Illustration by Quentin Lueninghoener, FairWarning.This sounds too good to be true, was one of Brenda Ortiz’s first thoughts when a salesman showed up at her front door in Riverside County in October 2018. He was with Vivint Solar, Ortiz recalled him saying, and was working with her local utility, Southern California Edison, to find people who qualified for free solar panels.
Transmission tower with power lines surrounded by trees. <(Photo: Pictures_n_Photos, via Shutterstock)OPINION: The devastation of fire season in wine country and southern California has only been compounded by never-ending public safety power shutoffs across the state. While the purpose of power shutoffs by utility companies, like PG&E, is to prevent their uninspected equipment from catching fire during hot, windy weather, the constant lack of power is an unacceptable solution for California homeowners and business owners and their operations.
Assembly candidates Elizabeth Betancourt, left, and Megan Dahle. (Photo illustration by Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)A husband and wife team in the Legislature — again? On Nov. 5, voters in California’s sprawling 1st Assembly District will choose between Republican Megan Dahle and Democrat Elizabeth Betancourt in a special election.
A resident watches smoke billowing from the Woolsey Fire, November, 2018, in Southern California. (Photo: BrittanyNY, via Shutterstock)OPINION: California is facing a wildfire crisis of epic proportions, and with the 2019 fire season already upon us, the immediate threat of yet another highly destructive and costly wildfire looms over communities all across the state. Everyone agrees that something must be done to address this crisis, and yet legislators still have not taken definitive action.
Grapes ready to be harvested in a Wine Country vineyard. (Photo: Lukasz Szwaj, via Shutterstock)Wine from California vintners will now get equal treatment to sit atop Canadian store shelves under the terms of the recently renegotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Lines delivering energy and communications along a rural stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. (Photo: Lux Blue, via Shutterstock)OPINION: California is a national leader in clean energy. Contrary to the perspective of advocates for Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), the question before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on Sept. 27 is not whether our state will continue to lead the nation in renewable energy, but whether all customers will contribute equitably to the costs of those investments and to system-wide electric reliability.
Developer Alastair Mactaggart, center, gets a hug from Sen. Bob Hertzberg, left, while Assemblymember Ed Chau looks on. Chau and Hertzberg pushed Mactaggart's privacy bill through the Legislature. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli) The new law gives consumers the right to access their personal information collected by big businesses. It gives them the right to delete it, the right to know what information is being sold and the right to stop businesses from selling their information. It also prohibits businesses from selling the personal information of youth under 16 unless they opt in.
O'Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the source of water for San Francisco. (Photo: Gary Saxe. via Shutterstock)Camrosa Water District, a public services provider in Ventura County, gets its water from a combination of groundwater, recycled wastewater, and the State Water Project, which transports water south through the state. Twenty miles away, another mid-size public water agency also founded around 1960 has a very different portfolio: Las Virgenes Municipal Water District gets virtually all its water from the State Water Project, which is managed by California’s Department of Water Resources.
San Francisco skyline at sunset, as its electricity usage kicks in. (Photo: Joseph Sohm)OPINION: A current law that is supposed to protect seniors and all electricity customers from paying for power that was purchased for other customers is not working. A broad coalition of senior groups and dozens of others is encouraging the Senate committee to discuss the fair allocation of costs for clean energy and other long-term contracts that were purchased to meet our state’s clean energy goals
An illustration depicting a person accessing data on a terminal. (Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)ProPublica: As the privacy officer for The Advisory Board Co., Rebecca Fayed knows a thing or two about privacy and what can happen when it’s violated. But when Fayed received a letter telling her that she, like nearly 80 million others, was the victim of a hacking attack on health insurer Anthem Inc., she couldn’t figure out why. Anthem wasn’t her insurance provider.