California
Elias: California utilities panel’s conflicts of interest must be prevented
One of the more interesting statements in a recent news story about the just-arrived $34.50-per-month average increase in household bills from California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, came from Carla Peterman, a top PG&E executive.
The money that PG&E (soon to be matched by its south state counterparts, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric) will receive in this new $414-per-year average levy on each of its customers will be used to make the electric system safer and more renewable, Peterman claimed.
That’s pious talk typical of major utility executives, who usually take home high salaries and have never been held personally accountable for their professional actions and failings. One example: When PG&E was criminally convicted and fined hundreds of millions of dollars for causing multiple fatalities with disasters like a natural gas explosion and the wildfire destruction of virtually an entire town, no executive suffered any legal consequence.
No one has even asked executives to speak under oath about why they didn’t make their system safer long before the many disasters of the last seven years. Peterman turns out to have had a major role in all this. Now an executive vice president and major representative for PG&E, she was not long ago one of the five state regulators who consistently neglected to hold utility executives responsible for their actions. Was this part of a plan or a deal?
From December 2012 until December 2018, Peterman was one of the virtually untouchable members of the California Public Utilities Commission, holding an appointive job from which she could not be fired, not even by the governor who put her there, Jerry Brown.
This sequence leads to questions about whose interests Peterman really pursued while a utility regulator — those of the mass of Californians who are utility customers or those of the utility company whose ranks she would later join. There could also be reasonable questions about whether her votes on the commission were motivated at least in part by promises of a high-paying future job.
No one but Peterman and the folks who put her where she now is can know for sure about that. However, if she had held a federal regulatory job with policy-making power similar to the post she occupied for six years, she at least could not have joined any company under her old job’s purview until five years after leaving the government post.
Peterman is not unique. A similar apparent conflict of interest was the case with Michael Peevey, a former president of SoCal Edison, for all 14 years that he was a PUC member, serving as its president most of that time before resigning in disgrace in 2014. Peevey was implicated in an apparent conspiracy with Edison executives over whether customers or the company would pay most costs of the Edison blunder that wrecked the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
Peevey was first appointed a commissioner by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, then reappointed by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger and again by Democrat Brown. The Peevey conflict of interest was in the opposite sequence of Peterman’s, as he ruled repeatedly on rates for the company he formerly ran.
Meanwhile, the sequence for John Bryson was almost identical to Peterman’s. Bryson, a 1970s-era Brown appointee as commission president, became SoCal Edison’s president soon after his six years on the PUC were up, later becoming U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Barack Obama.
These are just three examples of the kind of conflicts of interest spawned by a system in which the five PUC commissioners are essentially immune from public pressure during their terms. There has often been speculation about whether some had secret understandings with regulated companies involving high-paying positions in exchange for favors done.
What’s known right now is that as PG&E bills begin arriving in the mailboxes and on the computers of private individuals and businesses of all sizes, costs for everything from food to roofing to appliances will rise. Plus, the $34.50 rate hike itself will mean less food, less heat and less flexibility for myriad Californians.
If that’s not a loud call for state legislators to take action to preclude future conflicts of interest, it’s hard to see what could be.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
Rapper was stabbed 16 times by fellow inmate in May 2025 while 10-year sentence in Megan Thee Stallion shooting case
Tory Lanez has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections stemming from a May 2025 incident where the rapper was stabbed in prison.
Lanez — born Daystar Peterson and currently serving a 10-year sentence after being found guilty in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting case — also sued the warden and guards at the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, where the rapper was stabbed 16 times in an “unprovoked life-threatening attack” by another inmate, the lawsuit states.
Peterson was hospitalized following the May 2025 incident, suffering a collapsed lung among stab wounds to his back, torso, and head.
According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit criticized the Department of Corrections for housing Peterson with fellow inmate and alleged attacker Santino Casio, who was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder. “The choice to house Casio with Peterson was known or should have been a known danger,” the lawsuit said, adding that Tory Lanez’ “high-profile celebrity status” made him a target.
The lawsuit also said that prison guards were slow to respond to the shanking, and didn’t employ flash grenades or other measures to halt Casio’s attack.; Casio was not charged for stabbing Peterson, the Associated Press notes.
