This morning’s Sacramento Bee reports:
The increasingly aggressive election battle over electricity service in eastern Yolo County landed on the steps of the Capitol on Tuesday, with several lawmakers calling for an investigation into Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s campaign tactics.
Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, denounced PG&E for using a customer service telephone line and billing inserts to oppose ballot measures that would enable part of Yolo County to drop PG&E and buy power instead from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Ortiz and Jones — along with Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, who was not at the news event — wrote a letter dated Tuesday to the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee and the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce requesting that PG&E be asked to demonstrate that none of its inserts, telephone recordings or other political activities was paid for with ratepayer funds.
While we are certainly glad that people are starting to take notice about the campaign that PG&E has run against H&I, this issue only covers part of the story including the misuse of campaign and city logos for campaign purposes, the complaint filed by the No on Measure X campaign, the complaint filed by the City of Davis. The entire PG&E campaign has been misleading. The central issue in the campaign is over whether or not there will be savings for county ratepayers–the question I have to continually ask is whether you trust any claim that PG&E makes, because I sure don’t. At this point, I would at least be inclined to investigate a claim that the sky was blue. That’s how little credibility they have with me. I’ll be honest, I was always going to vote for SMUD, but it wasn’t an issue high on my radar until I watched the utterly contemptible campaign emerge.
—Doug Paul Davis reporting
