Electricity Transmission Pylon at Dusk. (Photo: chuyuss/Shutterstock)
Election Year Decisions: California Democrats Backtracking on Income-Based Utility Bills
Stuck-on-Stupid climate change nonsense is escalating cost of utility bills
By Katy Grimes, February 22, 2024 9:31 am
California is falling apart. We are witnessing the demise of the Golden State in every patently absurd bill introduced in the Legislature, every new regulation imposed, every tax increase, every constitutional right eroded – and every climate change policy inflicted, despite having no impact on temperatures or climate.
Confirmation of this demise is the state’s income-based utility pricing – the more you make, the more they take, regardless of your actual electricity usage. But worse than income-based utility rates is how the deck is already stacked: California Democrats are taking hydroelectric dams offline and have passed bills forcing the state to convert to an all-electricity grid.
In 2022, the California Legislature passed AB 205, which required the CPUC to move the state to an income-based system of paying utility bills, set by their income. This is supposed to cover the costs of building and maintaining electrical infrastructure, and to account for the energy they actually use.
Last month the Globe reported, “Ten Senators led by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) released a letter calling on the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to reject a utility-backed proposal that would raise energy bills for millions of Californians by $360-824 per year.”
You read that right.
“The proposed fixed charge is 4-6x higher than similar charges in other states, and removes the incentive for customers to reduce their bill by conserving energy. To date, the CPUC has not held public hearings on this proposal.”
These Senators voted for the tiered utility rate increases, and are now shocked by the results. Democrats always overreach, despite warnings, and are then forced to undo the messes, while never admitting their epic failures.
The Globe reported on a 2021 report from the University of California at Berkeley recommending that the state link California’s highest-in-the-nation electricity bills to customer incomes – ie. your ability to pay.
The Legislature and Governor approved this income-based electric rate scheme through AB 205, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in June 2022 claiming it was needed because the wild swings in utility prices that California experiences.
Here are the party-line votes on AB 205:
How did this happen?
Authors Severin Borenstein (an “economist”), Meredith Fowlie, and Jim Sallee of the UC Berkeley and the Energy Institute at Haas admitted that California’s electricity rates are so high, lower-income households pay a larger share of their income on electricity.
Taking more from the wealthy, from job creators, and those already paying the most taxes in the state is never the “equitable” answer, but it is the one the left always defaults to.
So, rather than using all available energy sources to create energy abundance and lower energy costs for everyone, the Berkeley report proposed “cutting back on the volumetric per-kilowatt-hour charges on customers’ bills and recovering the missing money through constructs tied to customers’ income.”
This is life in California under one-party rule, and why so many residents and businesses are leaving the state.
Democrats imposed a socialistic utility rate structure on California residents. And now residents are screaming about utility bills doubling and tripling.
California has the highest electricity rates in the country. Nearly every Democrat in the California Legislature voted for this.
Now Democrats are forced to undo this mess.
It is an election year. So naturally, a bipartisan effort to backtrack on the income-based utility rates is underway. It is necessary, and the residents are nearly at a breaking point. But remember who voted for this disaster, even after being warned what would happen.
California’s politicians and unelected agency leaders are limiting energy sources rather than using an all-of-the-above approach to energy production in California: Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar and wind.
If all we are allowed to use is renewable energy for electricity production – a deliberate energy shortage – higher bill, statewide shortages and rolling blackouts inevitably become the new California normal. Democrat’s solution is no solution – opening up all energy sources is the only solution.
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I can’t be the only person who spends nearly every moment of previously spare time cleaning up a daily personal mess that has unquestionably resulted from the fallout of what the Dem/Marxists have wrought over the past 3-4 years, especially in California. I suspect that even those who saved money for “emergencies” and who aren’t living hand-to-mouth at the moment have nonetheless become overwhelmed mentally and emotionally from constantly putting out fires the Dems have created from their insane thoughts and activities.
