Category: News

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California Utilities Will Buy More Energy, Hike Rates to Avoid Blackouts: CPUC

By Olga R. Rodriguez  : nbcbayarea – excerpt (video)

Utilities will be allowed to buy extra energy and pass on the costs to customers in order to avoid a repeat of rolling blackouts that kicked in last summer when demand outpaced supply, California regulators said Thursday.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to authorize Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Company to purchase additional power in the next three months.

“Customers deserve a reliable grid, and they deserve a regulatory body that will be mobilized to do everything in its power to ensure that we have one,” commission President Marybel Batjer said…(more)

All the more reason for people to switch to solar power, but, will the CPUC make that more difficult? Find out what California does for and against solar power users how the utilities exert constant pressure on net metering. https://solarrights.org

RELATED:

Utility bosses: If you make us look bad, there’s gonna be trouble

 

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Some San Francisco Affordable Housing Units Renting For More Than Market-Rate Units

By Susie Steimle : cbslocal – excerpt

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — Tenants living in so-called affordable housing units are now in many cases paying more than their market-rate neighbors.

These affordable units are not tied to the traditional real estate market fluctuations and hopeful tenants like Christine McDow say they should be…

According to Apartment List rents in San Francisco are down 27% since the start of the pandemic. A one-bedroom used to average $3,500 a month; now it’s down to $1,983.

Below Market Rate (BMR) units haven’t seen rent drops; in fact, in Dave Osgood’s building, they’re seeing rent increases…

“The so-called below market and market-rate seem to be merging,” Osgood said.

There are 76 below-market-rate units at The Towers at Rincon Apartments, Osgood says all year he’s seen people move out as cheaper market-rate units become available.

“There may be as many as 20% of them empty,” Osgood said…(more)

Unbelievable until you look at the city codes that have been heavily crafted by developer friendly lawyers and there are more layers than most people are aware of until someone files a lawsuit and starts looking for excuses to support their side. With luck, some of these can be fixed as they are exposed.

 

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Clint Reilly shares how his media group reimagines the future of local media

by Clinton Riley Holdings Inc. : bizjournals – excerpt (includes video interview)

In a one-on-one conversation, Mary Huss, publisher of the San Francisco Business Times, talks with Clint Reilly, local real estate, politics and media magnate. Tune in to hear them discuss how the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly will revitalize coverage of the city…(more)

They intend to “grow” the paper, hiring journalists instead of firing them. This should  create opportunities for writers and investigative journalists. How will he pay for it? He has some deep pocket of his own, but, he must also have investors. He could merge the SF Weekly and SF Examiner, or turn SF Weekly into a weekend paper to promote entertainment when it returns.

It they really want to compete with the Chronicle they have a lot of hiring to do. Will they delve heavily nto electronic media? I don’t think they know yet. Following this story will be a story in itself. Has anyone seen any changes at the Marinatimes yet?

We should keep an open mind for now, especially if they increase federal and state coverage. That gives them a lot of new ground to cover,  and we are not lacking in subject matter these days.
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California First Appellate District Court of Appeal publishes its opinion in LC/CVP v ABAG

Posted by Bob Silvestri : marinpost – excerpt

On January 6, 2021, the First Appellate District Court of Appeal issued an Order Granting Publication of its opinion in the case of New LivableCA/Community Venture Partners v ABAG, stating that

“For good cause, the request for publication is granted. Pursuant to rule 8.1105(c) of the California Rules of Court, the opinion in the above-entitled matter is ordered certified for publication in the Official Reports.”

That means the opinion of the Court of Appeal is now case law. This opinion will have broad applicability and impacts throughout the state’s legal system. To put it plainly, this is a very big deal.

The significance of this reversal of the decision by the San Francisco Superior Court, to dismiss this case, and its publication cannot be over-stated. The Appeal Court’s opinion has now become case law and as such is the law of the land in California that will impact future Brown Act petitioners for years to come.

To read the appellate court’s opinion CLICK HERE…(more)

 

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Gavin Newsom could be ‘undermined’ by Democrats in recall efforts, report says

By Eric Ting : sfgate – excerpt

The sixth attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is rapidly gaining steam amid the worsening pandemic, a controversial new stay-at-home order and an unemployment fraud scandal.

