More than 100 elected officials have signed onboard
/Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group
By Maggie Angst | The Mercury News
Forging ahead with an ambitious proposal to take over the state’s largest and most embattled utility, a coalition of more than 100 elected California leaders on Thursday unveiled a broad framework of what a customer-owned utility might involve.
The coalition of leaders — who represent more than 8 million Californians served by Pacific Gas and Electric and include the mayors of San Jose, Oakland and Santa Cruz — laid out a list of operating principles to guide them in creating a nonprofit cooperative that would raise an estimated $60 billion needed to pay creditors and wildfire victims.
“With these principles, we’ve presented a framework for a viable customer-owned PG&E that will be transparent, accountable, and equitable,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a press release. “I’m proud to stand with our growing coalition of 113 elected leaders — who together represent more than half of Californians served by PG&E — urging the company’s transformation to put the company’s days of underinvestment, mismanagement, and negligence far behind us.”
