A push to have voters decide this year whether a municipal electric utility should oust San Diego Gas & Electric within the city limits of San Diego died after the City Council declined to put the question on the November ballot.
“This is a flawed and premature initiative,” said Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell, whose District 2 includes Point Loma and Ocean Beach.
But she also made reference to SDG&E making $936 million last year, according to filings by its parent company, Sempra. That’s $21 million more than the utility’s previous all-time high set in 2022.
“I ask SDG&E to look deep into themselves and think about the fact that their corporation is making too much profit,” Campbell said. “They need to get a clue.”
Other council members made similar remarks.
“I’ve got some significant issues with SDG&E,” council President Sean Elo-Rivera said, but he added “there are far too many questions left unanswered” and joined his colleagues in an 8-0 vote June 10 turning down the proposal brought forth by a local group that spent months collecting signatures from registered voters around the city.
Councilwoman Vivian Moreno was absent from the vote.
Newsletter
Get Point Loma-OB Monthly in your inbox every month
News and features about Point Loma and Ocean Beach every month for free
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Point Loma-OB Monthly.
The issue went before the City Council due to efforts by the Power San Diego group, which aimed to eventually establish a municipal utility to handle the electricity distribution responsibilities for customers within San Diego, not in other municipalities in the county.
Power San Diego, made up of members who include longtime critics of SDG&E, cited how municipal power companies such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power offer customers lower rates than California’s investor-owned utilities SDG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.
The debate comes as utility bills keep rising. SDG&E’s rates have consistently been the highest in the state and often are the most expensive in the nation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Power San Diego launched a signature drive that would directly put the issue on the November ballot. The group’s original goal was to collect about 80,000 verified signatures from registered San Diego voters, but the effort finished well short of that last month.
However, the group managed to collect more than 24,000 valid signatures, which was just enough to send the issue to the City Council to determine whether to put it before voters in November.
Power San Diego volunteers deliver boxes of signatures to the San Diego County registrar of voters office May 14.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
During this week’s meeting, the city attorney’s office voiced concerns that Power San Diego’s proposal, as written, could violate the city charter on multiple levels — including selecting an unelected board of directors to run the proposed utility and the legality of transitioning current SDG&E workers to become municipal employees.
“The legal concerns are significant,” Elo-Rivera said.
Before the vote, the public comment period ran almost 90 minutes, with 53 people appearing before the council either in person or by telephone to voice often passionate support for or opposition to the proposal.
“Please reject this proposed ballot [initiative] to force a government takeover of the electric grid,” said Monica Valadez, dispatcher and shop steward at IBEW Local 465, which represents about 1,500 SDG&E employees. “There’s no guarantee in this measure that our jobs will carry over to the city-run utility.”
Members of IBEW Local 465 demonstrate in February against a proposed ballot measure that would create a municipal utility operated within the San Diego city limits.
(Rob Nikolewski / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Power San Diego supporters said union jobs would be protected if a switch were made.
“This is not a government takeover,” Lawrence Carr said. “It is the government, us, the city taxpayers of San Diego, firing a bad employee — SDG&E — because we [the city] can do it better.”
Power San Diego estimated it would cost $3.5 billion to get a municipal power company up and running. That would work out to less than $15 per month per customer, the group said. Backers of the proposal said there would be no incremental cost exposure to city ratepayers.
But SDG&E in March released an assessment from an energy consulting firm that projected the costs would come to much more than that — $9 billion to $13 billion — and contended that when the costs of financing a municipal utility from scratch are factored in, the total grows even higher.
Power San Diego called those estimates inflated.
Before casting his vote, Councilman Joe LaCava said, “Something of this magnitude will take time and must be done thoughtfully — not on a sound bite but on a sound plan.”
At the same time, he said SDG&E rates “are too high; profits are too high.”
When questioned by Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert, SDG&E’s director of regional public affairs, Brittney Applestein Syz, said, “Affordability is absolutely important to us and it’s something we want to start talking about — how we can manage our bills, work with our customers, while also addressing the needs in our community.”
Von Wilpert criticized the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities, and other state entities.
“What we need to do is make sure that Sacramento is doing better,” von Wilpert said. “So I don’t want my vote not to put this on the ballot to be in any way an endorsem*nt ... [of] this profit-gouging. But at this time, I don’t think [putting the measure on the ballot is] the most responsible solution.”
Power San Diego Chairman Bill Powers expressed disappointment in the vote but said he is “absolutely not” discouraged. He said he expects the group to take another crack at it in about two years, during the next election cycle.
“I think we want to understand where do we get the resources so that if we’re successful, we can succeed on both ends — getting it on the ballot and passing it into law,” Powers said.
But Matt Awbrey, spokesman for Responsible Energy San Diego, a political action committee formed by groups opposed to the initiative, including SDG&E, said: “We are pleased the City Council rejected the measure to force a government-run electrical grid that would have left San Diegans on the hook for $9.3 billion or more in debt.”
