California's new electricity bill charges are controversial mostly because of the sneaky way in which the Legislature started the process.
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In addition to $75.76 in metered power consumption and $1.58 in taxes, SMUD’s bill included a $24.80 “system infrastructure fixed charge” that, frankly, I’d never noticed before in decades of receiving SMUD service. Fixed charges collected by the latter have long been limited to $10 a month, but that’s about to change, thanks totwo years ago. A few words in a lengthy state budget “trailer bill,” Assembly Bill 205, repealed the $10 cap and ordered the CPUC to create a new charge that would vary by customers’ incomes.
Newsom included it in one of the dozens of trailer bills his administration drafted for passage late in 2022-23 budget negotiations. It was enacted with virtually no discussion – a classic example of howIt should have been proposed in a separate bill disconnected from the budget, gone through committee hearings and other traditional legislative processes, including debates and floor votes in the state Senate and Assembly.
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