.
You've got to see the children who have to miss school because
they can't breathe. We need to start investing in clean
energy. Otherwise, when are we gonna do it? By 2045, how
are we gonna get to 100% clean energy if we don't start
now? Please don't change your decision to shut down these
power plants right away. Because look at the shutdown of
electricity right now. I was thinking we wouldn't be in this
trouble if we have clean solar energy. Thank you very much.
President Batjer: Thank you. Flor Barragan.
Translator: Good morning. She's gonna say it
in Spanish and I'm going to translate. Good
morning. My name is Flor. I come from a community
in Southern California. Redondo Beach. I
come from a community with a lot of fossil
fuels that have poisoned our communities. I am
here to oppose gas because it's time you focused
on prioritizing the communities that have
suffered environmental injustices and clean up
our communities. We we need to continue forward
to create new industries, that promote the jobs
of the future with with clean and renewable
energy that don't sacrifice the community. We need a future, a clean future, for our
children and our youth and grandchildren. Please
close the four plants in 2020. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Amelia Sanchez.
Translator: She's gonna speak in Spanish and I'm going to translate.
Hello. My name is Amelia Sanchez, I come from the community
of Wilmington with other people. It's very important for me to
come here to ask you to close the plants with no more delays.
They can be replaced with clean energy. The Earth doesn't, no
longer, cannot support. The planet no longer no longer supports
contamination, It could be replaced with clean energy. And we all
know that the gas has caused fires. With solar energy, there
wouldn't be as many illnesses as there are, not just Wilmington,
but all the communities. When you're going to vote, remember,
think about all our grandchildren, our children, our youth. No
more delays. No more time. We need positive good changes to
improve our planet. If not, we'll continue to suffer the
consequences that the Earth is suffering now, fires, weather, and
there's more coming. I don't speak English, but I'm a grandmother
who's learning for my grandkids and the planet. And thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you very much. Tom Lyons.
Tom Lyons: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Tom Lyons. I'm here
on a different item, on item regarding an at-grade crossing in your
consent calendar. The FRA and other Department of Transportation agencies
have joined forces to reduce the deaths and injuries occurring at
at-grade crossings by reducing or eliminating them. In fact, a new safety
initiative was launched by in 2018 and is being led by the highest
levels of the FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration. Safety is at
at-grade crossings is a major concern, an issue for railroads across the
country. More than 20 people die every single day at at-grade crossings
or while trespassing. The Sonomo Railroad has experienced six
fatalities in the last three months at at-grade crossings. It is a cause
of concern that, while the industry as a whole is working to reduce or
eliminate at-grade crossings and enhance the safety, the Commission is
approving new ones. Despite the serious safety concerns. We ask that
you joined the FRA and the railroad industry in making our railroad safer
by working to eliminate and not add any more crossings. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Miguel Rivera.
Miguel Rivera: Hello. Hello. Good morning. I'm Miguel. I'm from
San Bernardino, California. I'm also on the AB617 committee through
(mumbled), And I'm here to speak on how we need to close down these
plants. We need to move to zero emissions technology. We need to create
clean jobs for our future. My future, my kid's future. Hopefully. If
I have kids. We need to, like I said, we need to invest in a zero
emissions technology. We have the technology available to us. Why
not? Let's stop. Let's stop wasting our time with dirty technology.
Dirty things are going, you know, things that are gonna not be good
for us. I'm sorry. Yeah. We need to invest in clean technology,
clean jobs for all of us. Our future, our air needs that we live in.
I live in San Bernadino, which has some of the dirtiest air in the
state, in the United States. We need to get away from technologies
that are no good for our lungs that are killing us slowly. Pretty
much. We priortize jobs supposedly but it's really just killing us.
Please close down the plants. Think with your heads. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. David McCord
David McCord: I'm David McCord I live El Cerrito, and
I'm speaking on the proposed decision of September
12 that almost everybody else has been speaking
about. With the required outsourced procurement
of 2500 megawatts of additional are a capacity
retention of the, off the OTC generator will be
unnecessary. Extension of operation will continue
to impact underserved communities, as almost
everybody here has spoken about. Robust conservation
and demand response programs and incentives can
significantly reduce demand, especially during
peak periods. The commission can press the IOU's
to redouble their efforts here. Most, if not all,
CCAs are doing so on their own and will continue
to reduce avoidable demand in their service areas.
So we don't need extension of the OTC pants.
President Batjer: Thank you very much. Claire Broome.
Claire Broome: Good morning, President Batjer. I'm
Claire Broome. I'm a resident of Berkeley and a
professor of Public Health. You've got a daunting
but critical task. As you look at trying to get
the PUC to move from doing business as usual to
addressing the level of concern that you've heard
this morning. I want to use the proposed decision
that's coming up for your consideration on the
reliability procurement as an excellent example of
what's not working. So, specifically, I file as
a party in other proceedings, not this one. And so
I have some inside knowledge of how the process
works, and there's a couple of problems. First of
all, four knowledgeable parties, in filed comments,
have identified that the need for this procurement,
there really is sufficient capacity already
there. Secondly, there's excellent new technology,
hybrid co-location of storage with generating, which
could meet those needs if they're real; however,
the CPUC does need to determine a net qualifying
capacity in order for hybrid resources to be used.
So that's something that the PUC could do to
make this clean as opposed to what they're proposing
to do, which is to extend ones through cooling
plants that have been slated for closing. So I
would say this is going in absolutely the wrong
direction, and I implore you to take a fresh look
at what's happening and try to take a more holistic
approach. Final irony. I live in Berkeley. My power's
off. So you're proposing to charge ratepayers
for new procurement when PG&E, under your responsibility,
has not provided reliability. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Andrea. I'm
going to spell the last name. V I D A U R R E
Andrea Vidaurre: Hi, Commissioners. My name is Andrea
Vidaurre. Today, I'm coming to you from the Inland Empire
Environmental Justice Communities that are overburdened
with multiple sources of pollution that this commission
should be well aware of because many of you have visited our
region. Our communities get to wear the crown of having
the worst ozone in the nation. And then on top of that,
home to many gas plants that run in pockets throughout our
region, and for far too long, because the pollution has been
directed to occur in these certain places, our community's
health continues to be sacrificed for other people's
prosperity and the state's energy stability. And your
proposal to extend the life of gas plants and move forward
and continuing the sacrifice on environmental justice
communities like the families in Oxnard. This proposal is not
only disrespectful to the communities in Oxnard, but all
environmental justice communities, and hypocritical on your
part to keep this weight on the folks that continue to
hold the most massive burdens on their shoulder already.
And it's ironic being here as we're seeing these massive
electricity shut downs of our communities across the nation.
Our folks again being sacrificed. And for what? Reliability
for who at the end of the day? Who really benefits from
this and who is forced to struggle through it? We need
you all to reconsider your proposal to extend the life of gas
plants. We’ll continue to see these reactionary measures
to climate change such as electricity shut offs because
at the end of the day, we're not doing anything to fight
climate change if we're not shutting down these gas plants.
We’ll oppose any decision that continues to that continues
the legacies of environmental racism and continues to
overburden communities of color. Thank you for your time.
President Batjer: Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who
would like to speak? Please come forward. And please state your name.
Yasi Kazivate: Hello. My name is Yasi Kavizate, and I am a resident of the Inland
region. I'm here today with my friends to oppose the proposed decision to extend the
life of four gas fired power plants and especially standing in solidarity with
communities that couldn't be here, frontline
communities that are disproportionately
impacted by pollution throughout the state of California. So we have this goal.
We have the goal in California. We won in getting 100% renewable energy by 2045.
And this proposed decision to extend the life of these gas plants will hurt this
outcome severely. We all know we gotta get to the 55% renewable generation.
If we continue to keep gas fire alive and not look at solutions that are actually
happening in California, like the Fontana Unified School District, that's offsetting
85% of their energy with renewable energy with renewable generation on 40 different
properties with storage and solar. And this is in the Inland region where
we’re simultaneously working on getting apprenticeship programs, finding the bridge
between good, sustainable jobs that are powered and have community benefits at
the end of the day. And some of you have visited the Inland region. Commissioner
Randolph, you were there on an education tour with our community members, speaking
about the importance of clean energy and clean air, and we've celebrated programs
like S-Ship and incentive funding to go towards clean energy. Why are we continuing
to keep? Why are you continuing to keep pollution alive and slowly killing us?
Why do I have to worry about my cousin running in in the afternoon because he's
gonna get runner’s asthma. Why don't have to worry about hearing another person die
from cancer? About hearing another person contract seasonal allergies or chronic
bronchitis? Or unexpected nosebleeds. This is unacceptable. And we can't keep
coming here, risk sacrificing time away from our families, time away from work,
to continue the same talking points. We’re tired. And you're expecting us to sit
happy and be okay with this expectation of reliability. Why can’t we look at the
reliability towards clean energy? Like, I don't understand how we continue, you know,
beat around the bush or whatever. I'm not really good at those things, but I'm
just, you know, a lot of folks here, come here every day. You know, this is part
of your job. But we're here. We're trying to rehumanize the space. This is what
you're doing. Look at this community right here. This is out of the norm. I know
I’m over time. So thank you for your time. Sorry about if I went a little over.
President Batjer: Thank you. Please state your name.
Amy Aguillera: Hi, whoa, there it goes. All
right. Hi. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is
Amy Aguillera, and I was born and raised in Oxnard,
California. My family lives there, works there,
and goes to school there. And I'm here today because
I strongly oppose to extend the 401 cooling gas
plants and specifically to oppose the Ormond Beach
one due to its harm on my community that lives
there. Gas is way too dangerous, and it risks the
lives of the frontline communities who live there
with short term and long term dangers to public health.
For this reason, we need to invest in new clean
energy and not fossil fuels. I remember being in
middle school, and throughout high school, organizing
with community, going to these hearings, asking
that you all shut down these plants. Not trying
to age myself. But it's been a while. It's been a very,
very long time, and I think that our communities
deserve better. For too too long, our Oxnard
Community has had to deal with pesticides throughout
our city, three power plants, and pollution from a
Superfund site. You know, there's families who go
out into the wetlands on the weekends in south
Oxnard, where our farm worker communities live, who
are the most impacted, you know, kids playing
in polluted waters that have a long-term health
effects. So we have to work harder to ensure a
healthy, safe environment is created for disadvantaged
communities on the Oxnard coast and beyond. So please,
we ask that you vote no to extend the gas plants
because depending on dirty energy is dangerous. We
need to regenerate California today. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Please state your name.
Hi. My name is louder. Grazia Santiago. I
live in Los Angeles and I stand in solidarity
with the Oxford community. I oppose the proposed
decision to extend the four ones through
cooling OTC gas plants. I especially opposed
Ormond Gas Plant because it does. It poses
particular harm for Oxnard and criminal Justice
community that has for years been impacted
by environmental racism in the form of gas
plants, fossil fuels, pesticides and much more.
