SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill over the weekend that would have cracked down on utilities and increased state oversight of electricity rates not because of a policy disagreement, but due to an administrative mistake.
What happened: Newsom on Saturday rejected SB 24, by Sen. Jerry McNerney, which would have stopped utilities from charging customers for their lobbying against new competition and boosted the state’s investigative authority over utility spending. In his veto message, Newsom wrote that the bill “contains a significant clerical error” causing two provisions to contradict one another, “making this bill unimplementable.”
Why it matters: SB 24’s demise represented a victory for the state’s major investor-owned utilities, all of whom advocated against it, and a major stumbling block for the wide coalition of energy affordability advocates who saw it as a top priority.
Details: The conflicting language in the bill was in two sections, a spokesperson for McNerney said: One clause that defined “political influence activity” as including appearances before regulatory bodies in connection with utility system operations, and a separate one that declared those appearances not to be “political influence activity.”