SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Sen. Scott Wiener’s effort to give cities like San Francisco a clearer path to cut ties with PG&E stalled this week after the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee failed to advance SB 875, legislation aimed at reforming the state process for creating local public utilities.
SB 875 would have sought to unrig what supporters described as a broken California Public Utilities Commission process that prevents cities like San Francisco from leaving PG&E and forming their own public utilities. The bill was the first of its kind to pass even one committee. It aimed to reform procedures at the California Public Utilities Commission to allow cities that wish to exit PG&E to establish their own public utilities while providing more affordable and reliable energy to residents.
In 2020, Wiener introduced legislation to turn PG&E into a statewide public utility. That proposal never received a hearing. Last week, SB 875 was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. PG&E and its union then unleashed what was described as “a tidal wave of misinformation opposition pressure campaign against the bill, and the bill did not receive the necessary votes to pass the Senate Energy Committee.”
Wiener stated, “PG&E struggles to complete even basic repairs effectively, but it still manages to spend plenty on lobbyists.” He said the bill “defied the odds” to reach its first committee hearing. He continued, “We’re in a toxic relationship, but it’s one I will keep fighting to end as long as PG&E continues to unreasonably spike up electrical rates and endanger people’s lives through their negligence.”
In 2019, San Francisco began trying to exit PG&E, but in the years since, it has faced repeated delays at the CPUC due to what supporters called a broken process rigged by private utilities, especially PG&E. The current valuation proceeding was filed with the CPUC in July 2021. Even with a strict 180-day timeline required by law, PG&E has successfully drawn the CPUC process out to more than four and a half years.
On Dec. 20, 2025, more than 130,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco lost power, with many customers not having service restored for three days. PG&E failed to notify the city of San Francisco, which had to contact PG&E itself to determine what was happening. PG&E sent estimates for when power would be restored that ultimately proved highly inaccurate. The company later blamed the errors on its use of poorly trained AI. PG&E also delayed opening resource centers for residents most affected by the outage.
As of Jan. 7, 2026, San Francisco residents had been hit by six power outages in a one-month period. The prolonged blackouts left residents with medical complications stranded at home while businesses lost tens of thousands of dollars in spoiled inventory. In addition, the outages occurred during the peak holiday season, resulting in major lost sales. Customers of public utilities spend less time without power on average than customers of investor-owned utilities.
San Francisco is a prime case study of PG&E’s neglect and incompetence, supporters of the bill argued. In 2018, the company’s negligence sparked the largest wildfire in California history. The disaster killed 85 people and pushed the company into bankruptcy.
In recent years, investor-owned utilities have raised electricity rates dramatically across California as customers have been forced to pay a greater share of wildfire liability costs. PG&E itself raised rates nearly 40% between 2022 and 2025, contributing to California having the second-highest electricity rates in the nation, behind Hawaii.
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