And they have strongly stood up and continue
to organize to fight back. Extending the life
of these gas plants is not the solution. It's
not the answer to our energy needs. We need
a just transition to renewable energy. Uh, sorry to renewable economy that prioritizes
frontline and environmental justice communities.
Real solutions. It's like renewable energy.
Solar solar panels. Um, that's accessible for
everyone. Solar storage. That's not only
for the daily use, but in case of emergency
situations like the one at the Bay Area isn't
right now. Um, and this This would especially
support elders and those who rely on medical
devices that require electricity. So we want
to see clean energy. We want to see these
investments in frontline communities because
it's time it's they historically been
disenfranchised, and it's what they deserve and
is what we need in order to face the climate
crisis. Depending on dirty energy is dangerous.
And we need to regenerate California now.
President Batjer: Thank you. Thank you. Please state your name.
Mindy Spatt: Good morning. Mindy Spatt, Communications
Chief with TURN, The Utility Reform Network,
representing California consumers for over 45 years.
Obviously, the customers who are experiencing
shutoffs, they're not here today. They've got way
bigger problems to deal with. So I did want to
tell the Commission a little about what we're
hearing. Emails and phone calls are pouring into our
office from our members throughout Northern California.
The big question they're asking is why PG&E's
criminal negligence has been allowed to continue
to the point where this is the only option and
why they continue to pay top dollar for a service
that is either going to burn them down or shut
them off. They're also asking why they should be
the ones to bear all the burden of the shutoffs,
why they have to take the financial loss, why their
schools have to be closed, why their communities
are being put through this while PG&E continues to
raise their rates under the guise of safety that
PG&E obviously can’t provide. The message we're
getting is that they've done nothing to fix their
tree-trimming so that this is the only option. On
top of that, PG&E apparently can't operationalized
these shutoffs properly either since we hear their
websites down there, they people can't get through
on the phone. In fact, last night ads were running
telling, directing people to PG&E's website
on a newscast that was reporting that their second
website had gone down. I mean, this is really,
I mean, I've been at TURN for 21 years. Every
time you think you PG&E can't do worse, they do.
President Batjer: Please state your name.
Anthony Victoria: Hello. Good morning. My name is Anthony
Victoria. I'm from Riverside, California, and between fires
and smog days, gas plants suck the life out of frontline
communities like Riverside, like Oxnard, and gas is anything but
natural. Let's be frank about that. And the people that are
living in the frontline communities there facing the real life
effects of not just climate change, but of dirty pollution.
People like me, people like the folks that you heard today
who have lost loved ones. I just lost my mother to cancer, and
it's because she had a diminished quality of life because
of where she lived, which was near railyards, near warehouses
and, more importantly, near gas plants. And so I think
you all here have a duty to not only push for our state's clean
energy goals, but also have a duty to protect the quality
of life of your constituents. And so I think it's only the
right thing to do and retire these gas plants. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Is there anyone else in the
audience would like to address the commission at this time? Okay.
Commissioner Randolph: President Batjer, can I just say something for a
moment? I just wanted to thank everyone for coming down and sharing your
thoughts. We've received a lot of comments on the proposed decision and are
taking them and your comments to heart. I will note that, in terms of the gas
fleet, generally, there have been a number of retirements, and we're hoping
that will continue, and we're trying to manage that transition as best we
can in terms of making sure that the renewable integration of both rooftop
solar, utility scale solar, wind, all those resources are integrated with
the system, and the system remains reliable. So we're trying to balance all
of those things. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come. And
as I said, I will certainly take your comments and the comments of the parties
in the preceding to heart as we take a look at this decision. You know,
I think one of the examples of gas plants that have retired or one of the
ones I saw when I visited in the Inland Empire. So it's important that we
see our way to 2045, and we see our way to 2045 in as effective way as
possible. So thank you for taking the time to come. I really do appreciate it.
President Batjer: And I also want to add my
thanks to the speakers for coming today and sharing
their concerns, and particularly, to you all who
have traveled many hours to come and present
your opinions and concerns to the Commission. So
I thank you. With that, the public comment is
closed. Typically, the management reports come
later on our agenda on, under item 48. However,
as I mentioned earlier, I have asked Deputy
Executive Director Malashenko, who was planning on
making her comments later on the agenda, number
48, to speak now. So, we will have a report from
the executive director now and not later into
the agenda. So those who are here with concerns
on the current PSPS by PG&E can hear her report.
So with that, Executive Director Malashenko
Executive Director Malashenko: Morning Commissioners. Elizaveta
Malashenko, Deputy Executive Director for Safety Policy here at the
Commission, and I'm going to give you an update on the public safety power
shutoff, the PSPS event that we've been experiencing in the state of
California this week. I'm getting to have two parts to my presentation.
First, an update on the status of the events, and second, providing a
little bit of information on the State response and what we have been
doing to monitor the event. The weather events began on Wednesday, early
morning. So at night, between Tuesday and Wednesday, and it started in
Northern California, and then it's been moving through the states. It's
forecasted to last through Friday afternoon in Southern California.
Just to give you some numbers in PG&E territory, there are 29 counties
that have been impacted by the events. When PG&E activated their PSPS
protocol, their estimates for the number of customers that would be
impacted were over 700,000. They began de-energizing on Wednesday, early
morning, and have progressed since then, with different events within
this larger event who shut off customers as the weather forecast moved.
Currently, we're just under 600,000 customers that are out of power,
and it’s the counties that are impacted tracked from Northern California,
Northern Central Sierras through the Wine Country counties all the
way to Kern. The weather is now moving out of the Northern California.
So PG&E has began re-energizing parts of Humboldt area, but they're
still continuing deenergizing some additional areas potentially later
on today. So we may still see the total customer impact reach the 700
thousand customers that was projected earlier. Now, for SCE, they had
some deenergization events. Yesterday. They were forecasting six counties
impacted throughout the service territory, including Kern, Los Angeles,
Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Orange. So pretty much throughout
the major bulk of this service territory. They deenergized a few circuits
in Kern County yesterday, and then at this point, the total customer
impact is 4.5 thousand customers, 4500 customers, and its primarily
in San Bernardino County with a smaller impact in Kern and they just
also initiated an event in Ventura County. They're continuing to monitor
the weather. The bulk of the projection on the forecast of the weather
events in Southern California was to start later on on Thursday and
go through Friday. So again, at this point, it is still possible that
we will see the full 200,000 customer impact in SCE territory as they
were projecting earlier. SDG&E has also their PSPS protocol activated.
They were forecasting the weather events for them to start late in the
afternoon on Thursday and go through Friday. The impact in the SDG&E
territory is in San Diego County. Their total projection’s around 32
thousands customers. They have not to this moment deenergized anyone. So
major event, the largest PSPS event that we've experienced in the state
of California to date. We've taken this very seriously at all levels
of staff across the different agencies. PUC has had someone embedded in
PG&E's Emergency Operations Center since Monday. I've been there for
several days. Right now, we have somebody else covering that shift. We
also have a PUC employee at the CalOES State Operations center to assist
with response. CalOES and CalFire also had the representatives embedded
in PG&E’s emergency operation center to facilitate all of us, both
reviewing PG&E's actions but most importantly, trying to do what we can
to resolve issues on the fly and ensure public safety. So just to give
you a sense of what the kind of issues that we work on, our concern
is for public safety and doing everything that we can to minimize the
impact of these very serious events. Some of the issues that have come
up is the coordination between PG&E and counties and local government.
So there’ve been a lot of challenges just in how that's being working,
and we've been doing what we can to monitor what's happening, suggest
recommendations for how to adjust the process as the events unfold. And
also just assisting with dissemination of information. So, for example,
one of the top challenges in these events is protection of vulnerable
populations. So there are customers who are identified as medically
dependent on energy infrastructure. So through CalOES, we coordinate the
utilities outreach to those customers, plus any support that may be
needed from local emergency response personnel to assure their safety.
And so exchanging a lot of the information around that of who is a
utility been able to reach? Who hasn't been reached? Where does somebody
need to physically go out and ensure somebody's safety? Help them out
if they're in harm's way? So that's a major part of the operation. Then
it's also identifying critical facilities. So it could be anything
from tunnels, critical transportation infrastructure, schools, hospitals,
jails, other telecommunications facility, checking in with them on
how much backup generation that they have. If they don't have generation,
making sure that either they're provided that generation through PG&E
or other means. We've had generation coming to California from out of
states. There's been some logistical challenges around that. Working
with Air Resources Board on the air regulations that apply to distributed
generation, making sure that the permitting allows for those
facilities to actually run. There's distributed generation, the facilities,
then also, there's a major impact on the transportation network from
deenergization, including a rail that we oversee with loss of power, you
lose signaling on the rail system and the crossings warnings. So for
at-grade crossings, the regulation is that if the signaling is down, the
train has to come to a complete stop at every crossing, and the crew
has to get out and flag the crossing until the train has cleared it.
And then for areas where the signaling is down, the train has to slow
and work with dispatch to get clearance to pass. So part of our rail
safety team has been working with CalOES and with the rail operators to
make sure that they're aware of PSPS and that again, all of these kind
of issues get resolved. There's being the impact on transmission system.
PG&E has shut off power. In the footprints of the event was 97
transmission lines. So there's a significant coordination needed with the
Kiso to ensure that the impact states stays localized and doesn't propagate
through transmission system. So we have a role in that coordination
and oversight of that as well. And then an example of just an emergent
issue that we also were monitoring very closely was the loss of the
website’s capabilities, specifically of PG&E, there was some slow down on
SCE’s site as well how due to the volume of traffic that the utilities
were experiencing. This is a major concern for everybody engaged in
this events. It was the loss of ability to provide information. So, you
know, we were working on that issue and figuring out workarounds of how
this information can be distributed. Now, just wrapping this up with
restoration, which is the final phase of these PSPS events, we're looking
for the weather to clear from the states by the end of the day on
Friday. It's very hard to predict how long restorations because it depends
on the amount of damage from the event itself. Rule of thumb is about
48 hours, but in some situations that could take longer, if there was
significant damage, utilities have to re-inspect all of their infrastructure
before they reenergize it. Since the most significant events in terms
of customer impact on territory with PG&E, they also have the most
complex restoration. They have 2400 miles of transmission that was out
and 24,000 miles of distribution lines, so that's a very significant
amount of infrastructure to patrol. They have 45 helicopters that are on
standby to do the aerial patrols. And over six thousands personnel of
crews, they have to be trained in electric system. So those are people
who are qualified to actually work on this. So that will be the sort
of final phase of this event is doing the restoration work, and we will
continue to monitor with all of the state partners of how it’s going.