Nearly EVERY previously routine matter (e.g., paying bills, being dropped from homeowners insurance for NO REASON, getting a proper repair on car or house, non-receipt of U.S. mail, a lingering ID theft whose source cannot be found and with NO help or response from state officials, and other seemingly trivial matters, requires a deep dive that eats up time and energy and causes anxiety and may never be fixed anyway. I can only imagine the economic and thus personal trauma for those who are running up credit cards when trying to pay steadily increasing costs for groceries, home energy, gasoline, and other such necessities, never mind inevitable unexpected expenses.
If you are experiencing this too but always vote Democrat, just please remember that every time you get an electric shock in your body and throw your hands up in despair and helplessness from runaway inflation, an unexpected dramatically increased expense, a female child coming home from school and informing you they have decided to become a male, from becoming a victim of violent or property crime with no consequences for the criminal, and so much more, just remember that Democrat politicians are responsible for it. ALL OF IT. They are masters of distraction and destruction and irrelevancy and bad decision-making and upside-down foolishness and are constantly at work sowing the seeds of chaos in your life.
If you want this to stop — or even lessen — you are going to have to swallow hard and vote differently, for someone else than a Dem. At this point, almost ANYONE else. And we ALL have to be sure to VOTE. State ballot returns are down thus far. Very low, which seems to me to be a golden opportunity for sensible people to vote in great numbers so we can begin to see our way back to sanity or even semi-sanity in California.
Agree 100% Showandtell, with a few additions : Voting under the current electronic voting platform(s) and mail-in (aka “cheat-by-mail”) voting completely opens the door to voter fraud and election mis-representation.
Also, has anyone else noticed that Democrat lawmakers are habitually LYING about reported economic results from their bad policymaking? They release rosy economic reports, and then backtrack on them several weeks later, usually on a Friday afternoon late and adjust them downwards, which would have HORRIFIED the population had those same adjusted results been released accurately & timely?
The amount of “spin” that Democrats put on their press releases is FRIGHTENING…..
Thanks for your reply, CD9. I hear you but we gotta vote anyway. And keep in mind that work is being done in that arena that it would be unwise to publicize.
Agree 100%.
Lying about reported economic results? Wait till the final budget deficit is reported.
The criminal Democrat mafia and their unelected agency leaders are limiting energy sources rather than using an all-of-the-above approach to energy production in California. It’s all by design? Do they really care what voters think when they can manipulate elections with voter fraud and rigged voting machines? No doubt they’re getting payoffs from somewhere like the CCP, WEF globalists, etc.?
Yep, yep and yep, TJ…. the amount of DISRESPECT that the Dems show us is mind-boggling… nice to see that press outlets are starting to take notice and publish the findings : https://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/liberals-look-down-on-ordinary-americans/
There has been a new method of returning your voted Vote by Mail ballot that was approved for this election that creates a new method for potential “fraud”. The voter can take a Vote by Mail ballot to a polling place, check in using the name and address on the Vote by Mail envelop and then proceed to the tabulator and run the voted ballot through the machine. Since California doesn’t check ID and there are millions of Vote by Mail ballots that go unvoted this will be an easy scam. In the old days (the last election) a voter could drop a voted Vote by Mail ballot off at the polling place and it would go through the signature verification process. If the voter wanted to vote at the polling place they were supposed to surrender the Vote by Mail ballot. The vast majority of this corruption can be brought to an end with simple identification requirements. That’s what we have to wrestle away from the politicians. Perhaps a ballot initiative will work requiring valid identification in order to vote? This initiative can also do away with Vote by Mail?
State line lookin’ better every day. Won’t go to OR, but NV and AZ are viable…or maybe Pago Pago.
I wonder if the different attempts to raise overall electricity rates are tied to the offshore wind cartel who have stated they need to get more 3 to 5 times more per KWH than we are currently charged. Maybe this is part of the climate change industrial complex at work.
I think rate increases are tied to offshore wind subsidies. Part of the $$ needed to make that part of the climate industrial complex work.