Source: The Sacramento Bee | By Stephen Hobbs

“The fact that the insurance corporations are going after Consumer Watchdog, means Consumer Watchdog is doing their job extremely well,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, and one of the letter signers. “In fact, I would call it a badge of honor.”

In the state’s tumultuous market, where prices are spiking and coverage is harder to find, the Department of Insurance is now considering a question that goes to the heart of the group’s work: Does Consumer Watchdog actually represent the interest of Californians? State lawmakers, companies and residents are all pressuring Lara to do more. In response, he is supporting rule changes meant to speed up reviews of proposed rate increases. Lara blames delays on companies – but he also claims Consumer Watchdog has slowed the process down by copying department work when it protests price hikes. He has accused the group of holding the reviews hostage at times. Representatives for 14 environmental, legal and other groups co-signed a letter to Lara that said it was “outrageous” for companies to suggest Consumer Watchdog wasn’t working on behalf of residents. It called on the department to grant the organization’s request immediately.

Source: ABC 10 | By Devin Trubey

Mark Toney, with the Utility Reform Network, said this increase in funding is on top of existing rate increases from earlier this year. So, while it might not seem like a lot, it all adds up. “The fault in this rate increase lies squarely with the legislatures who passed a bill that allowed PG&E to collect extra money for work they were already supposed to do and already receive money for,” Toney said.

As Californians face higher electric bills with the extreme heat, PG&E customers can expect to pay more. Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) allowed PG&E to increase their funding on expansion projects.

Source: ABC10 | By Brandon Rittimanhor

Customers who received some of PG&E’s first new underground power lines are shocked by how little the company buried and frustrated by a lack of clear communication

Source: Cap Radio | By Chris Nichols & Tony Rodriguez

Mark Toney, executive director of TURN (The Utility Reform Network), said past studies of deadly heat waves have found some people died even though they had air conditioning because of the cost of running it.“I know a lot of elderly on fixed incomes. They're afraid to turn on the air conditioner, but it's an extremely important thing,” he said. “What we need to do is to push the shareholders to take some of their record profits and give some great relief during this record-breaking heat.” Toney said his organization has asked the California Public Utility Commission to issue an emergency order during this ongoing heat wave to stop utilities from disconnecting power due to nonpayment. He said PG&E has already agreed to do this from July 4 through the end of this week.

The current, seemingly endless heat wave hitting the Sacramento region and much of the West is putting stress on people in many ways. As residents look to stay cool, air conditioners are running nearly nonstop in homes that have them. That can lead to not only tired appliances, but big bills.

Source: Cap Radio | By Sarit Laschinsky

The summer heat wave means Californians will be running their air conditions and trying to keep their outdoor plants alive. However, they will also be facing higher energy and water bills as a result. Mark Toney, Executive Director of TURN (The Utility Reform Network) joins Insight to talk about the impact of the heat on high electricity bills.

Source: Redheaded Blackbelt | By Sarah Reith

Regina Costa is the telecommunications policy director for TURN, The Utility Reform Network, which fought vigorously against AT&T’s proposal. She is confident the successful effort to hold AT&T to its obligations as COLR was due in part to “the people of Mendocino County and Humboldt County, people who drove and waited for hours to give public testimony on the problems with AT&T’s proposals. What you guys did made a massive difference.” The fight for quality service in rural California isn’t over, though. One common complaint is that AT&T doesn’t maintain its network to a high standard. Regina Costa says the CPUC is now looking “very closely” at a report on service quality issues. “Part of that report discusses what AT&T admitted, which is that it doesn’t maintain its network because it doesn’t have staff,” she said. “Well, they made the decision to reduce their staff.” She says the commission is now considering if there is a way to force the utility to increase its personnel. “Most of the time, even when the lines are horrible, if they could still at least work, you’ve got something,” she observed.

A bill that would have relieved telephone companies of their legal obligation to provide essential telecommunications services at affordable prices was pulled from a key committee on Monday, meaning it is not currently on its way to a vote by the full House.

Source: CBS News | By Steve Large

Mark Toney is the executive director of The Utility Reform Network, or TURN. Toney said that PG&E should be covering more power lines above ground. He said that PG&E's effort to put 10,000 miles of power lines underground is too slow and costly. The state has authorized the utility company to bury only 1,300 miles by 2026. "It's delaying safety and costing a fortune," Toney said. "If you are in a place that's waiting to be buried, maybe you're not in this four-year round. Maybe you'll be in the next four years or maybe after.”

With triple-digit fire weather top of mind, some people who live in wildfire-prone areas like Foresthill in Placer County are getting their power lines put underground by Pacific Gas and Electric—and some are not. Mike Howard owns a home on one acre of property in Foresthill. He's had several close calls and mandatory evacuations in the ten years since moving there.

