Your Mouth to God's Ear

California Governor Gavin Newsom has once again sent signals that he is seriously considering using his authority to end Pacific Gas & Electric as a going concern in the state of California if the embattled utility does not get its sh%$ together.

Because the California Public Utilities Commission has the authority to reject any payout from the state wildfire insurance fund, which would likely force PG&E into liquidation.

When that infrastructure is sold off, the buyers would be assured of EXTREMELY diligent oversight, so the market value will be relatively low, at which point takeover of those assets by state and local government becomes pretty viable.

Please, Governor, pull the trigger.

PGE has been a cancer on corporate governance for over 100 years.

Exactly one year after PG&E Corp. filed for bankruptcy, Gov. Gavin Newsom said PG&E “no longer exists” and doubled down on a state takeover if the utility doesn’t shape up by June 30.

“There’s going to be a new company or the state of California will take it over,” Newsom said at an event with the Public Policy Institute of California in Sacramento about the future of the state’s energy Wednesday.

“Because if PG&E can’t do it, we’ll do it for them. Period, full stop. We’re sick of excuses and delays,” he said.

………

“Bankruptcy turned out to be an extraordinary opportunity for the state,” Newsom said Wednesday. “I never would have imagined that a year ago today. I thought it was a huge burden, one I didn’t anticipate spending as much time and energy on.”

What it gave state regulators is the chance to transform the 115-year-old company into a 21st-century utility, he said.

………

But if the governor doesn’t like PG&E’s new plan, he made clear on Wednesday what the next step was.

“If they can’t do it, we have no choice but to do it for them, because the economic and human cost, not just the environmental degradation, is so great that we will be in peril if we just sit back and let the markets do it for us,” he said.

Seriously, if there is a company that merits the corporate death penalty, it is PG&E.

Have the states and localities reorganize the assets as either a government utility or a cooperative.