Lanez, who following his hospitalization was transferred to San Luis Obispo County’s California Men’s Colony, also alleges in the lawsuit that he never received his possessions from the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, including songbooks filled with lyrics to his unreleased music.
Lanez is serving a 10-year prison sentence for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot during a confrontation in the summer of 2020. He was eventually convicted on several firearms charges, including assault with a firearm, in December 2022. In November 2025, his appeal was denied by a three-judge panel, and the 10-year sentence was upheld.
From one crackdown on hospice fraud to another.
A few weeks ago, the FBI arrested multiple people in Southern California that were accused of defrauding the government for millions of dollars.
In a more recent announcement last Thursday, California’s State Attorney General Rob Bonta held a press conference to announce a fraud bust of their own.
“Operation Skip Trace uncovered and ended a hospice fraud scheme that defrauded Medi-Cal of $267 million,” Bonta said. “So just to be clear, a quarter billion dollars over funds that are paid for by California taxpayers, funds that are meant to provide care to Californians in need. It is unacceptable. It is illegal and we will not stand for it.”
The operation saw a total of 21 suspects charged as a result and dismantled a major hospice fraud scheme, with two handguns and over $750 thousand in cash seized as well.
According to the state’s attorney general, this is just one of the many cases over the years the state has cracked down on.
“This is just the latest example of the California DOJ’s longstanding ongoing and successful efforts to combat hospice and medical fraud,” Bonta said. “We have been doing this work for years. We’ve been doing it successfully before certain people in this country decided to think about it for the first time. We will continue to do this work. Heads down, sleeves rolled up, important investigative work, prosecutorial work.”
He added to that by taking a shot at the Trump Administration’s latest fraud operations.
“While healthcare fraud might be President Trump’s shiny new political talking point, the California DOJ has been going after healthcare fraud since 1979,” Bonta said. “For decades, Trump is late to the party. Protecting taxpayer dollars and protecting programs sick and vulnerable Californians rely on have been our priority for nearly five decades.”
Governor Gavin Newsom also spoke out about this latest crackdown while taking a shot of his own at President Trump.
In a post to “X” the Governor’s Press Office wrote in part quote…
“California has been cracking down on hospice fraud long before Trump gutted oversight and pardoned the architect of the biggest health care fraud scheme in U.S. history.”
State Republicans have responded to this latest announcement from Attorney General Bonta, calling for a special session to demand accountability from the Governor on widespread fraud.
California
Xavier Becerra surges in poll after Eric Swalwell drops out of California governor’s race
A new poll shows a major shift in the California governor’s race after former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was once a frontrunner, dropped out of the election following several allegations of sexual misconduct.
“This definitely throws this race into even more volatility, creates a huge vacuum,” Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani said.
According to the new numbers, Xavier Becerra, the former state attorney general and Health and Human Services Secretary under President Biden, is surging in popularity.
In Emerson College’s Inside California Politics poll, Becerra is now polling at 10%, a seven-point jump since March.
Republican Steve Hilton remains in the lead with 17%, followed by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco at 14%.
Among Democrats, billionaire Tom Steyer leads the pack with 14%, followed by Becerra and former Rep. Katie Porter at 10% each. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan sits at 5%.
The poll showed that 23% of voters remain undecided.
“Xavier Becerra should be the happiest of them all because he’s the biggest move in this survey,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Emerson College conducted the poll right after Swalwell dropped out of the race and President Trump endorsed Hilton.
“I believe over time, because Trump has endorsed Hilton for the governorship, that Hilton will continue to edge up and Bianco by definition will have to go down,” Yaroslavsky said.
Last weekend, the California GOP held its convention, and, similar to the Democrats, the party did not make an endorsement. However, Bianco received the most votes from the GOP delegates.
“We’re extremely happy with how it came out,” Bianco said. “There was a lot of effort put in by my opponent. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and win this election.
With the large number of undecided voters, Yaroslavky believes that the race is still in the air.
“It’s still early,” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s a little less than seven weeks before the election. The ballots go out at the beginning of next month. People, at least 30%, still haven’t made up their mind.”
In the state’s primary system, only the top two vote-getters in the June primary will advance to the November general election.
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