After years of citizen complaints regarding the inadequacy of energy giant PG&E, Governor Gavin Newsom is finally putting his big boy pants on and owning up to the wildfire and PG&E crises.
Such an action ostensibly shows attempting to fix some of the state’s most pressing issues, but given his prior failures on fixing issues such as the housing crisis, healthcare, and education, citizens still need to remain critical and skeptical. Clearly, the governor’s actions speak louder than his words.
PG&E has absolutely failed Californians in the times when their services are needed the most. When fire danger goes up, electricity services go down, and it isn’t just because of natural disasters. The truth lies in their lack of infrastructure improvement over the past decade. Simply put, they haven’t been stepping up to the challenge of fixing the grid’s ability to survive fire disasters.
Newsom is now looking to take over public energy service, a thought which has been pitched around as locally as the city level through programs such as community choice energy. He’s denounced the mismanagement of the company, stating that “What has occurred…is unacceptable. We are seeing the scale and scope of something that no state in the 21st Century should experience.”
Until Californians see real improvements to their electricity services, everything Newsom is saying is just another Democrat’s empty promise. We can only hope that the absolutely horrendous actions of PG&E are enough to make Newsom quake in his boots.