It was previously reported by Politico’s Carla Marinucci that those close to the governor were growing “increasingly worried” about the recall efforts, and Marinucci’s latest report on the recall adds another twist.

After detailing the new Republican fundraising efforts behind the recall — while noting the challenges the GOP will face in a heavily Democratic state — Marinucci quotes a “Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group” who says, “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires” on getting on the ballot in a potential recall election in 2021….(more)

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She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired

By Scott Morris, Bay City News Foundation : propublica – excerpt

Alice Stebbins was hired to fix the finances of California’s powerful utility regulator. She was fired after finding $200 million for the state’s deaf, blind and poor residents was missing…

Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.

Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.

“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”…(more)

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Clint Reilly, S.F. Examiner’s New Owner, Vows to Expand Paper’s Newsroom, Coverage

By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio)

The soon-to-be owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem.

Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he and his wife Janet co-own, Clint Reilly Communications, is expected to take over in January.

“What’s happened in newspapers over the last decade, decade and a half, even 20 years, has been essentially a huge cutback in journalists and costs at the local level,” Reilly said. “As journalists have been laid off, so have the beats that they cover. And so the amount of coverage of local news has declined dramatically over the last 10 years.”… (more)

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Hypocrisy in the local zoning debate

By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

Professors who argue that local regulations drive up housing prices appear to admit they have no credible data to back up that argument.

On December 1, 48hills ran my story about the California State Auditor’s dubious sortie against local land use authority, an incursion purportedly undertaken in behalf of greater housing affordability. While I’m waiting for the Auditor to respond to my Public Records Act request for documentation of her numerous claims, I want to call out the hypocrisy of three of the scholars cited in my story.

To illustrate the tenuousness of the Auditor’s attack, I observed that a growing number of academics are questioning the argument that “local constraints significantly hamper the provision of affordable housing.” I illustrated that interrogation with a few examples:…(more)

Government confusion, fraud and corruption are to blame for the high cost of building in San Francisco.

If we look at San Francisco’s building triumvirate, Planning, DBI and Permitting departments, that the public and small contractors must wade through we can see that the primary costs for building and remodeling in the city is not in government regulations. It is in government confusion, fraud and corruption. The sad thing is that is took the FBI t expose what many knew was going on for decades. This system is rigged. You must pay to play or get out of the game.

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Mill Valley’s RHNA Methology Letter Calls for a Stronger Response

By Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley : marinpost – excerpt

This letter is written to the Mill Valley Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councilmembers, but it may apply to any of our local civic leaders who are considering how to deal with the RHNA number conundrum, made more obviously out of touch with reality by the large exodus of citizens from California this year.

The end of the land rush has come to the state, due to a number of factors, but, our government officials can’t get past their old methods of creating financing through growth. Read the letter here and consider how you may apply the information to your community…(more)

Review the investigative report by The Embarcadero Institute, entitled “Double Counting in the Latest Housing Needs Assessment” (September 2020)…

“Use of an incorrect vacancy rate and double counting, inspired by SB-828, caused the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to exaggerate by more than 900,000 the units needed in SoCal, the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.”

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SF challenges PG&E’s power moves

By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – excerpt

Utility uses expensive hookups to discourage public power use\

The contentious relationship between PG&E and San Francisco has grown more tense, with the energy company now seeking to impose costly new requirements for The City to use its grid to deliver publicly-owned Hetch Hetchy power to city projects and even street lights.

The City lost a dispute earlier this year before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over similar requirements the utility imposed in recent years on projects like schools, affordable housing and pools. The City has since taken the matter to court.

But now PG&E has filed a Sept 15 proposal with FERC to make the costly hookups a requirement going forward as part of the wholesale distribution tariff, a set of rules for how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission can use PG&E’s grid to serve The City’s own power customers. The SFPUC delivers over the grid greenhouse gas-free hydroelectric power produced by Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite…

PG&E has said it will now no longer offer the less expensive secondary service hookups but will support existing secondary service as long as there are no upgrades…(more)