And I just also wanted to finish up by just thanking all of the state
agencies that have come together in the partnership and the work off
CalOES and CalFire, in particular, for keeping the public safe. CalFire
is also been responding to actual ignitions because this was a really
and continues to be a red flag warning and a high fire threat condition.
There’s over 200 fires that broke out over this period, CalFire has
contained all but one under 10 acres. And the one fire that is over is
also getting controlled. So they've done a phenomenal job of putting
out those fires and keeping the communities out of harm's way. So that
will complete my remarks and take your questions if you have them.
President Batjer: Thank you very much, Liza. Does anyone
have any comments or questions? I will just add a thank
you also to the California Department of Technology and
Director Amy Tong for dispatching herself, as well a staff,
early yesterday, to assist with the server and website
issues. And they have also remained there for the last 24
hours, and they're still there assisting. So add that to
the other state agencies for all of their assistance.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: I want to echo my thanks to you and your staff.
To you, President Batjer to Director Stebbins. I know you've been very hands
on at the Emergency Operations Center, coordinating with other state agencies.
I want to associate myself with what you said at the start, President
Batjer, and there'll be plenty of time for postmortem. I just have a question
for you about coordination with local county governments, because that's
something that I've heard about personally, and I heard about in the media.
It's been a big source of strife. Are there things we can do right now
in the next two or three days as the shut offs continue to other communities?
Although if it's moving south, it'll be Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric,
as opposed to PG&E. But things we could do right now in midstream to correct
that. Obviously it's disappointing because that's been a central focus
of our de-energization proceeding and what we required in the first phase
and what we're looking at in the second phase. We heard a lot of concerns
about the last round, but without hashing that in great detail, there are
things we are doing right now with our other state partners to improve that.
Executive Director Malashenko: Thank you for that question. We have been engaged
in this issue and doing what we can to course correct on the fly, the end of day,
it's a PG&E event, so they are the ones who have the responsibility for communicating
with the counties. We can offer suggestions and fill in some of the gaps, which
is what CalOES has been doing. There are very
different relationships between processes
between different facilities and the respective counties. We currently don't
have the same concern that the communication
will have as many challenges in San
Diego, they've had this program for a while.
So far, I they think that process between
communicating between SDDG&E in San Diego County, you know, is relatively smooth.
SCE, we've been monitoring SCE communications
as well. There are some challenges, but
they're approaching it quite differently. So
I would say that there are the challenges
that have been experienced, the different depending on IOU and the county in
question. And again, you know, from the role,
and in the these emergencies, you have
to follow the SEMS, the emergency management
system, that is, the system of the
state, through through the SEMS framework, CalOES has been engaging with all the
different parties to try and make this work smoother, and we will continue to do so.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Just ask a follow up to that cause I, and thank
you also, Elizaveta, for your leadership on this and the amount of time that
your team and yourself, I know, you've been at the different command centers.
I saw the executive director letter that was sent out on the data sharing
for vulnerable populations, and just as a follow up to Commissioner
Rechtschaffen's question, I had assumed that type of coordination was occurring
already. So if if you could clarify if it was and this was a reinforcement of
that. Where is there additional need for forced coordination with the locals?
Executive Director Malashenko: Yeah. Thank you. It
has been a a topic of much discussion ahead of time.
This is one of the examples where there has been
frustration on the execution during actual events.
The letter was to reinforce the understanding that
the states and the PUC
specifically hand with the IOUs going into these
events. As the event was unfolding, there was some
confusion from people who were executing the events.
And so we we took this action in order to resolve
any kind of confusion in the immediate moment.
And we will be following up, as the letter says,
with the Commission to consider reinforcing this
so that we make sure that, you know, this isn't
something that keeps coming up again and again as
different people get involved in in different events.
Commissioner Shiroma: Thank you, Elizaveta. I have several questions
and a comment. You mentioned the medical rate customers and I know that
the utilities have a specific listing of the customers who are on their
med rates and these are folks who rely upon electricity for health
and safety, people who are on oxygen tanks and so forth. And did I
hear you say that CalOES is helping to assure that these customers are
safe, have access to electricity, are being taken to thes centers that
PG&E has opened. Or do we know yet the status of these customers?
Executive Director Malashenko: Thank you for your question.
The this is being the one of the major challenges of the PSPS
program is assuring safety of communities with access and functional
needs. Some of the challenges that I want to say up front is
that there is no comprehensive list of everybody who is in various
ways dependent on electricity for their well being. The medical
baseline is a tariff that the commission has, and the intention
of that tariff was to give a rate break for those who are
medically dependent on electricity. So it was a rate program to
help with the cost of it. It was never designed to be used for
the purpose of emergency response. But as these events have been
happening, we've used this as the best available proxy. The
processes around that is that utility makes contact to each customer
that could be impacted by PSPS. So they call them and until
they actually get them on the phone or in some other way, actually
get a positive acknowledgment that they are aware that this is
happening and that they have a plan to to make themselves safe. And
then when the event initializes, the utilities share the number
of those customers that they see as being potentially impacted
with state agencies, including CalOES. As the events progress
we get statuses from utilities of how many of those customers they
have been able to reach. So then, for the subset of customers
that were not reached, that there is a concern that the, you
know, about their status, that's when the utility does an
actual physical visits to their property to try and in person
validate that they know the information and that they're safe. Then
the remainder, where a utility was not able to get that confirmation,
that's where emergency personnel gets involved. According
to SEMS you generally deal with that at the lowest possible
level, so that's one of the many burdens that falls on local
governments and their local law enforcement's is to pick up some
of that work related to assuring the safety of the AFN community.
Commissioner Shiroma: So a follow on comment and then another
question. The sheer magnitude of the, in this case, the
PG&E public safety power shut off is, I think, is again,
there'll be a postmortem and so forth. But the sheer magnitude
is indicative of the condition of the utility in terms of
what we call the hardening. And that means the condition of
the polls, the lines, the wires, the transformers, the
transmission lines, and the maintenance or lack thereof, of the
system, and the vegetation management. Now having said that,
is this a situation where the utility can invoke mutual aid?
In other words, asking for help from other utilities to come
in. The weather conditions are driving this and the condition
of the utility, but once the workers can get back in there
and inspect the lines to then turn the power back on, is
this a situation where mutual aid ought to be invoked by the
utility to expedite the ability to turn the power back on?
<v Executive Director Malashenko>Yes, thank you
very much for the question. Mutual assistance
is something that is considered by a utility.
And this something that is discussed
through the SEMS process. The reality is that there is a limit to how many resources
you can throw it an issue. For example, I mentioned the 45 helicopters that PG&E
has to do aerial patrols. You have to fly safely, so you can't just keep adding
helicopters. There is only so much air space
that you can do air traffic control safely
and make sure you don't have an accident. And then for crews, as well, there is a
certain, you have to be able to manage your field work force and to ensure that they're
doing the inspections in the way that yields
quality results.There'is also, at a certain
point, you can't do it any faster because even if you keep adding more people to
it, the management of that has diminishing returns to your expediency. So there is
that balance, right? So it was something
that's on the table. And PG&E is able to call
on mutual assistance, but in this particular
event to my knowledge, PG&E has elected not
to do so, and their estimate is that they will be able to do it with their resources
as I summarized them. And we will continue to monitor that and raise that question
again if there's evidence to to lack of resources contributing to the challenge.
Commissioner Shiroma: Appreciate your continuous
monitoring of the whole situation. Thank you.
Commissioner Randolph: I actually, and thank you
for that presentation that was really helpful.
And I just wanted to make a comment that I really
think, you know, we need to take a careful
after-action review of all of this because one of
my concerns is, as my other commissioners have
stated, there was, there was coordination activity
that we thought had already taken place, you know.
And one example is, you know, PG&E had done
outreach in terms of asking people to provide their
contact information so that they then could be
contacted. But that contact did not extend to kind of
providing updates. So there was this sort of
broad, you know, we may be de-energizing sort of
statement. But then people were left wondering, you
know, is my area really affected? You know, when
is it gonna happen? And there wasn't, you know,
there were weren't email alerts or things sent to
customers, so that customers could understand what
was going on after the customer sort of made the
effort, you know, weeks or months ago to make sure
their contact information was up to date. So,
you know, improving the interaction and understanding
of what's happening, I think is as important
as all of the additional detailed work that needs
to be done. So I appreciate your efforts to stay
on top of this and and keep the company working
on all these issues. And I really want to take
a careful look at this. So we can come up with it
a detailed list of lessons learned and ways to
do it differently next time. Hopefully, avoid this
as much as possible in the future. Thank you.
President Batjer: Liza. Again, I thank you
very much and and your staff for all of your
hard work this week and agree that lessons learned and a good after-action report will
be very necessary. I've observed many missteps.
Surprising missteps in in the monitoring
that I've been doing. So I thank you very much for your presentation and your update.
<v Executive Director Malashenko>Thank you, Commissioners.
President Batjer: We will now resume with the regular order of business. These are
the following changes to today's agenda. Item number two held to 10-24-19. Item
Three has been withdrawn. Item number five has been held to 10-24-19. Item seven has
been held to 10-24-19. Item number eight, we will take up with the regular agenda.
Item 11 has been held to 10-24-19. Item
number five, we will take up with the consent
agenda. I'm sorry. 35. Thank you for the correction. I don't even know what I said.
Item 47 we will take up with the consent agenda, and Item 50 will be held until the
11-7-19. Okay, with that on, we'll take up the consent items. Is there a motion?
Commissioner Shiroma: So moved.
President Batjer: It has been moved and seconded. All in favor, please
say aye. It is a unanimous vote. The consent agenda items have been
passed, as I said, unanimously. I believe that we have some comments from
the commissioner's on the consent items. Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
<v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>President Batjer. I
wanted to just speak briefly to three items. The
first item, 4, in relation to the Race Phelan project.
In an augmentation from the California Advance
Service Fund. One of the things I'm wanting to
acknowledge and thank the staff, not just from the
Communications division, but with the Energy
Division and Southern California Edison, for their
commitment to look at a permanent solution first. Now,
this resolution that we just approved does provide
the funding for the proposal that was requested.
But I think the preferred alternative is really
to have the permanent solution funded wholly and not
have a temporary solution funded with CSF ratepayer
funds and then a permanent solution funded again
by electricity ratepayer funds The goal here is
to do it once, do it right, and I am very supportive
of the CSF fund funding that infrastructure, that
permanent infrastructure. So I look forward to
working with all of those stakeholders, to seeing if
that is a real option, and a timely way. So
congratulations on that, but I wanna acknowledge that
change in the resolution and the coordination that I
see taking place between Energy and Communications
is growing stronger. And this is an example of where
we should be optimizing our funding. Secondly,
I wanted to give a big heads up to my fellow
commissioners and all the parties on item 10. This
is the power charge indifference account. This
decision, as many of our PCIA decisions, really sees
the effect in the ERRA decisions the, you know,
essentially the, it's called the Energy Resource
Recovery Account. But what it is is it's the true up
and the forecast of the majority of the generation
costs and different elements of those generation
costs. And I just wanna raise the awareness that
given this improvement of accuracy and how the PCIA
is determined, particularly as it relates to how
the vintage billing determinants are being accounted
for, this is going to lead most likely to a
significant PCIA rate impact. And we're gonna see
that in the ERRAs. We don't know what it is gonna be.
