The five members of the California Public Utilities Commission make hundreds of decisions each year that affect Southern Californians, including determining how much most pay for electricity and natural gas and deciding whether phone companies need to offer landlines.
In the months ahead, the commission will consider raising electric rates in the wake of the devastating Eaton fire. Videos captured the inferno igniting Jan. 7 under one of Southern California Edison’s transmission towers in Eaton Canyon. Edison has asked for an increase of more than 2%, which it said was needed to bolster Wall Street’s view of its financial health after the Los Angeles wildfires.
Yet none of the five commissioners lives in Southern California, where Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric alone serve almost 19 million people — nearly half the state’s population.
All five were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and live in or near Sacramento or San Francisco, where the commission is based.
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) president
Alice Busching Reynolds
Sacramento, CA
Commissioner
Matthew Baker
San Carlos, CA
Commissioner
Darcie L. Houck.
Davis, CA
Commissioner
John Reynolds
Oakland, CA
Commissioner
Karen Douglas
Davis, CA
None of the five commissioners responded to emails from The Times asking whether they saw the lack of Southern California representation as an issue.
Before their appointments, two of the commissioners were senior advisors to Newsom on energy issues. A third was chief counsel at the state’s Energy Commission. The other two also previously had top jobs in the state government.
Newsom spokesman Daniel Villasenor defended the appointments, saying all five were well qualified, but declined to address questions about the lack of representation for Southern California.
Terrie Prosper, a commission spokesperson, said the agency was “deeply committed to serving all residents of California … irrespective of their location.”
Many people dispute that contention, citing among other factors the commission’s repeated decisions in recent months to approve requests from Edison and other utilities despite protests from Southern Californians.
“We need to rethink whether five people from the Bay Area should have so much power,” said Mike Gatto, a former Democratic state assemblyman from Los Angeles who chaired the Utilities and Commerce Committee during his time in Sacramento.
The concept of geographic representation is well established in government — members of Congress and the California state Legislature are all elected by district, and city council members of large cities such as Los Angeles typically are elected by district as well.
The California Board of Equalization, which oversees the assessment of property taxes in the state, has four members who are elected by district — including one member just for Los Angeles County, the largest county in the state.
It’s not just Southern Californians who have complained about their lack of representation on the utilities commission.
Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom (D-Tracy) recently introduced a bill, AB 13, that would require the governor to appoint a commissioner from each of the same four regions used by the Board of Equalization. The fifth commissioner could come from anywhere in the state but would be required to have a background in public advocacy.
The legislation is needed so utility customers have “access to the folks who represent them and also ensuring that people who represent them can feel the pain” of their decisions, Ransom said at a hearing on AB 13 last month.
“I’m talking about geographic diversity — where our commissioners are located,” she said.
Expansive regulatory power
The Public Utilities Commission is one of the most powerful agencies in California, regulating privately owned companies that sell electricity, water, natural gas, cellphone and internet services, as well as the railroads and passenger transportation companies such as Uber.
Dozens of San Fernando Valley residents protested outside the commission’s San Francisco headquarters in December, asking the panel to vote to shut down the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch.
The facility, owned by Southern California Gas Co., was the site of the largest methane leak in U.S. history in 2015, forcing more than 8,000 families from their homes. Many residents have complained of medical problems, including headaches, nosebleeds and nausea.
Ignoring comments from more than 200 residents, the commissioners voted 4 to 0 to keep the gas storage site open indefinitely.
“It would have been nice if they would have listened to us,” said Patty Crost Glueck, who lives two miles from the facility.
Rarely has the commission even had meetings in L.A., she said, “where we can look them in the eye.”
The panel’s recent decisions to increase electric bills have also spurred outrage.
Edison’s 15 million customers have watched their electric bills soar by 85% in the last 10 years, with most of those increases approved by the commission.
Multiple additional requests for rate increases by the utility are now pending, which could together lead to another double-digit hike.
The latest request came last month when Edison asked the commission to allow it to pay a higher rate of return to shareholders to boost Wall Street’s confidence in its finances after the L.A. fires. The change would boost monthly bills by more than 2%.
“For God’s sake, don’t let SCE get another unwarranted rate hike,” wrote Randy Nakashima of Yorba Linda, in one of more than a hundred comments filed opposing the request.
Edison has said that it’s possible its equipment sparked the Eaton fire, but that the cause is still under investigation.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection will ultimately determine how the blaze was ignited.
Separately, the commission’s staff is investigating whether Edison violated any utility safety regulations that could have led to the Eaton blaze, which destroyed more than 9,000 homes and other structures as it tore through Altadena and killed 18 people.
If Edison is found at fault, the commission probably would be involved in deciding how much customers, rather than the utility’s shareholders, should pay for the billions of dollars in damages.
Even before firefighters had contained the Eaton fire, the commission voted Jan. 30 to agree that Edison could raise electric bills to transfer $1.6 billion of the costs of the 2017 Thomas wildfire — and the deadly mudslides it set off in Montecito — to its customers. Investigators said Edison’s equipment sparked that fire.
The commissioners opted to put the Thomas fire decision on the panel’s consent agenda so that it could be passed without discussion.
“By allowing SCE to raise rates in order for customers to cover these damages, we are failing to hold them accountable,” seven state legislators from Southern California wrote to the commission after the vote.
The legislators said it was “reprehensible” to require the same customers who may have lost their homes or suffered power outages from the Thomas fire to “assume the financial responsibility for corporate mismanagement and infrastructure deficiencies.”
Rooted in railroads
The Public Utilities Commission was created as the Railroad Commission in the late 1870s, after the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Officials decided to locate the headquarters in San Francisco because of the power the railroads had over government officials in Sacramento, according to a commission history.
At the time, Southern Pacific Railroad was the largest landowner in California, a railroad official served on the state Supreme Court, and the railroad had found ways to stack political committees with people on its payroll. Some Californians jokingly referred to the commission then, the history said, as the railroad’s “literary bureau” — its public relations arm.
Corruption inquiries led to reforms, and the Public Utilities Act in 1912 brought all transportation, water, electric, gas, telegraph and telephone service under the agency’s jurisdiction.
Prosper, the commission spokesperson, said that although the agency continues to be based in San Francisco, it has a presence statewide, including an office in Los Angeles. The commission holds at least three meetings each year outside of San Francisco and Sacramento, she said.
“We provide multiple channels for the public to share feedback,” Prosper said. “These efforts are designed to ensure that all Californians — regardless of where they live — can engage with the CPUC.”
Ransom’s bill also seeks to ensure that the commission has more independence from the governor’s office. It would require a one-year cooling-off period before an employee of the state government’s executive branch could be appointed to the commission.
According to a legislative analysis of her bill, 11 of the last 12 commissioners appointed by Newsom and his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, between 2012 and 2025 came from a position in the state government’s executive branch.
That contrasts with the previous appointments between 2000 and 2012, when just four of 12 commissioners came from executive branch positions.
Ransom’s bill isn’t the first to try to give Californians who live outside San Francisco or Sacramento representation on the commission.
In 2022, AB 1960 would have required the governor to consider a candidate from Southern California, Northern California and the Central Valley among the group being considered for a seat on the commission.
Newsom vetoed the bill, calling it “unnecessary.”
