Wildfire Survivors Push Back Against Newsom-Led Utility Bailout
prospect.org
prospect.org
From where I sit, this is not simply a "power company bad" situation; the state has played a significant role.
EDIT: Looking further, PG&E's net profit every year for the past few years seems to have been extremely large, so I don't know that I buy it...
Meanwhile they maintain margins that most any public company would be incredibly jealous about.
Sure it's not black and white but the positioning is tiresome.
Then you just can't. I'm sure the utility companies are heart broken they have to not spend on maintenance and can instead pocket the extra cash but it doesn't change the levithianian regulatory mess California has erected around doing anything in the name of protecting the environment, compromise and competing concern be darned.
In California, Pacific Gas and Electric is documented to make a business choice of relying on contractors to do the vast majority of tree removal and trimming after a certain change in the executive leadership. Subsequently, extensive documentation shows a chain of pressure to cut costs on tree trimming and extract better terms from the sub-contractors using harsh negotiation and policy.
Later, after catastrophic wildfires time and again in the last ten years, an avalanche of low-paid, low-skill tree cutting has occurred. In many cases the zeal to cut old trees seems to have some extra energy, between the abused sub-contractors, harsh labor oversight, insulated management and back-room executive management meetings.
The framing that it is environmental protections that are the impediment to power line maintenance is as worn thin as a floor carpet at a twenty dollar motel near Sacramento IMHO
Source requested.
SCE made billions in profit last year. If they cannot upkeep their infrastructure while making large profits, they should be regulated to spend more profits on infrastructure or they should be nationalized and controled entirely by the state.
SCE does not get to have both large profits and say they are not allowed to charge enough.
California pays ridiculous rates as it is, sometimes over 40 cents per kwh.
My main point, though, is that the regulatory environment here in California has evolved without due regard for the law of unintended consequences.
The state Utility Commission basically operates on a fancy Cost Plus basis, limiting them all to 10% profits. I personally think this is crazy and drives up electricity costs. The higher the cost of delivering power the more they make. In fact is the only way to increase profit.
Anyways, SCE is indeed highly profitable making billions per year of profit. They all continually run up against the profit limit.
You can easily look up SCE financials. It made over $4 billion in profit in 2025.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260218378299/en/Edi...
That is exactly what people have been lobbying the regulators for, but the regulators keep saying no.
After choosing profits over maintenance, California utility giant forces blackouts on customers: https://www.salon.com/2019/10/09/after-choosing-profits-over...
PG&E Spent Billions on Lobbyists and PR Instead of Upgrades: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/11/pge-power-shutdown-calif...
John Oliver on utilities, including PG&E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YRSqaPtMg
Can we stop just automatically assuming that the poor, beleaguered companies would definitely be acting in the public's interest all on their own if only it weren't for the big bad regulators? It really seems like, in 2026, there should be ample evidence to the contrary by now.
For reference, we have buried about 1000ft of line on our property (pg&e actively prevented us from burying an additional 200ft of their line that runs through trees and has been taken out by limbs since then).
So, we’re over 1% the statewide first year burying project. (Our lines do not count towards their total).
Trying to pin down liability just based on the ignition source just makes a deep pockets lottery. If the power company lights a massive fire, you get a payout. If someone throws a cigarette out their window, they go bankrupt and you get nothing.
Eventually if you have a dry forest with a lot of dry brush and you have enough hot windy days, it's going to catch on fire. If the power lines are perfect, maybe you'll delay it a few years, but the same thing is going to happen. Either you deal with the problem from a fuel standpoint, or you make peoples' houses harder to burn, or you're going to end up with a bunch of burned down houses. There really isn't some magical solution where you can just blame it all on PG&E.
Haha. California gets a bad rap. Hands down it’s a tragedy. More like budget cuts and negligence, than anything to do with environmental regulations. I’d like to read that source.