There is a strong likelihood that some of the utilities
one, maybe two, will be applying for trigger
application in this upcoming transition year. And
so I just, I want to make sure that we're very
transparent about that. That we ask the right
questions, that our accounting is as tight as possible.
But it is gonna be another major transition year. And
finally, I want to say that I'm very enthusiastic
that we just opened the rulemaking on item 23,
the electric program investment charge that we
call EPIC. Because we have to use the acronyms for
everything, but as you know, this is our energy
research and development program that has had a lot
of success. And our sister agency, the California
Energy Commission, administers this program. And I'm
looking forward to very enthusiastically extending
the program for another period of time and to work
in collaboration with our sister agencies and
all the stakeholders to making sure it's an even
more robust program and more relevant to the issues
and the crises that we're facing today. So thank
you for those, for allowing me those updates.
President Batjer: Commissioner Rechtschaffen, you hade a comment.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Thank you, President Batjer. I wanted to
explain briefly what we did in item 19 where we closed for PG&E their
risk assessment mitigation phase. And the RAMP process is an integral
part of our overall safety and risk assessment program for utilities. We
require the utilities to file these plans that identify their top safety
risks and come up with a risk mitigation plan that evaluates the cost
effectiveness of various mitigation measures. Those costs are then plugged
in and considered in each utilities general rate case. What happened
here is the process that we follow for all the utilities, our Safety and
Enforcement Division evaluated the ramp filing from PG&E. They completed
an analysis, found that PG&E had met the various reporting criteria,
incorporated lessons learned from previous RAMP filings and provided
detailed information explaining the RAMP analysis. And our Safety and
Enforcement Division report was about 150 pages long. Importantly, PG&E
has incorporated the results from the RAMP process in its Test Year for
the 2020 general rate case, and that's why we closed the proceeding
here. The Safety and Enforcement division also identified some important
areas for improvement. This is an iterative process as we intended it
to be. I would also note that because of timing this RAMP did not include
all of the analysis, the improved analysis, that our safety model
assessment proceeding, the overall broader proceeding that dictates what's
in the RAMPS, has now directed for future RAMPs, although importantly,
PG&E did include some of the emerging analysis that was suggested by
that proceeding. By the way, the utilities will have to follow this
process with respect to their wildfire mitigation plans going forward.
They didn't do so in the first round of wildfire mitigation plans, which
were developed on a very strict time frame. But in the decisions of
approving those plans, we directed them to engage in this kind of cost
effective analysis going forward. The other IOUs will be making RAMP
filings over the next couple of years according to the schedules we've
established for them. And, of course, we'll be working with all of them to
make sure that they continue to improve on their RAMP filing. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Okay. Are there any other comments?
Seeing none. We will now take up the regular agenda items. The first
agenda item is item number eight. And item eight is a resolution
containing the Executive Director's recommendation addressing Ruth
Hendricks August 23, 2019, motion for disqualification of Commissioner
Rechtschaffen for cause in the proceeding R19-7-17. This proceeding
was opened in July of this year to implement portions of AB1054 which
was signed into law in July, related to establishing Californians
Wildfire Fund. This resolution finds that Miss Hendricks motion lacks
merit because she has not established facts to demonstrate Commissioner
Rechtschaffen has any unalterably closed mind on matters critical to
the disposition of this proceeding. Nor has Hendricks established
a financial or pecuniary interest on the part of Commissioner
Rechtschaffen. Pursuant to Rule 95E, Commissioner Rechtschaffen will not
vote on this item and has indeed stepped away from the dais for this
vote. Do we have any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?
Commissioner Randolph: I'll just speak briefly and
thank Legal Division for preparing this resolution.
This is a relatively new statutory process that
allows for allegations of bias. In this particular
case, those allegations were utterly without merit
and without evidence to support them. One of
the allegations included an allegation that not
holding hearings, you know, finding in a scoping
memo that hearings were not necessary in a proceeding,
somehow, indicated bias, which could not be
further from the truth. And in fact, it's very
routine for scoping memos to make the determination
that evidentiary hearings are not necessary at a
particular proceeding. So, I want to thank staff's
work on this. And I will absolutely be supporting
the resolution and the conclusions therein.
Commissioner Shiroma: Yes, yes, I echo Commissioner Randolph's comments, and I
appreciate that Commissioner Rechtschaffen decided to recuse himself from this vote.
I don't think he needed to because the conclusion is that there's no financial
benefit, there's not some sort of a pattern of bias, and the actions taken under
this proceeding are in concert with many of our other proceedings, in terms of hearings
or not, in terms of taking judicial notice or not, and I appreciate Commissioner
Rechtschaffen's work on this very, very tough proceeding. So I support denying
the motion for disqualification of our colleague Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
President Batjer: Thank you. Any other comments?
I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll, please.
Clerk: For item 8, Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: President Batjer. President Batjer: Aye.
President Batjer: The vote is unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. I think the
Commissioner can return. Hang on one moment
while we make sure that the Commissioner can
return to the dais. Thank you. Okay, well, we will be taking up items number 36 and
36A two together. I'm going to first ask
that Commissioner Randolph speak to item 36.
Commissioner Randolph: Okay, so I'll just briefly
introduce this before I turn it over to Commissioner
Rechtschaffen. So this is a staff resolution, but it's
within the energy efficiency proceeding, which is my
proceeding. And it's, the issue is it's part of our
incentive program, awards incentives for past activity.
And I just wanted to thank staff for doing the work on
this proceeding, it's kind of, it's a very relatively
ministerial function to take a look at the spending
that the IOUs engaged in and determine the shareholder
award related to that. And I believe staff did a good
job with this resolution. There was concern about SoCal
Gases codes and standards advocacy. Back in 2018, we
issued a decision, and we told them not to engage in
that activity going forward. As part of that decision,
we explicitly stated that we didn't have specific
standards to evaluate the activity against and that we
didn't have rules and guidance for determining, sort
of, what codes and standards activity was appropriate
versus what was inconsistent with codes and standards
activity. And so, at the time in 2018, we did not say
that that activity was against the rules. And so staff
appropriately took that activity into consideration
and prepared and calculated the incentive awards that
were awarded. I do recognize, however, that there are
some policy considerations when you're looking at, you
know, not approving expenditures versus deciding whether
or not they should get an incentive payment for
that activity. And so, I appreciate, sort of, the work
in analysis that Commissioner Rechtschaffen has done
on that topic. I will give you a brief update that we
actually issued an order to show cause to SoCal Gas for
their activity post that decision, the 2018 decision,
because we do have some concerns about the activity
that they engaged in, post the activity that's considered
in this resolution. So it's super complicated. And
it really is, it's It's kind of a careful policy question
that we considered in this situation as, and as I
stated, I think staff got that analysis correct. But I
do understand Commissioner Rechtschaffen’s point of
view. And I do know some parties have called for if we
do engage or if we do issue an order to show cause based
on the 2016 and 2017 activity, that that be rolled
into the order to show cause that we recently adopted.
So I would be comfortable with that as an approach. So
that's kind of a long winded way of saying I am going
to turn it over to Commissioner Rechtschaffen to
share his point of view. Oh. One last point I wanted
to make. Actually, this is kind of an important point,
which is I do think we have been very busy in the EE
proceeding. We've been doing updating potential goals,
we've been, we just did the fuel substitution decision.
We have a lot of work coming in terms of thinking about
market transformation, etcetera, etcetera. But one
of the things that I would really like to take on is
taking a look at the SP program as we move towards
more third party administration, you know, is the SP
program necessary? Does it really encourage energy
efficiency savings? Not just spending but savings? And
so I really do want to take a fresh look at this program
and this whole debate about the codes and standards
activity kind of highlights the complexity of thinking
about shareholder rewards for this kind of spending.
So I do want to take a look at that going forward.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: You know, I don't think, if that's
long winded, you fail at the job. hat is far from long winded.
I do want to start by saying I completely agree with youT
about the need to reevaluate the whole performance incentive
structure. And this, as you said, really does highlight the
need for that, because here, the incentives are provided not
for demonstrating an actual specific result, but merely as a
percentage of the amount spent. So we're really making a very
educated guess about whether or not the actions and the activities
really do result in the desired result, which is increasing
efficiency. Commissioner Randolph highlighted the complexities
here, and I want to know what the story, the alternate
resolution differs from the original resolution only with respect
to this issue that commissioner Randolph identified, the
incentives claimed by SoCal gas for their codes and standards
advocacy. And in part because of the complexity, procedurally
and with the rulings, it doesn't decide anything definitively.
It would open up another order to show cause to allow the
parties to present evidence and for us to consider whether or
not that's the appropriate approach and whether or not the
incentives in this case were warranted. And that's actually the
process that's been recommended by our Energy division and
our Legal division here, going forward. Just to take a step
back, the reason I'm supporting this alternate approach is the
purpose of this program is to provide incentives that lead to
energy and savings, and our approval of money for codes and
standards advocacy is clearly intended to be used to advocate
for stricter standards. As I said, incentives are not based
on the results achieved here, actually, just based on a quote
unquote management fee, that's a percentage of the expenditures.
And what happened here is the parties of raised, to my
mind, some very serious questions as to whether SoCal Gas
followed our intent in their 2016 and 2017 activities when it
actually advocated against stricter standards that would save
energy. So what the decision does again is it would direct the
opening of an order to show cause in the energy efficiency
proceeding to determine if SoCal Gas did that. And if it did,
whether the contested incentives awards for 2016 and 2017’s
appropriate, as well as whether the rate payer funding in those
years is appropriate. As Commissioner Randolph indicated,
there's an existing order to show cause, and it makes sense if
this alternate is approved, that those proceedings would be
consolidated and to reiterate what Commissioner Randolph said
very briefly, in a decision last year, in which there were
allegations made that SOCO gas had used its codes and standards
at advocacy to argue against stricter standards that was
result in energy savings. We issued a decision agreeing with
those allegations, finding that SoCal gas had not used ratepayer
fundings to advocate for stricter codes and standards. So they
had not done what the intent of our program is. We barred
SoCal gas perspectively from engaging in this kind of advocacy.
