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It's kind of nice to sue PG&E for fires. If bought out, we'd only be suing ourselves, and then tax payers would be the ones on the hook for bailing out all the
by dangjc 7y ago
It's kind of nice to sue PG&E for fires. If bought out, we'd only be suing ourselves, and then tax payers would be the ones on the hook for bailing out all the homeowners who wanted nice cabins in the woods.
- supercanuck 7y agoHow many people would want cabina in the woods without the amenities that public services provide
- dark_glass 7y agoDo you want a cabin in the woods, or a house? I think most people think very little amenities when thinking of a cabin in the woods, but maybe I am biased.
- flattone 7y agoA lot? "About 48 percent of the population inside micropolitan statistical areas lived in incorporated places, while about 52 percent lived in unincorporated areas" https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0082/twps0082.html https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0082... anecdotally the pursuit of not being around "public services" is a large part of the motivation. Personally as I'm leaving my 20s far behind I realize all the neon and jazz of the city did nothing but pacify a deeper realization that a more clear seeming experience of mind was on hold or somehow diluted...convenience can be very distracting. ... hopefully this makes some kind of sense. different kinds of folks/values. a lot of my peers live right in the city, which makes sense. convenience of stores / hospitals etc for raising a family. for me alone give me 50 acres and a 2 bdrm ranch home. and an invisible driveway :)
- sharkmerry 7y agoYou looked at a limited set of populations from 10k to 50k (micropolitan) is there a reason? in all of the US 62% live in incorporated areas. United States 281,423,231 175,062,893 62.2 106,360,338 37.8 https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0082/Table_1.pdf https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0082...
- jcranmer 7y agoNote too that "unincorporated" doesn't mean "rural." This is unincorporated: https://goo.gl/maps/TxHPvu6JNNC8tYk77 https://goo.gl/maps/TxHPvu6JNNC8tYk77
- flattone 7y agothanks for this. I am caught by surprise.
- sharkmerry 7y agoright, and someone is still providing services to those its just higher up the chain right? there arent that many people living with water, roads right? they just arent organized at a town level
- Hermitian909 7y agoThe most populous unincorporated areas have all of the standard amenities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Marin_Keys,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Marin_Keys,_California That's an unincorporated area, populated by an affluent community, with all the services you'd expect. I think the answer is actually in the negative becuase the common amenities include pretty basic services like roads, police protection, or grid power. As far as I'm aware that level of disconnect is very rare.
- bcrosby95 7y agoI live in an unincorporated city of 14k and it's just plain ole suburbs. 1.5 miles to one mini-mall and 3 miles to another. We're also about a 15 minute drive from a huge mall, best buy, a fry's electronics, etc.
- trimbo 7y agoWe already are on the hook, either as taxpayers or as customers. What I don't understand is why we'd want the regulators that let PG&E get so bad take over the place.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoAre you implying the regulators forced PG&E to be awful? Or that they allowed PG&E to be awful? If the former, I'd like to know how you came to that conclusion. If the later, that doesn't mean the regulators are worse. I'm not saying I'm pro-regulator or think PG&E should be bought out. I just am perplexed by your comment.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoNot OP, but I'm fairly certain he meant the latter. And I think his point wasn't so much they'll be worse, but why do we believe they'll be better?
- kevingadd 7y agoWhat do we have to lose? Other than more lives than PG&E has already taken from us... given that PG&E has caused fires many times so far it seems worthwhile to attempt more direct methods of fixing this. If the regulators taking over somehow makes it worse, we can always privatize it again. There are other private power companies in the state that will remain private.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago> What do we have to lose? More lives, more money, more vegetation, more houses, more resources. If you're going to replace something, it's usually a good idea to have some reason to believe what you're replacing it with will be better. I'm not advocating for PG&E, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion. But currently I don't see any obvious solution to the situation.
- ceejayoz 7y agoWhere do you think PG&E's money to pay for legal judgements currently comes from? Tax/rate payers are paying in either scenario. Private ownership just means shareholders manage to siphon off some of the money in dividends before the lawsuits.
- const_throwaway 7y agoI thought the concept that PG&E is legally responsible for forest fires is a new development, hence the new power outages.
