July 05, 2006

"PG&E claims bias on ballot"

"Determined to yield nothing in the battle for customers, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is funding a lawsuit against the Sacramento Municipal Utility District over a ballot proposal for SMUD to annex parts of Yolo County.

The suit centers on the wording of the question being put to voters in SMUD territory in Sacramento and Placer counties in November.

For SMUD to expand into Yolo, voters in the area up for annexation, as well as those now served by SMUD -- in most of Sacramento County and a small part of Placer County -- must approve.

If the deal goes through, PG&E will lose about 85,000 customers in the cities of Davis, West Sacramento, Woodland and nearby unincorporated areas.

A suit filed in Sacramento Superior Court contends that the measure written by SMUD is "illegally biased."

The measure's question reads:

Shall Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) provide electric service to the Cities of West Sacramento, Davis and Woodland and portions of Yolo county by annexation; on condition that Yolo customers shall pay the costs of annexation and service and the SMUD Board of Directors shall use any net income from Yolo service to maintain low rates through debt reduction, and invest in energy efficiency and clean energy resources for use in the Sacramento region?

"Basically, what it comes down to is that their ballot label is a campaign ad, not the fair and impartial ballot label required by law," said Jeff Raimundo, a consultant to PG&E's campaign committee, the Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity.

PG&E prefers the wording that will appear on ballots in Yolo County. That question was composed by a third party, the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission.

Peter Darbee, chairman, president and CEO of PG&E, said in an interview that a comparison of the two supports PG&E's position.

"If you hold up the LAFCO ballot question and the SMUD question, you'll understand what our point is," Darbee said.

The LAFCO-composed question reads:

Shall the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) annex into its service territory the Cities of West Sacramento, Davis and Woodland and the contiguous unincorporated area of Yolo County for the purpose of providing electric service?

As for SMUD's wording, its General Counsel Arlen Orchard, who wrote the question for the Sacramento and Placer county voters, acknowledged that it could have been simpler and shorter.

"I think the idea is that people are better off with better information than less information when they're casting a vote," Orchard said."

Posted by Randy Riddle at July 5, 2006 03:32 PM