Just last week, as Commissioner Randolph said, we issued an
order to show cause to as to why SoCal Gas shouldn’t be
sanctioned for violating that 2018 decision after it was issued
for continuing to engage in this advocacy and also for issuing
misleading statements about its activities. We did not, in
that 2018 decision as Commissioner Randolph said, explicitly
determine whether the 2016 and 2017 activities had explicitly
violated any of our prior orders or decision. So that would
be the exact issue examined in this OSC. I'm happy to answer
questions. As I said, I completely agree with Commissioner
Randolph that beyond this resolution, the OSC, it's time to
reevaluate this entire incentive program. So with that, I would
urge your support, ask for your support for the alternate here.
President Batjer: Okay. I think we have a comment from Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Shiroma: Thank you. Thank you. So I do want to
thank the Energy Division, Erica Petrovsky and Jen Caliphate,
for bringing 36 and 36A forward. 36A through the guidance of
Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Ultimately, I'm gonna be supporting
the alternative draft resolution. Having said that, I appreciate
the work that the Energy Division did in bringing for the
staff resolution, which looked, you know, precisely within
the four corners of what was done back in 2016 and 17. And I
appreciate that, when the efficiency savings and performance
incentive framework was established of Commission in 2013, it
wasn't necessary contemplated that a utilities specific negative
behavior or performance would be an issue. There's a lot of
good faith views of what the program would accomplish. I
appreciate the recent concerns expressed about Southern California
Gas's alleged activities. More recently and back during that
period of time that we are looking at now, you know, the alleged
activities about arguing against more stringent codes and
standards and how those may run counter to our Commission intent
with the program and overall, in terms of efficiencies in the
natural gas arena. So I support the consideration of the issue
and really, from an overall policy perspective, I think in my
last few months, I've been wanting to express on the dais here
about here are the rules and the four corners of the boundaries
and what have you, but also our role as commissioners is
to look at the overall policy advancement that we can exercise,
and here, I think, that is what outweighs and is expressed
in the alternative decision. And I appreciate Commissioner
Randolph's viewpoint, as already Commission on Energy Efficiency,
that we do need to take a look at, do some of these instead of
programs really work or not? Are the achieving what we need
to achieve or not? And then also to look at folding in this
effort into the recently issued order to show cause. Thank you.
President Batjer: Any other comments on items 36 and 36A?
Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Okay, I just wanting to thank
the staff for their work on this. I know it's been a
long journey. It's always those big dollar amounts of $25,000
that keep us busy here. But this, I also want to thank
Commissioner Randolph for her leadership on keeping the
oversight on this and this evolving question of when is it
appropriate for ratepayers to pay for some of this work that
the utilities are conducting for the promotion of their fuel?
And as she mentioned, not only are we looking at that
question overall in terms of when is it appropriate to use
ratepayer funds for their overall promotion, be it gas or
electric, but when is it appropriate when we're talking about
promoting efficiency? And this is kind of a nuance within
that. And and in particular, I felt the evidence that was
raised was enough to actually deny the incentive payments
within the resolution. But I think the compromise that
was reached in the alternate of really bundling it into an
order to show cause and providing opportunity for all parties
to provide their perspective on what was actually taking
place there in their advocacy, particularly the advocacy
they did to the federal government on DoE standards on the
furnaces. But it is a bigger question, and I'm very happy
to hear that Commissioner Randolph is interested in
looking at the merit of this program overall. I think, in
addition to the point that she raised, the overall issue of
of generation really being in the future a separate role
for these utilities and what what kind of nexus it has in
the future is really dwindling from my perspective. So I
very much would like to see this program looked at and
potentially eliminated. And I'm certainly supportive of joining
this order to show cause with the existing oversight that
she's providing in the one that she just recently issued.
President Batjer: Any comments? Okay, see none, I will
ask the agenda clerk to please call a role for Item 36A.
Clerk: For Item 36A, Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Aye.
Clerk: President Batjer President Batjer: Aye.
President Batjer: Okay, that's a unanimous vote.
Thank you all. I think that eliminates the need
for a vote for item 36. We will now move on to item
37 on the agenda. That is assigned to me. This
decision extends the statutory deadline in the
rulemaking proceeding to consider amendments to
General Order 95, R17-10-0110. Excuse me, R17-10-010,
to January 13, 2020. The current deadline is
October 31, 2019. The Commission opened this
rulemaking on October 12, 2017, in response to the
Safety and Enforcement Divisions petition to
consider amendments to General Order 95. 22 entities
participated in six workshops to discuss possible
amendments to General Order 95, including SED, the
Safety and Enforcement Division, publicly owned
utilities, labor unions, communication companies,
cable providers and industry associations. The parties
then prepared a joint parties workshop report
that was served last October and includes proposed
regulations as well as the technical presentations
that were considered in developing the proposed
regulations. Most recently, the parties filed
comments on the workshop report on September 30,
2019, which supplemented their prior comments.
The ALJ is currently drafting the proposed decision.
I am confident that the proceeding will be
completed within the next three months with the
decision on the proposed decision on January 2020.
You all know I'm not in favor of extensions, but I
think this one is necessary. And I ask for your
support on this decision. Any comments? Seeing
none, wold the Agenda Clerk, please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 26, Commissioner, excuse me, item number 37. Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Aye.
Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. Thank you. The vote is unanimous.
Moving on to item 38. Commissioner Rechtschaffen?
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: This is an extension order dealing with our Mobile
Home Park program. We opened up a rulemaking to evaluate a pilot that we had
established in 2014 to bring direct gas and electric service to residents of mobile
home parks. In order to prove the safety of these programs to bring direct utility
service to these programs. Prior to a statutory
change in 1997 it was common practice
that utility service would stop the boundary of the mobile home park and the
owners would provide the service. And that created a lot of safety problems. So
this has been an important safety program, but it's also an expensive one, and it's
taken time to get a handle on all the costs and the benefits and to do the kind of
robust assessment we need to do to decide if it should become a permanent program.
At the same time, we've been trying to
figure out what would what would be involved
in terms of implementation if we were to make it a permanent program while we're
evaluating the pilot program. And we've been doing this, along the way, we've had
several staff changes which contributed to the need for an extension order, so the
order would provide an additional six months.
I anticipate we will issue a decision
though by the end of year or by January the latest. I ask for your support.
President Batjer: Any comments? Seeing none,
would the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 38. Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commission Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. Thank you. The vote is unanimous.
Moving on now to item number 39. Commission Rechtschaffen.
<v Commissioner Rechtschaffen>This case involves
three consolidated applications for rate
increases for customers were using Crimson
California's crude pipelines. The deadline for
the resolution is October 24th of this month.
The evidentiary hearing and briefing has been
completed. The ALJ's working on a proposed
decision, but it hasn't been issued yet. And
therefore we need an extension to provide time
for the parties to comment on the decision
and the Commission to deliberate. I am expecting
that the proposed decision will be issued
on November 1st and that we will be able to
vote on the matter of December 5th. And I will
do everything I can to make sure that we
meet this schedule. I urge for your support.
President Batjer: Any comments for item 38? Okay,
seeing none. Could the agenda clerk please call the roll?
Clerk: For item 39. Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. Thank you. The vote is unanimous.
Moving on now to item number 40. Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Shiroma: Yes. Thank you. This
is a proposed order to extend the statutory
deadline for our Lifeline program. It's on the order instituting rulemaking regarding
revisions to the California Universal Telephone
Service, the number is R11-03-013. This
is a proceeding that has, over the years,
issued a number of decisions, scoping memos a
minute, and so forth to continuously stay abreast of the Lifeline rulemaking and the
program. I am asking for an extension to April
23, 2020. We have had a number of matters
before us through this proceeding, including
our ongoing pilot programs. And in fact, there
is a workshop on October 17th to look at
some additional potential pilot programs for
Lifeline. Again, this is for the discounted
telephone service and phone service, and also,
very importantly, we have a matter before us on the extension of the program itself.
The Commission has been going at a two-year
cycle on extending the funding of the program.
We do anticipate issuing a proposed decision
soon to decide on whether the California
Lifeline Program Fund continued to make up for the loss of federal support in those
instances where a program participants fails
to meet the federal eligibility criteria but
does qualify under our California program. This is a very essential decision that we
will be making. So I ask for your aye vote
on extending our deadline to April 23, 2020.
President Batjer: Okay, are there any questions of Commissioner
Shiroma? Seeing none. Would the agenda clerk please call the roll?
Clerk: For Item 40. Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. <v Commissioner
Rechtschaffen>Yes. <v Clerk> President Batjer.
President Batjer: Yes. Okay. Moving on to item number 41. Commissioner Shiroma?
Commissioner Shiroma: Thank you. This is also a proposed order
to extend the statutory deadline for the California American
Water Company and Cook Endeavors dba Fruitridge Vista Water
Company sale and transfer. California American Water seeks to
purchase the Fruitridge Water Company. I'm asking for a extension
to April 24, 2020. This proceeding has involved the parties
submitting appraisals, and that oftentimes in these consolidation
cases, it's the appraisal that takes the longest time to
assess, and the comments that come in through the proceeding and
particularly on the appraisals. So the extension will provide
time to resolve the issues and in around that, it is my
understanding that we are actually pretty close to resolving those
and to issuing a proposed decision. A extension will provide for
issuing a proposed decision, receiving comments on the proposed
decision, and ultimately, bringing it forth for a vote by the
Commission. So I ask you for your support for the extension?
President Batjer: Okay. Thank you very much. Any comments?
Okay, seeing none. Will the agenda clerk please call a roll.
Clerk: For Item 41. Commissioner Shiroma. Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Aye.
Clerk: Commission Rechtschaffen. <v Commissioner
Rechtschaffen>Yes. <v Clerk>President Batjer?
President Batjer: Yes, We're moving on to, the
vote is unanimous. Thank you. Moving on to item
42. Which is mine This is an order extending
statutory deadline in the application 15-12-007,
Southern California Edison's request for a permit
to construct the Circle City substation in
the Merrill Oma Jefferson Submission Line. SCE
was granted a suspension of the proceeding to
re-analyze some of its underlying data supporting
its application and to present the updated
information. This decision extends the statutory
deadline to April 13, 2020, to complete the SCEs
data analysis and to issue a proposed decision
closing the proceeding. And with that, I request
your support. Any questions? Thank you. Seeing
none, will the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 42. Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Shiroma: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes. Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. Thank you. The vote is
unanimous. Moving on now to item 43. Commission Randolph?
Commissioner Randolph: commissioners, As you know, the Metro
Goldline Foothill Extension Construction Authority has filed many
applications for authority to construct rail crossings. Most if not
all of these cases have been assigned to ALJ Burcham and he has been
prioritizing those cases on a first in, first out basis. However, the
Metro Construction Authority has asked for a change to that first
in, first out basis. It says that some crossings are more
construction-ready than other crossings. So the authority has separated
its applications into high priority, which are construction-ready.
