Electric bills based on income? Forget it, both parties agree

The push to make higher-income Californians pay higher fixed charges for electricity has sparked class warfare and a confounding round of ducking, glancing, blaming and fingerpointing.

“Today we will be introducing legislation to roll back the Public Utilities Commission's proposed incomegraduated fixed fee,” Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-thousand Oaks, said last month “Today, 10 senators led by Senator Scott Wiener, D-san Francisco, released a letter calling on the California Public Utilities Commission to reject a utility-backed proposal that would raise energy bills for millions of Californians by $360-$824 per year,” a release from Wiener's office said.

It seems important to point out that, at least overtly, neither the CPUC nor the investor-owned utilities are to blame for this wildly divisive “earnmore/pay-more” plan for funding upkeep of the grid. Rather — as lawmakers well know! — they are.

Wiener and Irwin both voted aye on the bill that codified it on June 29, 2022, as did the overwhelming majority of state legislators.

Though some lawmakers didn't fully realize its implications at the time, the idea was tucked into a budget trailer bill that they passed with precious little public comment or debate at the bitter end of the session, which was then signed by the governor. Assembly Bill 205 repealed the existing cap on fixed charges — a wee $10 a month — and required the CPUC to develop fixed charges “on an income-graduated basis with no fewer than three income thresholds, such that a low-income rate