2024 Affordability & Accountability Legislative Scorecard

Utility rates have reached critical levels, worsening California’s homeless crisis and threatening our transition to a cleaner, safer future.

The TURN Affordability and Accountability Scorecard is a tool for holding our legislators accountable to the people who elected them. TURN provided a score for each of California’s 40 senators and 80 assembly members, based on how their votes on 10 bills showed they stood up for affordable bills or backed utility profits.

We call on legislators to:

  1. Protect Families & Control Costs Make utilities prioritize affordable service by requiring cost-effective wildfire safety measures and protecting vulnerable households from disconnections.

  2. End Excessive Profits & Wasteful Spending Limit utility profit margins to reasonable levels and prohibit utilities from charging customers for lobbying activities and PR campaigns.

  3. Create Smart Public Financing Solutions Establish a public transmission authority to reduce infrastructure financing costs and lower bills for all California residents.

2024 PRIORITY BILLS

AB 2847 (Addis) SPONSORED
Discloses utility capital spending
Ensures that utility corporations disclose the true costs of their long-term projects, so regulators and the public know the total cost for ratepayers over 20–50 years of repayment. 

SB 1142 (Menjivar) SPONSORED
Increases utility shutoff protections
Directs the CPUC to increase protections to prevent low-income utility customers from being disconnected from utility service or help them get reconnected. 

SB 1003 (Dodd) SPONSORED
Controls utility spending on wildfire mitigation
Increases oversight of utility wildfire spending and requires more thorough justification for spending to ensure safety and cost-effectiveness. 

AB 2054 (Bauer-Kahan) SPONSORED
Holds CPUC and shareholders accountable
Increases the wait period for CPUC commissioners to be hired as utility executives, and requires shareholders to pitch in for utility cost overruns. 

AB 3264 (Petrie-Norris) SUPPORT
Studies low-cost transmission financing
Requires the CPUC and Energy Commission to study non-ratepayer money options to pay for electricity transmission, as well as create affordability metrics that will reflect total household spending on energy-related costs—including transportation fuels, propane, etc. 

AB 2765 (Pellerin) SPONSORED
Reports telecommunications backup power
Protects telephone service by ensuring telecommunications corporations have 72 hours of backup power in place in case of power outages. 

SB 938 (Min) CO-SPONSORED WITH ENERGY AND POLICY INSTITUTE AND EARTH JUSTICE
Stops spending ratepayer money on advertising
Prohibits utility corporations from forcing ratepayers to pay for lobbying expenses and public relations advertising on television, newspapers, and billboards. 

AB 2329 (Muratsuchi) SPONSORED
Promotes affordable clean energy investment
Establishes the California Affordable Decarbonization Authority and a Climate Equity Trust to make affordable investments in a clean grid. 

SB 1130 (Bradford) SUPPORT
Expands FERA low-income discounts
Expands FERA discounts to include one- and two-person households, making tens of thousands more low-income customers eligible for assistance. 

AB 3263 (Calderon) OPPOSE
Trades short-term relief for long-term increases
Permits utility corporations to burden ratepayers with future bill increases in exchange for a one-year reduction through long-term financing of annual expenses. 

AB 2797 (McKinnor) OPPOSE
Allows AT&T to abandon landline networks
Overrules the CPUC and allows AT&T to abandon its obligation to provide telephone service as a Carrier of Last Resort designation. 

  • This bill, as amended, was not included in the Legislative Scorecard because it was withdrawn prior to its first committee vote. 

Incredibly, right now there are no limits on how much utilities can ask for in rate increases, how often they can request an increase, or what the CPUC approves. 

Out-of-control rate increases are not fair or sustainable, and they are not good for California. If clean power is not affordable, we cannot meet our climate goals and if residents can’t pay exorbitant utility bills, we push more people onto our streets—exacerbating the unhoused crisis.

MARK TONEY, TURN Executive Director

SCORING METHODOLOGY

Welcome to TURN’s first-ever Legislative Scorecard! We identified the TURN Top Ten Affordability & Accountability bills for the 2024 legislative session to develop this scorecard. TURN took a public position on each of these bills, and each legislator was scored based on whether they voted consistently with TURN’s position.

  • During committee and floor votes, an “NVR” or “No Vote Recorded” has the same practice effect as a “No” vote and was scored that way unless there was an excused legislative absence or other factors that indicate a contrary position.

  • Due diligence was conducted to confirm absences, including consulting the official legislative journal.

  • Each legislator’s votes were tallied and then converted into a percentage of voting in line with TURN’s position.

  • Authors of TURN–sponsored bills were given a 2% bonus.

In 2025, TURN plans to release its legislative priority list in the spring and update it throughout the year to highlight which bills may be included in the 2025 TURN Legislative Scorecard. 

Bill have doubled!

Since 2018, monthly bills have increased 100%.

4.3 Million...

California households have fallen behind in utility payments.

The sky is the limit!

Size and frequency of utility rate increases are unlimited.

SOLUTIONS

The solutions we desperately need are to reduce utility costs overall and ensure that those least able to afford electricity pay an unfair share while continuing our progress on clean, reliable, equitable, stable, and affordable energy infrastructure. Here is what we need to do:

  • Reform the way IOUs are regulated to give them strong incentives to reduce rather than increase costs, fundamentally addressing cost-bloat in transmission, distribution, administration, and other expenses, and decreasing the magnitude of cost-shifts from some groups of customers to others. Regulatory reform means moving from cost-of-service regulation, in which the more utilities spend, the more profit they earn, to performance-based regulation, in which the more they reduce costs without compromising the quality of service, the more they earn.

  • Keep the CARE program in place to make sure that consumers with the lowest ability to pay for electricity can afford their basic energy needs and to reduce the impact and cost of service disconnects. 

  • Expand current ratepayer disconnection protections to preserve access to energy, especially during extreme weather/temperature conditions.

  • Continue efficiency programs that reduce energy bills for all consumers by reducing fossil fuel and electricity use while maintaining and improving living conditions.

  • Find better ways to pay for important wildfire mitigation efforts, moving at least some of the mitigation costs out of electricity rates and into other funding sources.

  • Make sure utility wildfire mitigation spending is cost-effective and addresses areas and measures that can be shown to have the largest impact. 

  • Expand state support for demand management that will even out loads between peak and off-peak times of day, thereby reducing cost shifts between some groups of customers (including both those who have improved their efficiency and those who have installed rooftop solar) and others.

  • Retain and expand state climate programs, with funding primarily from the budget versus from utility rates.

  • Implement public financing of capital infrastructure for the grid to utilize the state’s ability to have a lower interest rate on debt.