Shame on Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan and Senator Glazer for rubber-stamping a new CA Utility Tax. Though it would add $400 to $1,500 per year to our bills, the cost to our long-term safety will be even greater.
It would penalize those trying to conserve power, discourage rooftop solar, and incentivize utility companies to build more high-voltage power lines that start fires and incinerate Californians and their homes.
The way forward must include distributed energy, with rooftop solar, more local energy production, less energy waste, and microgrids. Continuing to give power to PG&E and other corporations guilty of criminal neglect and manslaughter will accelerate us into apocalypse.
PG&E and other big utilities likely lobbied the Utility Tax into the recently passed AB 205. There were zero public hearings and no discussion. Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan and Senator Glazer may not have even realized the provision was in the budget bill. Or if they heard about it, they may have bought PG&E’s propaganda.
These corporations make a variety of false claims, as they did recently to hamstring small businesses trying to install rooftop solar. Bauer-Kahan and Glazer must reverse this threat by appealing or amending AB 205. They could also mandate the CPUC set a small utility tax in line with the national average, but the last thing I would trust the California Public Utilities Commission to do is treat Californians fairly in regard to utilities.
The CPUC will set a dollar amount to the tax in 2024. In the past, they have sold us out at every opportunity, all to line the pockets of big-utility corporations. These corrupt commissioners are appointed by Governor Newsom, who has taken substantial donations from PG&E and let them get away with murder.
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