And low priority, those that are not ready. And the crossings
in this particular proceeding at Indian Hill Boulevard and Town
Avenue have been identified by the Metro Construction Authority as
being low priority. So Judge Burcham has been working on the high
priority applications instead of this lower priority as identified
by the applicant application. And we need to extend the statutory
deadline to April 20, 2020. Ask for your support for Item 43.
President Batjer: Okay. Are there any questions on item 43?
Seeing none, will the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 43. Commissioner Shiroma Commissioner Shiroma: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes. Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. The vote is unanimous. Thank you.
On now to item number 44. Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: In this case because of a consolidation with a related
case and the postponement of hearings at the party's request, the matter could
not be resolved by the October 11th statutory
deadline. The hearings are now over.
An extension of time will allow the ALJ time to draft the presiding officer
decision, give the parties comments, give the parties time to decide whether to
file an appeal, and my fellow commissioners time to decide whether to review the
proposed decision. This order grants an extension until April, but I expect
that a decision will issue by the end of this year. And I ask for your support.
President Batjer: Are there any questions? Okay,
seeing none with the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 44. Commissioner Shiroma Commissioner Shiroma: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph <v Commissioner Randolph>Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes. Clerk: President Batjer?
President Batjer: Yes, Aye. Thank you. The vote is unanimous.
Moving on now to item number 45. Commissioner Randolph.
Commissioner Randolph: This is an order extending
statutory deadline in the combined PacifiCorp GRC and
OII. This case looks at both the first GRC for Pacific
Corp since 2011 and also investigating whether the
company engages in least cost planning on a control
area basis. In July, the judge asked PacifiCorp for
supplemental testimony on the impacts of the Tax Cut
and Jobs Act on their application, and we received
that supplemental information in August. Now that we
have that, the next step will be to conduct internal
RO modeling to determine the revenue requirement, and
we'll have have a proposed decision out once that
is completed. This order extends the statutory deadline
to April 12, 2020. However, I am optimistic that
we will likely get a decision out much sooner than
that as we work through the RO modeling process.
President Batjer: Questions of Commissioner Randolph?
Seeing none, will the agenda clerk please call the role.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma <v Commissioner Shiroma>Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. <v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Aye. Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Aye. Thank you. The vote is unanimous.
Moving on to item 46. Commissioner Guzman Aceves
Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Thank you. This is anorder extending done line
for a complaint proceeding. And it was actually reopened for an order to
show cause against PG&E. And I'm requesting that you extend the deadline
from October 13th to April 13th of next year. This complaint originally was
focused on the Hetherington's concern around PG&E's actions after they requested
their meter be moved closer to their home. I hope that we'll be having a
presiding officer's decision on the order to show cause later this month. But
I'm asking for an extension until April just to give us time. Thank you.
President Batjer: Thank you. Any comments on item 46?
Seeing none, will the agenda clerk, please call the roll.
Clerk: For Item 46. Commissioner Shiroma Commissioner Shiroma: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves. <v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>Aye. <
v Clerk>Commissioner Randolph. Commissioner Randolph: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen. Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Yes. Clerk: President Batjer.
President Batjer: Yes. Okay. Thank you. The vote is
unanimous. Thank you. We're now moving on to Management reports
section of the agenda. I will turn to the Executive Director,
Alice Stebbins, to present items 49 and 51. Alice.
Executive Director Stebbins: Thank you, President Batjer.
The first item is the second quarter employee recognition
award. So if you could come down and help me,
that would be wonderful. Thank you. Hi, everyone.
We're gonna mix things up a little bit today
for the Employee Recognition Awards. And I'm
gonna ask all of the awardees to come down.
President Batjer will hand you your certificate
and your gift card, and then we'll do a group
photo. So when I call out your name and read
about you, you can come on down. There's the certificates. Cheryl Winn. Cheryl
is getting award for outstanding achievement
and exceling at Leadership. Cheryl is a
PURA Five in the Energy Division. Cheryl started
with the commission less than a year ago,
hired on specifically to execute a critical
commission policy for the utilities to completely
transition their portfolio of programs through
third party solicitation. Her contribution
is central to the success of California's nearly one billion energy efficiency
portfolio. Thank you. So Cheryl gets to stay
here. We're going to do a group photo. You
want to do one? Okay. It's okay. Patricia Chin Gambell. You can come
on down. Patricia's getting a presentation. And stay down here, Cheryl. Please
Patricia's getting an Exceling in customer service. Patricia is a senior legal
analyst in the ALJ division. She works in the
docket office where she helps ensure that
official filings are in compliance with commission
rules. She ensures not only that the documents
were filed correctly, but that the filers have positive experiences
with the commission, demonstrating her commitment
to customer service at the highest level. Thank
you. And then we'll go into a group photo. And Angelique Garcia Tupet is getting an
award for Exceling at customer service.
Angeliqu. Nice job. She is one of my favorite
people in the consumer affairs rep. She's a
CAB. She works in CAB, Consumer Affairs Branch.
She has taken it upon herself to become CAB's
expert and go to person for consumer enquiries
concerning the Lifeline program, which helps
ensure that Californians have access to the
communications services required to remain connected to family, Emergency Services and
jobs. Her deep understanding of the Lifeline
Program requirements has allowed her to train
other CAB staff. Well, thank you, and then we have constant scored. Constance Gordon
Exceling in core values. Is Constance here? Okay,
Great. Constance is an information officer
in the Executive Divisions News and Outreach
Branch and has received multiple nominations.
She is responsible for gathering and distributing
our daily news clips. She also includes beautiful
photographs at the top of the clips, which can
provide needed beauty in what might otherwise
seem like a day full of challenging news. Not
that that's right now, right? She embodies
the values of hard work, dedication and open
communication. And then we have Jose Perrera
Sorry I butchered your name. Jose, are you here? No. Okay, it's Jose is getting
this for exceling in core values. We will give him a certificate later. Then we have
a team. We have the team of AnnaLisa Aber,
Marianne Davina and Nathan Poon, and they're
getting the award for exceling at collaboration
AnnaLisa, Marianne and Nathan wll work as proceeding
analysts in the A. L. J Division. The commission
was required by law to issue decisions on
eight wildfire mitigation plans in a very
compressed time period, three months, and the
proceeding analysts were crucial in allowing us
to meet this deadline with quality products.
Marianne Nathan and AnnaLisa reviewed hundreds
of pages of documents, prepared notes and
summaries of the material to assist with the
eight separate ALJ's analysis of the plans
and comments. Their support and ability to collaborate with a large project team was
instrumental in allowing the commission to meet the aggressive statutory deadline for
analysis and adoption of electric utility wildfire mitigation plans. Thank you.
And last but not least, we have Lorena Beckham
exceling in building morale. Is Lorena
here? Okay. Well, Lorena, thank you. And we were gonna, now, now it's group photo time
gang. So come on up here. So we could be kind of close.
and then the next item is, thank you, is Ravi Mainja is going
to introduce a presentation. A short presentation. Ravi
is from News and Outreach.
Ravi Mainja: Thank you, Commissioners, for allowing us
to present the annual report for the Changes program.
I'm the staff assigned to manage the contract for
the CPUC. I work within the Public Advisor's office
within the News and Outreach office. So we're assigned
to the Changes contract andprogram. We’ll zip
through this. I know it's been a very full program. So
we’ll kind of zip through the slides. So the intent
of the Changes program is to support limited English
customers that have questions and concerns with their
energy services. There are three major components to
the program. One is the outreach component, education
of limited English customers. And also individual case
support which comes in the form of needs assistance
or dispute resolution. The lead contracted team
consists of a partnership between Self Help for the
Elderly. The principal is Anni Chung, sitting just
behind me, and also Casey McCall, from Marston
Consulting. I’ll introduce her in a moment to deliver
data from the last year of the program. They lead a
collaborative of 28 community-based organizations that
provide services within local communities up and down
the state. The recent contract that was awarded to Self
Help the Elderly was awarded in June 2019 and that
was a result of competitive solicitation. We advertised
on the Cal E-Procure website and also we used a lot
of our new social media channels, which has been very
helpful as well. I’ll briefly just talk a little
bit by the background to the origination and design of
the program before bringing Casey on to the rest of
presentation. So basically the design really goes
back to Rulemaking 000204, where the Consumer Bill of
Rights was being considered for telecommunication
consumers. Then followed a set of guidance set out by the
Commission, that really looked at a few different areas
that were carried forward into to create a program
in telecommunications area. And one of the main areas
that they looked at was creating additional, what
really what was needed, education and complaint
assistance for Limited English customers. And actually
also, seniors and disabled. So they came under the, what
was described as the Vulnerable Customers umbrella.
What was also noted in the guidance is the importance
of community based organizations within the structure
of delivering this kind of a program because those are
the types of organizations that can actually provide
the necessary support in an effective way to support
members of particularly immigrant communities
that had concerns about contacting government and
needed that language. And also cultural competency that
was very important in getting the message across and
supporting those customers. So following that set of
guidance which have listed here, the Team program was
launched in 2008. That was a Telco program. It led to,
it was a great deal of support for that program. And
it also became very, very apparent that as community
members also needed help with their energy bills as
well. So the Changes was launched as a pilot in 2011.
Following successful evaluation it launched, the first
time as a permanent program, in 2016. And it was
also evaluated again last year, found to have very
positive return on investment for ratepayer funds and
it's been a well-supported program. And with that,
I'll introduce Casey to take through to the data.
Casey McCall: Thank you, Ravi. Ravi, are these your
glasses? I'm gonna talk fast cause I know time is limited,
but please stop me if you need me to slow down or go
into more detail on anything. The data here is for the
last full year of program services, so from May 2018 to
April 30th. The current contract year started June 17th.
So we had a little bit of a lag with no services until
contracting was completed. So in this program year,
we provided outreach to over three million consumers
throughout the state. Consumer education to 37,000 consumers
and then needs assistance and dispute resolution cases.
