Gov. Gavin Newsom Supports PG&E’s Bankruptcy Exit Plan

Gov. Gavin Newsom has reportedly signed off on PG&E’s latest plan to exit bankruptcy, over a year after the utility filed for bankruptcy protection.

The news brings PG&E one step closer to exiting bankruptcy by June 30, the deadline that the publicly-traded utility needs to meet in order to access a $21 billion state “wildfire fund,” established by AB 1054, state legislation signed into law last summer.

Under AB 1054, the utility still needs to gain final approval from the bankruptcy court and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), a state regulatory agency, by June 30 in order to access the funds.

Additionally, under PG&E’s deal with Newsom, the utility will appoint a “chief transition officer” and begin a process to sell the company, Bloomberg recently reported.

“This is the end of business as usual for PG&E,” Newsom said in a statement. “We secured a totally transformed board and leadership structure for the company, real accountability tools to ensure safety and reliability, and billions more in contributions from shareholders to ensure safety upgrades are achieved.”

The largest remaining hurdle may be winning approval by the CPUC, which has yet to determine whether or not PG&E’s plan meets the guidelines laid out in AB 1054.

Among those guidelines is a requirement that the utility’s plan does not burden ratepayers with additional costs.

“We really want to make sure that … ratepayers aren’t going to be charged more for PG&E getting out of bankruptcy, that there’s not going to be a bail-out of the PG&E bankruptcy,” Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), told Utility Dive in a recent report on the issue.

4 Comments

  1. > Additionally, under PG&E’s deal with Newsom, the utility will appoint a “chief transition officer” and begin a process to sell the company, Bloomberg recently reported.

    Sell the company?

    Sell it to who? Private investors?

    It’s already owned by private investors.

    WTF?

  2. Yeah, the Govenor completely sold out to PG&E interests much like governors before him. Allowing PG&E to access taxpayer funds to bail them out of bankruptcy and use taxpayer monies for the property damages and hundreds of deaths PG&E caused is abhorrently wrong. Once again Gov. Newsom has sold out to the dysfuntional and corrupt PG&E Corporation. While more than half of Northern Californians were without power last summer and fall due to PG&E blackouts, Gov. Newsom was smiling and promoting his executive order in Southern California to ban circus animals from performing in California. Guess he had his priorities and it didn’t include the devastation caused by PG&E blackouts which included financial losses to local, commercial, and industrial, and small business.

  3. With this tumultuous corona virus situation Newsom probably didn’t have time to read the plan, especially the fine print.

  4. Yeah, I guess. Recalled Gov. Gray Davis also forgot to read the fine print on his taxpayer bailout of PG&E bankruptcy in 2003. Similiar to this current PG&E bankruptcy they chose to award their shareholders with profits that were non-existent and award PG&E management million dollar bonuses. Then as now PG&E had no money to buy power resulting in massive power blackouts and brown outs. Gov. Newsom will surely face the same outcome no matter how or why he signed off on the PG&E taxpayer ail out.

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