Gavin Newsoms latest utility bailout bad policy, bad for democracy

Gavin Newsom is secretly pursuing an 11th-hour push to shield California’s three for-profit utility monopolies from the financial consequences of the wildfires they cause, shifting those costs onto consumers instead.If he succeeds, it won’t just be another utility bailout.It will be another end-run around the democratic process.It wouldn’t be for the first time.Last September, with just two days left in the legislative session, Gov.

Newsom replaced a consumer protection bill with a 231-page bailout for California’s three for-profit utility monopolies.Lawmakers later admitted they didn’t have enough time to understand what they were voting on.That should never happen in a democracy.Newsom’s administration warned that if the bill didn’t pass, Edison, the company behind the Eaton Fire, might go bankrupt.The next month, Newsom’s five appointees on the California Public Utilities Commission approved a massive Edison rate increase worth more than $1 billion a year, plus nearly $1 billion in retroactive back pay.Two months later, far from bankrupt, Edison increased shareholder dividends, paying out $1.3 billion in 2025 alone.

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Never miss a story Let’s be honest about what happened.Instead of protecting Californians from bankruptcy, these decisions transferred billions from hardworking families to Wall Street shareholders, money that should have remained available to compensate wildfire survivors.The shareholder rewards didn’t stop there.In 2025, the year the Eaton Fire killed at least 19 of my neighbors and destroyed the lives of tens of thousands more, the company’s profits more than tripled, from $1.3 billion to $4.5 billion.From innovation? No...