Totaling 4040 cases total. As Ravi mentioned, Self
Help for the Elderly is the lead agency on behalf of our
collaborative. We are one collaborative that has worked
together since 2004, before the Team program was
established, and we worked on telecommunications advocacy
for Limited English-speaking communities since then, so
our group has been together quite a while, which really
helps for communication, intragroup support, we have
CBO's that can provide language access for each other
and things like that. We also have subcontractors for
database development, outreach materials, incentive
materials and things like that. Our 28 member coalition
of CBO's actually has 74 service offices throughout the
state, and so services can be provided at any of those 74
offices. And we target communities that are high immigrant
populations, particularly emerging populations. So we
need to look at refugee resettlement numbers, secondary
migration projections, all of those kinds of things to
make sure that the most vulnerable communities, those
with the least number of services and least language
access are getting served. Our CBO's also work in the
offices of other CBO's to make sure that resources are
expanded, even beyond those 28. They're stationed at
consulate offices, at public benefits offices, we have
one CBO who's actually goes to a Wal-Mart once a week to
provide services, and people now know to come and bring
their bills with them to Wal-Mart. So that's part of our
outreach is to make sure that of those, because budget
is so limited, to make sure that, not only are we able
to stretch that budget as far as possible to as many
organizations as possible, but that those organizations
that are able to spread out to other resources. We also
have the capacity to provide services in 77 different
languages. Typically, we provide services to about 30 a
month, but pretty much any language that somebody needs,
we can find resources among our coalition. So the
numbers, the Changes cases that you see for the previous
year, you'll see these are needs assistance and dispute
resolution. The total 44,040 cases last year. So if
you look at those numbers, I would suppose that one might
at first glance, look at that and say, Oh my gosh,
what's happening with PG&E, why are there so many extra
complaints in PG&E? We don't look at it that way at all.
First of all, I would say that in the last two or three
years, PG&E has preemptively taken steps to make sure
that they're being extra responsive to Changes organizations,
which we really appreciate. But the other thing to
consider is that PG&E is both gas and electricity. So
Edison and SoCal gas case, those numbers would be split.
And it's just a bigger, it's a bigger geographic area
that they serve and also the placement of where our CBO's
are. So if we look at that. And the other thing is that
because we can only provide service is to IOUs and
understanding that in Southern California, a big part
of service is provided by the Department of Water and
Power, LADWP. Also in Southern California, there quite a
few more municipalities that provide services. So one of
the ways we look at if we ever do find budget to expand
is to be able to expand into areas that have either
emerging immigrant populations or higher immigrant
populations. And what we're looking at is being able to target
populations or target CBO's that might be in areas that
are adjacent to LADWP. So a couple of years ago, because
City of Glendale provides electric service, but people
in Glendale still use SoCal Gas, We were able to
find a CBO that is adjacent so that now we have been able
to serve the Armenian population, which is the largest
refugee population in Los Angeles, and you'll see that
they're in Glendale now. Those are cities, that's a
city with one of the most cases now. So what we're finding
is that if we are able to expand CBO's, we want to
go into areas that are not being served. My personal
preference would be the next one would be in the Long
Beach-Carson area because we've got a heavy Tagalog
speaking population. Obviously, it's the biggest Cambodian
population in Southern California. So when we do find
additional resources, we want to look at places that are
adjacent to areas that we can't serve so we can reach
the most people and those that are the most vulnerable.
Last year, we provided a services in 191 different
cities, and those are the cities that are the most, that
have the most cases. So this is the counties that are
served by our CBO's. Obviously, I won't go into them, but
you can have that list. And then again, CBO's travel
quite a bit. So for just dispute resolutions, last year,
this is how most of the disputes were categorized. One
thing to point out is that we have 24% that are stopped
disconnection. But that may be an overlap, so you'll see
payment plans, 15% payment plans. 7% were extensions.
Those were also stopped disconnections but counted
separately. So what we're looking at now is revising the
database so that it's not separated out, so that what I
want to do is have just a question that says, is this
bill under a disconnection order, have they received a
disconnection notice, as a totally separate section, so
that we can move that data out and be able to give you
a better picture of what happens when somebody gets a
disconnection notice and you know, so that the data is not
overlapping and it'll be a little more clear. So we're
hoping to have that done by mid-year. For Needs Assistance
cases. Now Needs Assistance cases are those where
a consumer needs help with something. They can't speak
the language. They can't read their bill. They don't
know where to go. But they don't necessarily think that
the company has done anything wrong. They don't have a
dispute. They just need help navigating the system. And
so the biggest number are HEAP assistance applications,
and in disputes too, often, even when you get a payment
plan, often, usually, actually, you need a HEAP, a
commitment from the HEAP program as well, in order to
get the balance down low enough to enter into a payment
plan that's workable. Medical baseline services applications
and enrollment at 6%. Changes to accounts are things
like someone passes away and they don't know how to change
the name on the account or something happened where
somebody moved it. It's those kinds of things that
people can't do because they don't speak the language.
Commissioner Randolph: Casey, can you ask a quick
question about a HEAP assistance? I just wanted to
understand a little bit more. I don't quite know all
the mechanics of that program. So does, in order
to get HEAP assistance in a way that enables you
to develop a payment program, as you mentioned, so
does that heating assistance program like like provide,
like a chunk of money to pay off past heating?
Casey McCall: There are actually two different pots of HEAP money, and one of
them is where it just provides a credit to the account. If you're low income and
you meet certain qualifications, you can get a credit to your account, and that’ll
just be, your future bills are worked against that. So it's a really great
thing, and that's why you see this big number in Needs Assistance. We look at it
as kind of preemptive to disconnection is that, if we can get as many people that,
you know, to pull from that pot of money before it runs out, it always runs out
before the year ends, then they get that credit. Then we can look at saying,
OK, now that you've got this cushion, let's look at your budget. Let's make sure,
Are you on care? Do you qualify for medical baseline? Can we get you weatherization
services? All of those things, so that's why the numbers so big in Needs
Assistance. The other side of HEAP is the emergency piece, where somebody is in
danger of being shut off within the next day or two. And there's a big packet
that they need to fill out with a lot of documentation. So if you don't speak
English or can't read and write, you really need help to get in there and get
that done. Those are administered contractually
by, usually community development
corporations or community action agencies. And sometimes those community action
agencies subcontract that out. But there are usually only one or two in each
area that you have to go through every day. So it's a fairly complicated process.
But once you get through it, then the HEAP program will say, Okay, we're gonna
give you $300, based on your bill, based on your income, and then the CBO can go
back to the utility and say, look, I know this bill is $3000 but HEAP is gonna
pledge 1000 so that brings it down to 2000. Now, can we talk about what you need
to get us a payment plan for a year? And usually you're offered a payment plan
that lasts, like, six weeks, so that, you know, over a period of six weeks. So
then the CBO has to go back in and find other resources and try to negotiate a
payment plan that's actually workable for a low-income client because once they
default, the next time they're in that situation, the utility will say, sorry, you
already defaulted onto payment plans, we're not gonna do this anymore. So we're
really looking at how to prevent disconnection. You know, try to head it off
with as many resources as we can in the beginning. But most of the dispute
resolution stuff does come in when it's
trying to negotiate a workable payment plan.
Commissioner Randolph: Okay, Thank you. Yeah.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Before before you leave this slide. Since you're talking
about miscellaneous calls, have you gotten calls about the power shut off? And
if so far, you have some of the most vulnerable
customers going from limited language,
do you need can we give you scripts that you could use? You have scripts that
Casey McCall: We don't have scripts that we're able to
use. You're talking about the current situation, right?
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: The current situation
which is going to go beyond this week. Of course.
Casey McCall: So far, the calls I've received are
directly from the CBO's themselves saying, what
do we do, where we go with this? We don't have a
script, and I'm assuming that in the next day
or two is when we'll start getting calls that are
saying our clients are calling us. The things,
the questions that have come up are things like,
look, this is the 9th and 10th of the month, this
is when people just got their food stamps last week.
9th and 10th is usually the good week, you know,
because your freezer's full. You've got some food,
that's gonna last you a week or two until you
run out. Now, you know people aren't gonna have
electricity. So CBO's are concerned about that.
They're particularly concerned about medical
baseline people who, what we were told is that those
people are being called until they're reached. I
don't know what languages they're calling, and I
mean, or if they're going to be able to speak to
people once they call them or what they say once
they call them. You know, like, we're calling you
because to tell you your powers off, I don't
know. So what we've been talking about just among
ourselves is how do we respond since you can't,
what I can't figure out is, how do you give somebody
notice that this is gonna happen with enough
time to go to a relative's house? So there's two
sides. There's the big, you know, how do we deal
with this to try to prepare people and then how do
you respond when they've lost all their food for
the months? Or, you know, even if they do know
they need to buy ice? But that's their bus money.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen: Maybe I can suggest, Ravi,
can you follow up with Casey and Annie, to get from
our safety enforcement division and from utilities, the
notice protocols and what we're suggesting people do.
Casey McCall: Yeah, when I contacted Ravi yesterday,
he was able to reach out to somebody that's been working
on that, that sent us some information which we will
work through. One of the things that I just heard this
morning from the report was something about being able
to pass along medical baseline contact information to
other state agencies. Which, to me, it's a concern for
undocumented families and finding out that the power
company is now passing their contact information on to
government agencies could be very scary these days,
so I don't know how we balance everything. So in the
Changes program, I think that our priority is first to
make sure everybody's informed, in language, has some
sort of idea of what they might do. And then how do we
go back and mitigate the impact of what they're
experiencing? Does that answer your question a little bit?
So, consumer education in the Changes program, we have
eight specific topics that CBO's provide. Consumer
education is required to be about 45 minutes in order to
give a very comprehensive education. And CBO's choose
the topics that they think are most relevant to the
particular group they're serving or educating at that
moment. Care and FERRA and Understanding Your Bill are
always every year the highest education provided. These
are the languages that consumer education was provided
in last year. So obviously Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese,
you'd look at and expect the threshold languages
we've, when we began the team program, we made special
efforts to make sure rural communities and Native Americans
were receiving services. And you'll see that that's
at 8%. And then we have 20 other languages at about
9% that have been served, provided education as well.
<v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>Casey Do you know if
you have any of the Mexican indigenous languages?
Casey McCall: Yes, we have Mestico. Particularly in the,
Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Ventura, Monterrey. Go ahead. Sorry.
Mestico. We have four and I know I'm gonna mess them up, but we have 4
<v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>Do you have Triqui?
Casey McCall: Yes, Yes. And, but we have very few, I will
say that we have very few numbers in that now, but I'm
hoping that those will increase because a couple of CBO's
have specifically brought on staff that speak those languages
rather than the ones in the last year, they were pulling
stuff from other programs, which we don't particularly
like them to do. We want somebody that's gone through quite
a bit of education before they provide the services so
we're happy that those people have brought on new people
in those languages. I think our Mestico has gone up. I
think it was like at, I could be wrong, but I think it was
like a 220 in the first 10 weeks, so that's not bad. And
then our outreach activities, just briefly. These are our
four basic or five basic outreach activities. People, our
CBOs go to community events and give information about
program services available. They do placements in the media,
has to be in language media placements in ethnic media
outlets. Social media numbers are very low because our
communities don't tend to be online as much, particularly
monolingual speaking seniors. But we do do some social media
outreach. Community presentations to other CBO's are often
done in coalition meetings, collaboratives, those kinds
of things. And the point of those is to let other CBO's
know about the services and CBO's are required before they
bill for that, to set up a referral plan with those other
CBO's to make sure that their clients are getting served
as well. Some of them set up plans where those CBO's that
learn about the program just have a process for referring,
and other CBO's go and have a staff person at the other
organizations, maybe once or twice a week, to make sure
that those organizations can also get their clients served
as well. And then special outreach projects are those
that a CBO will propose to us ahead of time. So the basis
of this program is not just linguistic capability, but it's
also cultural competency, and we know that in every culture
people respond differently, and so we want our CBO's
to be able to provide outreach in a way that's best for their
own particular community. So they will propose something
for a small amount of money. That maybe, Gosh, we know
we could reach more people if we could only do this. But
we can't afford $1000. Then they'll submit a proposal. We'll
work with them to work that out. So just as an example.