- kevingadd 7y agoThe forest fires (of this magnitude) are also a relatively new development, and they're partially due to poor line maintenance. The poor line maintenance is the real direct cause of the outages, not lawsuits - if the lines were well maintained they would not be causing fires and no shutoffs would be necessary. We don't see line shutoffs like this all over the country right now.
- scrumbledober 7y agoI keep seeing this said, that the fires were caused due to poor line maintenance. Are the fires caused by lines failing or is the maintenence that they are failing on just clearing brush from around the lines?
- kevingadd 7y agoWe've had multiple fires so far that were caused by line/infrastructure failures producing sparks. Brush-clearing is also a factor
- malandrew 7y agoThere was a court case that made PG&E liable even when they were not negligent.
- CameronNemo 7y agoActually suing PG&E is not so nice. Costs just get shifted to recipients of PG&E's service. We need to charge the PG&E executives with criminal negligence and recover capital distributions that occurred while PG&E was neglecting its infrastructure.
- njarboe 7y agoThe California Public Utilities Commission(CPUC) controls how much PG&E spends on infrastructure and dividends. PG&E requested to spend more on infrastructure improvements but the CPUC decided to keep rates lower, pay out dividends, and spend money subsidizing alternative power instead.
- kevingadd 7y agoHow does the CPUC pay out dividends? The CPUC is a state regulatory agency with a budget that comes out of tax dollars (~1.6b).
- njarboe 7y agoCPUC controls PG&E's budget and determines how much they can pay as dividends. Usually around a 5-6% return on capital.
- nerfhammer 7y agoThe CPUC is able to set PG&E's target profit margin.
- CameronNemo 7y agoThanks for the info. Do you have a source? In particular I would like to know the years and who was in charge of the commission at the time.
- smsm42 7y agoAFAIK PG&E works on "guaranteed profit" model, i.e. they can raise prices if current prices do not cover for expenses plus predetermined profit margin. So suing it, unless it's currently hugely profitable way beyond the margin (which AFAIK it is not) would only end up in "suing ourselves" anyway.
- kevingadd 7y agoYeah, to have a real impact on the flow of money we'd probably need to penalize executives somehow to change behavior... and they'd just bail on the company or deflect blame somehow, like we saw in that VW emissions scandal. On the bright side the lawsuits have impacted PG&E's stock prices which does make it easier to take the company over, but the loss of power + increase of prices is not an ideal outcome.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bcrosby95 7y agoThis isn't completely correct - despite the "guaranteed profit" model, PG&E always needs approval to increase rates. Whether or not CPUC would fight those rate hikes is another question. There are some organizations that probably would though.
- outside1234 7y agoI'm not sure Santa Rosa is exactly in the woods.
- ladberg 7y agoBut the fires were caused by power lines to more remote areas, and then spread to Santa Rosa (and other cities).
- elgenie 7y agoThe technical term in the literature would be wildland-urban interface [1], and Santa Rosa should be pretty easy to find on this 2010 map of the WUI [2] when you zoom in on the Bay Area . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildland%E2%80%93urban_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildland%E2%80%93urban_interfa... [2] https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/rmap/rmap8/rmap-nrs-8-WUI-MAP.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/rmap/rmap8/rmap-nrs-8-WUI-MAP...
- dheera 7y agoThis is also exactly why natural monopolies like utilities should not be publicly-traded companies, in my opinion. When fires happen in California, short-sighted shareholders from all over the place short sell their stock, sue them and waste money on legal expenses, and otherwise deprive them of funds they need to fix problems. Imagine if every highway in the Bay Area were a publicly-traded company. Accident happens on I-280 due to a pothole. Shareholders panic and short sell I-280 stock. Accident never gets cleaned up. Pothole never gets fixed. Because they don't have funding to fix it. When there are problems in infrastructure, like fires, we should be pouring money into fixing and upgrading infrastructure immediately so it doesn't happen again, not taking funding away.
- Nuzzerino 7y ago> Imagine if every highway in the Bay Area were a publicly-traded company. Accident happens on I-280 due to a pothole. Shareholders panic and short sell I-280 stock. Accident never gets cleaned up. Pothole never gets fixed. Because they don't have funding to fix it. I occasionally hear this argument about "the roads" mentioned, but I'm genuinely curious if there are notable real life examples of this scenario.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]