Senator Wiener Introduces PG&E Breakup Bill
SB 875 will clear the path to leave PG&E and form public utilities to provide more affordable, reliable energy to Californians.
SAN FRANCISCO – Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced SB 875, legislation to end PG&E’s delays in the process of local governments breaking up with private utilities to form publicly owned utilities. In California, cities like Sacramento and Palo Alto with public utilities charge residents electricity rates around 50% lower than those paid by customers of private utilities like PG&E. Despite paying higher electricity rates, cities like San Francisco have seen blackouts that leave hundreds of thousands of people stranded for days without power. SB 875 will reform the broken process at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to allow cities that wish to exit PG&E, establish public utilities, and provide more affordable and reliable energy to residents.
San Francisco began trying to exit PG&E in 2019 but has run into years of delays at the CPUC due to a broken process rigged by PG&E and other private utilities. The current valuation proceeding was filed with the CPUC in July 2021, but despite an 18 month timeline required by law, PG&E has successfully drawn the CPUC process out to four and a half years. A judge recently outlined the process’s path forward over the next year, but more process reforms are needed to prevent continued obstruction from PG&E.
“Under PG&E’s monopoly, San Franciscans are paying more for worse service. We should get a choice to leave this broken relationship, and SB 875 is a critical step to get there,” said Senator Wiener. “For decades, utilities like PG&E run by big investors have rigged our regulatory system to block cities’ attempts to break up with them and form public utilities. They are afraid that cities and municipalities can do what they do cheaper and better. They are right to be afraid — cities like Sacramento with public utilities pay around 50% less for electricity and receive better service than PG&E offers. They don’t deal with the same constant blackouts from poor maintenance, or the poor communication when blackouts happen. SB 875 will unrig the breakup process so that cities like San Francisco can get back on their feet and start delivering affordable, reliable energy to Californians.”
On December 20th, more than 130,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco lost power. Some didn’t see it restored for 3 days. PG&E failed to notify the City, which had to reach out to the utility to find out what was going on. PG&E issued multiple estimates of when power would be restored that were wildly inaccurate, and later blamed the false estimates on their use of poorly trained AI. They even delayed opening resource centers for residents affected by the outage.
As of January 7th, 2026, San Franciscans had been hit by no less than six power outages in less than one month. The prolonged blackouts left San Franciscans with medical complications stranded at home while businesses lost tens of thousands of dollars in spoiled inventory and lost sales during the busy holiday season.
San Francisco is merely a microcosm of PG&E’s incompetence and neglect. In 2018, the company’s negligence sparked the largest wildfires in California history, leaving 85 people dead and pushing the company into bankruptcy.
In recent years, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have raised electricity rates dramatically across California as they force customers to pay for a greater and greater share of their liability for wildfires. PG&E alone raised rates nearly 40% between 2022 and 2025. As a result, California now has the second highest electricity rates in the nation after Hawaii.
Public utilities offer much cheaper electricity, and they have avoided the IOUs’ punishing rate hikes in recent years. Last month, the publicly operated San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) even slashed the rates they charge for generation in the CleanPowerSF program by 20-25% to offset 15-25% rate hikes on transmission that were being imposed by PG&E. As a result, many electricity bills in San Francisco fell slightly. SFPUC General Manager Dennis Herrera explained “we prioritize local families and businesses over shareholder profits.”
Local jurisdictions currently have the right to break away from PG&E, but concerted lobbying efforts by PG&E and other IOUs have made this process convoluted and time consuming. In 1992, PG&E and other IOUs successfully lobbied to make acquisitions by public entities more difficult by raising the burden on public entities to establish their right to acquire utility facilities.
PG&E has also exploited ambiguity in sections of the law to delay the process of public acquisition, urging the CPUC to adopt an extremely broad scope for its review to extend the process for years longer than necessary.
These delays have succeeded in stymying public utility efforts across the state. In 2014, the South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID) began the process of pursuing municipalization. Over a decade later, they too have made little progress due to process delays exploited by PG&E.
SB 875 would reform this broken and corrupt process at the CPUC. The bill reverses the 1992 changes and re-establishes the historical standard that public entities demonstrate the public interest in their acquisition of utility facilities. In order to avoid PG&E’s endless delay tactics, the bill will also clarify that CPUC review of public purchases of utility infrastructure be limited to determining whether the transaction is fair and reasonable to affected public utility employees. The bill will also establish enforceable timelines to prevent PG&E from causing excessive delays at the CPUC in the future.
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