It wouldn’t entirely surprise me if the legislature in Sacramento used widespread unhappiness with the utility providers to nationalize them and run them as state functions. That bunch of lefty drones rarely sees a government takeover they can’t totally love.It hasn't taken long for that proposal to surface, see this argument for a state-run utility in The Nation, a lefty publication. It showed up yesterday. Author Johanna Bozuwa proposes:
The call for public ownership of energy resources in California has built steadily since last year’s devastating wildfires, when activists disrupted a California Public Utilities Commission hearing with a call to stop bailing out PG&E (again) and transition to democratized power. Since then, activists have advanced a resolution for a state-run utility and San Francisco offered to buy out PG&E’s infrastructure.The Sacramento city utility actually does an okay job, as does the one in Redding. I lived for two years in each many years ago and had no problems with power.
Others are pursuing Community Choice energy programs, an already flourishing form of public energy provider in California serving 11 million customers, in which local governments pool customers and control procurement of electricity. Almost 40 long-standing publicly owned utilities already operate in California, such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
City-based systems like SMUD don't own long distance transmission lines and don't reach out into the surrounding countryside to provide power for rural dwellers. Basically, they skim the cream of high-density utility installations and leave the high cost spread-out stuff to PG&E, or "piggy" as its detractors call it.
Actually, you don't want your utility provider's employees to be civil servants who are essentially impossible to fire when nonperforming or unneeded. And I'm not sure its a good thing to have a government utility provider which you cannot sue if it screws up and damages you or your property.