One of the things that was done was in Madeira. The CBO
was able to work with the city of Madeira, and they were
able to get in language inserts into all of Maderas mailers
that went to the entire population of the city promoting
the team and changes program. Other CBO's do things like
special projects where they will work within an ethnic
holiday. Or some of them have worked with immigration groups
to make sure that they've been able to provide resources
to get people in and to understand what's going on with
the program and how they can receive services. So our
Changes budget is 1.7 million a year for five years. Our
current monthly expenditure is about $177,000 average, but
remember that this is current. Our program didn't start until
June 17th and this is through August 31st so it's only
about two months. So if you average out the budget, it
comes to 145,000 and we're a little bit over. But that is
because, at the beginning of the year, we have a pretty big
training get together and planning that goes for three
or four days. And so you'll see that that even out. And
then actually our budget for direct services is 84.29% of
our budget is dedicated to direct services. And this is
us and our contacts. Thanks. I hope I didn't go too fast.
<v Commissioner Guzman Aceves>Oh, thank you, Casey.
I just, I really want to thank you and thank
the entire coalition for all the work that you're
doing for the customers of California. Just
out of the work I've experienced with some of
your CBO's and many of our proceedings. They were
some of the first organizations, Central California
Legal Services raised the issues of solar
fraud. Bay area, some of those CBO's raised the
issues of the gas aggregators, and I saw that
continues to be an issue and has really informed
our rulemaking. If anything, I feel that as
Commissioner Rechtschaffen in the example of this
latest example of the public safety shut offs
that we are not integrated enough. And I am
very interested in exploring how, and this kind
of goes to our whole CAB utilization, overall, in
those front line folks that we have geographically
located in communities is more important now
than ever. Today we voted out that SCE is
closing 11 of their offices. They're gonna be
going to places like Walmart to look for paying
bills and dispute resolutions. It's going to get
harder, and having people on the ground is gonna
be even more important. I'd really like to see
a conversation with Communications division,
Energy division and CAB on how we can utilize
your on the ground feet. You're working on these
issues and certainly the involvement of looking
at your work in the disconnections proceeding.
You know, the HEAP program is only available to
60% of the folks. They're getting disconnected.
That's capped out. So we need new solutions, in
addition, and we're gonna need new people to
implement those. So I really like to see an
augmentation of the resources in a coordinated way.
The gaps that I continue to see are in areas that
you listed, you know, Stockton, San Berardino,
those areas that are still at a deficit of
needing people to help them navigate the utility
process. And those NGOs need resources. And so
I'd like to work with Terrie or her folks to
make sure that we can come back to the Commission
with an augmentation for those vacuums, those
areas that we still need. And I asked the question
on the Mestico language because it's come up
a lot in the PSPS setting where, the Ventura
fires, they didn't know anything. They couldn't
evacuate, they didn't get anything. So there
are these continued pockets of geographic
necessity, and I know there's some satellite stuff
that's happening, and certainly those for in
language and so forth. But I think this is a good,
these are not expensive services that you're
providing. I think this budget is is appropriate
and I would like to see it expanded to cover
some of these areas that are still missing. And
there's so many more needs. Like we haven't talked
about the telecommunication side and how we better
integrate your work with our communications
division work as well. So I don't know if, Alice
or Terry, I don't see Terry here, unfortunately,
but if we can set a timeline for something like that to come back to us to consider.
Casey McCall: Thank you for those comments.
Yeah, I agree. And some of the things
that I think, you know, if resources become available, are things like Commissioner
Rechtschaffen was talking about, how do we do some emergency notifications or
responses? Either, you know, before something
happens or immediately after the fact
to get information out in language. Our CBO's
have good contacts in ethnic media. So,
you know, it's possible that we could get public service announcements in language
out on radio, which is usually how you can contact a lot of non English speakers.
Radio doesn't require a lot of money, and you don't need to be able to read to
get the information, so some of those things. Also, looking at how we are able to
better respond to those emerging communities.
Who knows what's gonna happen next year,
since refugees were just cut another 30,000 last week. So we're down to something
like 60,000 next year, which is not much, but we do know that the Burmese population
is expanding. We were expecting in addition,
a large influx of Syrians until, like
yesterday. So I really don't know what will happen there. So we're going to go
back next week. And once Office of Refugee Resettlement releases their numbers on
the 20th, try to look at other areas where we might be able to bring in language.
President Batjer: Any other questions? No comments?
Commissioner Shiroma: Yes, this is a comment
not so much as question, but a comment
for Anni and Self Help for the Elderly. As a bona fide senior citizen who is used
to navigating very complicated matters, I am telling you this navigating, what I'm
supposed to fill out in terms of paperwork and what have you, it is not easy. And
you know what the older we get, the harder it becomes to figure out paperwork in and
so forth. And then, if you speak a different
language it's an order of magnitude
even harder. So just an expression of
appreciation for the assistance being givento
the all of the communities and the particulary
for the senior citizens, the elderly.
Anni Chung: Thank you, Commissioner. We're very grateful
that the special attention is really paid to seniors,
vulnerable seniors, low income immigrant community, but
especially those who are limited English speakers or monolingual.
President Batjer: Thank you. This was extremely informative,
particularly for me, with the first time of having
some strong exposure to the program. So I really thank
you, Anni, Casey and Ravi. This was extremely helpful and
so informative. Thank you. Before we move on to the next
item on the agenda, the Commissioner's report, we're gonna
take a, can we do five minutes. Can everybody really be
disciplined and do a quick five minute break? Thank you.
President Batjer: Okay. We're moving on to the next agenda item. We're now at the
Commissioner's reports part of the agenda. Who
would liketo begin? Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Shiroma: Thank you, President Batjer. I'm gonna do a really
truncated report. First of all just wanted to say thanks to Stephanie Green and
her team organizing last week's Supplier Diversity En Banc in Fresno. Yes,
it was outstanding and I really appreciate all the efforts, and particularly
the focus within the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Valley, and hopefully
we more supplier diversity opportunities there in the valley. And then I
just wanted to say that Tuesday, in my San Diego Gas Electric GRC Phase 2,
the Energy Division will be hosting a full day workshop on dynamic rates
in the courtyard room here in San Francisco. And then I mentioned the October
17th Lifeline Workshop. We're discussing some additional ideas for pilot
proposals for getting the word out and having more opportunities for folks
to access the Lifeline program. That's October 17th here in San Francisco,
and then on October 22nd we have an autonomous vehicle pilot workshop looking
at additional pilot programs to collect more data on the vehicles where
there is a test operator in the vehicle and we will be co-hosting that
workshop with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Also here to San Francisco
President Batjer: That's terrific. Great. Yes, Commissioner.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves: Thank you. I also wanna
think Stephanie Green and all her team for the great
En Banc, a lot to follow from that, but it was really
fantastic to be in the Valley and to see the diversity
that's in the valley and the resources that arethere.
I wanted to update folks on the tribal land transfer
policy and broadband consultations that we've been
doing with the tribes. We did have a workshop last
month on the 30th at Blue Lake Rancheria. We had a lot
of great participation. About five tribes came and
participated, and a lot of folks came from ALJ division,
Communications division, and so I won't to go
through everyone. But one thing that was really
relevant is the Rancheria there is actually one of the
community resilience locations and because of some of
the EPIC funding that they received, as well as SCHIP
funding, they have, and obviously about a megawatt of
solar they have combined. They are a resiliency location.
So it was a bit of a bright light in the role that
tribal governments and their leadership can play into
the future. There is a broadband issue, though. So we
do have our final consultation. Commissioners Shiroma
and I will be down Temecula tomorrow. The Pechanga
Band is hosting us, and we have tohave participation
from many of the Southern California tribes, and we
hope to post the updated version of the tribal land
policy on the website tomorrow. We have received a
tremendous amount of input from tribes as well as other
utilities and other folks from the public, so keep
an eye out for that cause we hope to vote on it next
month. And finally related to the last topic, in a
way, I wanted to encourage you to see if you or your
staff's could participate in a couple of webinars that
we're putting together as part of the disconnections
proceeding. One webinar will be on Friday, excuse me
not Friday, October 25th from 10 to 11, and we are
lucky enough to have EverSource, one of the IOUs from
the East Coast that provide service to New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut, brief us on what they
are doing with their innovative program on a rearage
management program, and this is a debt forgiveness program
for customers who are paying their bills on time.
It's an innovative way, as we heard the HEAP programs
are insufficient and this is the East Coast leading
the way on dealing with this social issue, so I
encourage you to participate in that and learn. We want
to learn from our friends in these coasts about their
innovation in this area. Likewise, in that same
proceeding, we're having additional webinar on October
29th where SMUD will be presenting their excellent
work with their local CBO's, particularly their CBO's
that work through the Lyhee program. And then they'll
be presenting on their portal that they developed
with their local service providers on how to accept
online pledges on behalf of their customers and how
to do many more things in a much more streamlined way
between the utility and the local nonprofits that work
directly with customers. So these are just a couple
of examples of things that are working in other
places that we want to replicate here in our service
territories, and I encourage you to have some staff there
to listen in to these excellent programs that SMUD
has and EverSource has. If you have any questions on the
logistics, please reach out to our office. Thank you.
President Batjer: Great. Thank you. Other reports. Okay. Seeing none.
I just wanted to also say that the En Banc last week in Fresno was
terrific. Thank you to Stephanie Green and staff. And to all of the
presenters. It was my first En Banc in the supplier diversity world. And
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Learned a lot. And I think there's probably
even some more that we can still do in that area for next year's en
banc. So I look forward to talking to commissioners about that. I just
want to say again that we will, the Commission and commission staff,
will be closely monitoring the PSPS throughout the state in these coming
days and there is a CPUC factsheet that's in the back of the room.
For those of you in the public who would like to pick it up, that
has some important information. It does have some of the websites.
Hopefully, they're all functioning. These are on state websites, so I'm
gonna guarantee that they are. So thank you. And with that that ends
and concludes the Commissioner's reports. Thank you, everyone for coming
today. The public meeting is now adjourned. Please clear the room.