This is addressed right at the beginning of the article. The argument is not that PG&E is skimming off huge profits, rather that it is structurally inefficient:
> Distribution: How much to get the power from your local substation to your house over local power lines. In PG&E's rate chart, they charge 20 cents per kilowatt hour for this. That just does not match up with how much it actually costs them to transmit power over local lines and keep the lines maintained.
> Everything else: Operations, maintenance, profit. This is where PG&E is actually seeing large expenses, because their coverage area is massive, it costs a lot of money to deliver power to rural customers, and they are also undertaking a massive project to underground utility lines in fire-prone areas.
The backstory here is that PG&E underfunded maintenance for decades while paying out substantial dividends to shareholders, and now that fires are killing lots of people, they have to go back and properly maintain their network.
Now, you can make the case that CA as a whole might not be better off if cities leave PG&E and the state has to subsidize rural power delivery even further, but I think the article is correct on the question that it tackles.