Source: San Jose Spotlight | By Brandon Pho

A representative with The Utility Reform Network (TURN), an Oakland-based group that advocates for affordable connectivity, said AT&T retreated and pulled the bill in the face of public scrutiny. “Californians saw through AT&T’s smoke and mirrors,” TURN’s Telecom Policy Director Regina Costa told San José Spotlight. “The bill wasn’t about modernizing AT&T’s network, it was about giving AT&T the power to walk away from providing any kind of service wherever it chose.”

A state bill that would have let AT&T off the hook for emergency landline service — circumventing state regulators and affecting remote pockets of Santa Clara County — is on hold after public backlash. Assembly Bill 2797 has been pulled from the California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee meeting slated for Tuesday. It comes after the bill — originally about horse racing — was gutted and amended to give telecommunications companies another way out of their “carrier of last resort” duty if they submit a notice showing a lack of customers or that alternative services are available. Critics said AT&T is behind the bill, which Assemblymember Tina McKinnor introduced just before state utility regulators denied AT&T’s request to withdraw from its state obligation.

Source: The Mercury News | By George Avalos

“A 9% rate reduction is a drop in the bucket for customers who have been slammed” by monthly bills that have soared, said Mark Toney, executive director with The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, a consumer group. Since Jan. 1 of this year, PG&E has submitted four fresh proposals for rate increases to the state PUC, Toney added. “It is disingenuous for PG&E to take credit for a rate reduction that they are required by the PUC to pass along to customers who have made the final payment on a portion of the billions of dollars in utility overspending on wildfire mitigation,” Toney said.

The utility will reduce residential electricity rates by about 9% starting July 1, the company said. The lower rates could reduce bills by $20 a month for a typical household that uses 500 kilowatt-hours per month of electricity, according to information provided by PG&E. As of April 2024, electricity bills averaged $226 a month for the typical residential customer, while gas bills averaged $74, according to PG&E.

Source: KTVU Fox 2 | By Ann Rubin

Right now, AT&T is what's called a carrier of last resort. It's required by law to offer landline service to anyone in California who wants it. But that could soon change thanks to proposed legislation. AB 2797 would make it easier for AT&T to pull out of certain areas. "If this passes, they are not obliged to provide service, which means they can pull completely out of serving an area. They can decide they don't want to serve certain neighborhoods. They can decline service to customers, refuse to repair their phone lines," says Regina Costa of The Utility Reform Network or TURN.

Politicians and utility advocates are speaking out. They say Californians' right to landlines needs to be protected, and they're concerned proposed legislation puts that right in jeopardy. In this part of Santa Clara County, when there are wildfires or earthquakes, landlines can be lifelines. Mary Picchetti says her neighbors are all scared they could lose theirs.

Source: Sacramento Bee | By Ari Plachta

“The final budget deal with the Governor represents a total capitulation to PG&E and its shareholders,” Utility Reform Network attorney Matthew Freedman wrote. “This $400 million will never be paid back to the general fund, forcing taxpayers to absorb the costs.”

California lawmakers agreed to loan Pacific Gas & Electric Co. an additional $400 million to extend the life of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, ceding to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push for the loan after initially refusing to pay in a public budget spat. Newsom, who brokered a 2022 deal to extend the nuclear plant’s operations with state loans to be covered by the federal government, has argued that Diablo Canyon is critical to maintaining grid stability as the state transitions to clean energy.

Source: Bay City News | By Ruth Dusseault

“Copper uses electricity. But when the power goes out, the power is provided from the telephone company by very big generators,” said Regina Costa with The Utility Reform Network, a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for affordable power and phone service. “When an earthquake hits and the power’s out for two or three days, you still have local phone service.”

The California Public Utilities Commission has rejected AT&T’s request to withdraw as a carrier of last resort, or COLR, but it also decided to revisit the rules of determination. Meanwhile, a new bill in the state Legislature would revise the requirements for any company to be designated the COLR. The COLR is a cornerstone of utility regulation. It obligates a carrier to provide basic service to all customers within their territory no matter where they live. It can provide telephone service over any technology, such as copper, fiber, cable, voice over internet protocol (VoIP is a combination of copper and fiber), or wireless cellular. AT&T California has held that designation since 1996. It planted utility poles and strung copper telephone wire throughout the state.

Source: CalMatters | By Khari Johnson

California’s Public Utilities Commission today rejected AT&T’s application to stop providing landlines and other services in areas where there is no other option.

Its 4-0 vote came after a judge determined the application by AT&T California was “fatally flawed.”

Source: SF Chronicle | By Aidin Vaziri

AT&T must continue offering landline telephone service in California, state regulators decided Thursday.

Source: San Jose Spotlight | By Brandon Pho

Affordable connectivity advocates like Regina Costa don’t buy it. “They have the ability right now to put fiber optic into their network and they have chosen not to. So what does that say?” Costa, telecom policy director for the Oakland-based utility reform group TURN, told San José Spotlight. “In the era of climate change there are going to be more and more problems and that includes fires. If you are in an area that doesn’t have a reliable alternative, which is much of California, and we’re hit by an earthquake or have fires — you cannot rely on being able to call 911 to contact family, friends to let them know you’re okay.” Costa called the bill “cynical.” “It’s a greedy bill and it puts Californians in jeopardy,” Costa said. “It would be a public safety catastrophe.”

