Get ready, Californians. Your incomes will now factor into the electricity bill | Opinion

Most Californians are unaware that their personal income information is about to get factored into what they pay for electricity.

Should that raise alarms, don’t blame utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric. Investor-owned utilities — PG&E, along with Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric — must comply with a state law passed last year that requires customers to be charged a flat fee to pay for electric system infrastructure such as power poles and transmission lines, as well as state-mandated initiatives like energy efficiency and wildfire-risk reduction.

The legislation, AB 205, was the ultimate product of the Assembly Budget Committee. It requires that the infrastructure charge be based on income level, with lower-income customers paying less than those earning more. Besides the fixed fee for infrastructure maintenance, customers will still have the monthly charge for how much electricity they use.

The California Public Utilities Commission is to review a proposal by the utilities next year and then adopt the final version. Full implementation is expected in 2025.

In an explanation in its Currents newsletter, PG&E says the plan will not generate any new revenue. “These are not new charges, but a restructuring of the components of providing and delivering power,” the utility says.

“This proposal aims to help lower bills for those who need it most and improves billing transparency and predictability for all customers,” said said Marlene Santos, chief customer officer for PG&E. “As California rapidly advances to a future of electrification, this proposal will help to limit the impact on disadvantaged communities, as Californians transition to electrification in support of the state’s clean energy goals.”

So, the state government is requiring that our personal income information be accessed, when until now, our exact income information has been the purview of tax agencies.

There is a real irony to California officials gaining further access to our earnings when the state is so reticent, even obstructionist, when citizens, nonprofit groups and the media seek information that is public record.

Too often the reaction of government — from local to county to state — is to ignore, delay or deny requests for information, said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition.

“We hear of multiple problems statewide,” Loy said. “On the one hand, state or local agencies are over-citing exemptions (to public records laws), making people fight for disclosure, when they should be more proactive with disclosure.”

Rate plan

The three utilities have proposed a plan for the fixed-rate charge that is based on a four-person household. Here are the guidelines that PG&E will follow based on the annual income of their customers:

▪ Less than $28,000 per year: $15 fixed charge per month.

▪ Between $28,0000 and $69,000 per year: $30 fixed charge per month.

▪ Between $69,000 and $180,000 per year: $51 fixed charge per month.

▪ More than $180,000: $92 fixed charge per month.

Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric have slightly different charges in their tiers.

Publicly run utilities, like Sacramento Municipal Utility District, do not come under the law. But SMUD customers already have a fixed charge on their bills, said PG&E in its explanation of the plan.

Just who would verify customer income levels? The utilities do not want to have any part of that. Instead, they propose “a qualified, independent state agency or third party be responsible for verifying customers’ total household incomes.”

PG&E says its proposal would wind up reducing bills for most customers. Those in the low-income tier would see bills drop 21%; moderate-income customers would get an 8% reduction. The highest-earning customers would see bills increase by 24%.

“The rate for each kilowatt hour of electricity for all residential customers would decrease by about one-third,” PG&E said.

The plan only applies to residential customers. Commercial and industrial are not included.

Public records examples

Any reduction in costs might make customers more agreeable to sharing their annual earnings.

That said, government cannot have it both ways. It cannot require more information from taxpayers while refusing to give out legitimate public information at the same time.

Two recent examples involve law enforcement.

The First Amendment Coalition recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Fresno over its refusal to hand over records in a case where police used a Taser on a suspect who later died.

Brian Howey, an investigative journalist from Oakland, asked for police reports in the Aug. 20, 2004, case of Michael Sanders, 40, who was shocked multiple times before he stopped breathing. Howey was gathering information about how families of suspects are kept unaware of what occurred in cases of deaths caused by police.

Howey said Sanders had puncture wounds and burns in his groin area where police had repeatedly shocked him with a Taser. The journalist said the wounds represented “great bodily injury,” a condition that makes records subject to public release. Fresno officials rejected that argument.

“For the city of Fresno to assert this is not ‘great bodily injury’ is a grave insult to the public and common sense,” Howey said. “What are they hiding, nearly 20 years after Mr. Sanders’ death?”

The Fresno County coroner ruled Sanders died from cocaine intoxication. But without the records, it is impossible to judge that finding, or know what police told his survivors.

In another example of public records wrongly denied, former Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones was found by a judge to have violated a California law requiring him to turn over disciplinary records of deputies accused of dishonesty, sexual assault or uses of force that killed or seriously injured citizens.

The Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times sued Jones for that information in 2020 and waited months to get the reports. “Delays of more than four months before an agency even starts to release records defy the command of Government Code 6253(b) that agencies ‘shall make the records promptly available,’” attorney Karl Olson wrote in his representation for The Bee.

Done in secret

There are times Californians do share their earnings information, including when they take out a home or consumer loan. But that is at the borrower’s initiative. The same is true when lower-income residents sign up for government benefit programs that have income-eligibility requirements.

The requirement for income reporting was added to the many provisions of AB 205 without public debate or fanfare, said a San Diego environmentalist who routinely monitors CPUC proceedings.

“So it was in the trailer bill that nobody saw, nobody read, it got passed and here we are,” Bill Powers told the San Diego Union-Tribune. He expects a high-income ratepayer to sue.

Trying to ease the burden of utility costs on the lowest earners is well-intentioned. But sharing individual taxpayers’ earnings information for purposes of monthly electric bills feels like big government run amok.

With state, county and local governments fighting hard to keep public records secret, what does that say about the Democrats’ supermajority rule in the statehouse? It belies the transparency they so often claim to want.

Share your view

It is too late to stop the income requirement as it relates to electricity bills. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 205 into law last summer. But the public can still comment on it to the state Public Utilities Commission. Go online to https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/consumer-support/file-a-complaint to share your concerns.