Measure aiming to replace SDG&E in San Diego doesn’t qualify for fall ballot

Power San Diego, an initiative seeking to oust San Diego Gas & Electric by creating a municipal electric utility within the city limits of San Diego, has fallen short of its goal of collecting 80,000 verified signatures to put the proposition on the city ballot this fall.

The initiative’s backers turned in about 31,000 signatures to the San Diego County registrar of voters office May 14. The group believes that’s enough to put the question before the San Diego City Council instead, though council committees twice have declined to endorse the proposal.

“Unfortunately, this campaign has not collected the 80,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, but this does not mean that we’ve lost — far from it,” said Emma Rodriguez, campaign coordinator for the SanDiego350 environmental organization, one of the groups supporting the initiative.

Power San Diego cited a provision in the city charter that the nine members of the City Council have the power to place the question of creating a municipal utility up for a popular vote if the city clerk verifies that at least 24,000 signatures are valid.

It’s expected to take several weeks to determine whether the number of verified signatures is sufficient.

“I’m fairly confident” that at least 24,000 valid signatures have been collected, said Bill Powers, chairman of Power San Diego. “I think the validation effort has been top-notch.”

Powers blamed his group’s lack of resources for the failure to collect 80,000 signatures. “Let me be clear — money,” he said. “In order to hire coordinators and consultants, it takes money. It also takes volunteers, and we did it primarily with volunteers.”

Bill Powers is chairman of the Power San Diego initiative to create a municipal utility to replace San Diego Gas & Electric within the city limits of San Diego.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Power San Diego already has gone to City Hall twice seeking support for its initiative but was turned down each time.

In September, all four members of the council’s Environment Committee listened to a presentation by Powers but declined to endorse his proposal to put it before voters.

“We must get much more detailed data in terms of costs, expenses, liability [and] revenue projections,” said Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell. “It is way too premature” to go on the 2024 ballot, she said.

Powers returned last month before the Rules Committee, but members dismissed the Power San Diego resolution without taking a vote.

“I have no love for corporate monopolies reaching into the pockets of everyday working people,” said council President Sean Elo-Rivera. “But this is a very complex and important issue and I don’t think this is baked enough to go to the voters.”

However, backers of the initiative think the council may be more receptive now.

“There is a lot of public interest in switching out SDG&E,” Powers said. “This is the grassroots saying [to the] city political infrastructure, this is a big deal. A lot of people are very interested in seeing a change.”

Under the Power San Diego proposal, the municipal utility would handle electricity distribution responsibilities for customers only in the city of San Diego, not in other municipalities in the county.

Backers say making the change would result in about a 20 percent reduction in San Diego customers’ electricity bills, citing how municipal utilities such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power offer customers lower rates than California’s investor-owned utilities — SDG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

Power San Diego has estimated it would cost $3.5 billion to get a municipal power company up and running.

But SDG&E in March released an assessment from an energy consulting firm that projected the costs would come to much more than that — $11.31 billion to $13.23 billion — and contended that when the costs of financing a municipal utility from scratch are factored in, the total grows even higher.

“It’s clear that this [signature drive] has come short of its stated goals,” said Matt Awbrey, spokesman for Responsible Energy San Diego, a political action committee formed by groups opposed to the initiative, including SDG&E. “This is a bad idea today, this was a bad idea a month ago when the City Council committee declined to put this on the ballot themselves, and it’ll be a bad idea as the registrar counts these signatures.”

“We are in a budget crisis and we have so many other priorities to consider,” said Ellen Nash, chairwoman of the San Diego chapter of the Black American Political Association of California, a member of Responsible Energy San Diego.

According to the city’s campaign finance disclosure portal, Responsible Energy San Diego has received at least $398,000 in contributions from SDG&E this year alone.

The prospect of creating a municipal utility also has drawn vocal opposition from the labor union that represents roughly 1,500 SDG&E employees.

“This whole thing gambles with public safety and with our public union jobs,” said Monica Valadez, dispatcher and shop steward at IBEW Local 465. “It gambles with all of that with no plan, and they never once consulted the actual worker who does this type of work.”

Power San Diego representatives promise union jobs would be protected should a switch be made.

They also dispute the estimate that creating a municipal utility would cost $11 billion to $13 billion, saying the change could be funded by passing a bond to establish a standalone enterprise fund, with costs amortized over 30 years.

Power San Diego officials say the residential customer portion of their $3.5 billion cost estimate would work out to less than $15 per month, arguing that residential customers already pay that much or more under the current system. The officials say there would be no incremental cost exposure to city ratepayers.

“Every public electric utility in the state has lower rates than SDG&E,” Powers said. “Every public electric utility in this state has more stable rates. Every public electric utility has local control. They’re not under the [California] Public Utilities Commission.”

The debate over whether to create a municipal utility comes as utility bills keep rising. SDG&E’s rates have consistently been the highest in the state and often are the most expensive in the nation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Officials at SDG&E have attributed the increases to several factors, including:

• Spending $5 billion in ratepayer funds since the 2007 Witch Creek, Guejito and Rice wildfires destroyed more than 1,300 homes, killed two people and injured 40 firefighters. SDG&E is considered a pacesetter in state-of-the-art wildfire prevention efforts.

• Programs to help California meet its clean-energy goal, such as deriving 100 percent of the state’s electricity from carbon-free power sources by 2045

SDG&E also has come under fire for the money it makes.

The utility’s parent company — San Diego-based Sempra — released its 2023 earnings earlier this year. According to filings submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SDG&E made $936 million in profit last year. That’s $21 million higher than the utility’s previous all-time high in 2022. ◆