After public outcry across the Bay Area, state regulators this week barred AT&T from pulling out of a crucial lifeline for hard-to-reach residents in remote pockets of Santa Clara County: basic landline services. But on the eve of the California Public Utilities Commission’s Thursday decision, a state law proposal about horse racing was gutted and amended to legislation that would give the telecommunications giant another way to phase out its statewide landline duty. The new Assembly Bill 2797 would relieve telephone carriers from their “carrier of last resort” designation if they submit a notice showing a lack of basic customers or that alternative carrier services are available in a given area.

Source: The Mercury News | By Ethan Baron

The Utility Reform Network estimated that hundreds of thousands of households in the Bay Area and millions around California would have lost landline service if the California Public Utilities Commission had approved AT&T’s proposal. “It’s a great victory for Californians,” said Regina Costa, telecommunications policy director for The Utility Reform Network.

State utility regulators Thursday unanimously shot down a massively unpopular proposal by AT&T to scrap landline service for most of the Bay Area and much of California that critics charged would have stripped many older people and rural residents of a communications lifeline in power outages and disasters such as fires and floods.

Source: LAist | By Nereida Moreno

“We're now in fire season and people had better have a way to receive emergency alerts and communicate with each other when the power goes out,” said Regina Costa of the advocacy group TURN. It helped organize residents around the landline issue. “AT&T did not prove its case at the commission … they didn't present any evidence to show that customers would have any real alternatives, and in fact, they admitted that they don't,” Costa said. “In California, we tend to look at things a little more closely, so hopefully [lawmakers] will see through this,” Costa said.

After months of public backlash, California regulators are expected to reject AT&T’s bid to phase out landline service at a meeting on Thursday this week — but the company is still exploring other legal remedies. AT&T is trying to withdraw as a carrier of last resort (COLR) which requires the company to offer basic phone service to anyone who wants it. It’s held that designation since 1996, and remains one of the only companies in the state to offer traditional copper-based landline service.

Source: NBC Bay Area | By Jaxon Van Derbeken

“A significant portion of that loan is going to be turned into a gift to PG&E, funded by the taxpayers,” said Matt Freedman, an attorney with the ratepayer group TURN that has been critical of the deal. Freeman noted that even lawmakers who initially signed off on the loan have recently soured on the deal. Next year, ratepayers will start feeling the pinch of the deal – with a proposed $400 million rate hike. But the hike will not be spent on fixing the aging plant. Instead, Freedman says, the money will begin to pay the utility $2 billion worth of promised profits and other incentives over five years. “We don't understand why you need to bribe PG&E to keep this plant operating,” Freedman said, adding all the money the state is throwing into the plant would be better spent on bringing far cheaper clean energy alternatives on-line.

The cost of keeping the aging Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open five more years could be as much as double what PG&E had first estimated back when a deal was struck two years ago to run it longer to help assure grid reliability, experts say. The deal involved lending the utility $1.4 billion, which the state hoped to get back with a newly available federal grant. But when the grant was issued in January of this year, critics discovered that the amount available could be as little as half the sum originally advertised.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle | By Katy Morsony

Let me be clear — wildfi re mitigation work and ensuring our electric infrastructurecan withstand the challenges of climate change is crucial. PG&E’s utilityequipment has been responsible for some of California’s most destructive fi res.However, California has given the utilities little motivation to keep the costs downfor these initiatives. Utilities benefi t from charging customers as much as possiblefor infrastructure upgrades due to the guaranteed profi ts they earn on this work,known as a rate of return. The higher the total costs, the higher the utilities’ profits.

PG&E rates have increased a staggering 128% over the past decade, leavingCalifornians struggling to keep up with exorbitant utility bills. Part of this increaseis due to management failures by PG&E’s current and past CEOs. But the morealarming portion results from PG&E’s exploitation of the regulatory system tocharge customers for the most expensive infrastructure options, prioritizing utilityprofi ts over aff ordable alternatives , at the expense of your savings account.

Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel | By Editorial Board

Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, recently told CalMatters there not only needs to be a cap placed on utility rate hikes but that regulators should ensure utilities are not given a “credit card with no limit and a guarantee that someone else is going to pay.” TURN is backing the Utility Accountability Act, a bill that would require utilities to document and disclose their spending.

In a previous Editorial, we discussed the challenges PG&E is facing with increased demand for electricity and the cost of undergrounding power lines in fire-prone areas. We also noted recent rate hikes and how they are burdening ratepayers already having to deal with the high cost of living in California. Customers also are facing new fixed monthly fees — part of an energy bill passed by legislators in 2022 with little discussion. This charge is assessed to households each month in exchange for lower rates for every kilowatt hour of electricity they use. The California Public Utilities Commission approved the $24 monthly charge last month.