PG's web of influence
 	 		 		
PG&E's web of influence | October 10, 2001 | SFBG News
 		 		 		 		
How the utility's political payola has kept San Francisco safe 
for a private power monopoly for 88 years.                                            

'A structural con game'
 						
These charts show some of the key ways in which PG has infused 
itself into San Francisco politics, society, culture, and 
business – using its money to make connections that have 
insulated the company from criticism or political challenge.
 						
Here's how it works: PG gives substantial amounts of money to 
local politicians – in exchange for a tacit (or in some cases, 
explicit) agreement not to bring up or promote the issue of 
public power. Until the advent of district elections last year, 
that was a big deal for local supervisorial candidates, who had 
to raise more than $250,000 to be competitive in citywide races. 
It's still a big issue for candidates for mayor – PG poured 
$21,504 into the 1999 mayor's race – and for candidates for state 
assembly and senate and for federal offices. PG's campaign 
contributions have been remarkably effective: for years the 
company simply kept the issue of public power off the political 
agenda (although most local politicians now support the MUD). PG 
also spends a substantial amount of money on lobbying: $71,000 in 
San Francisco just last year, city records show.
 						
But direct contributions are just the start of PG's influence. 
For one thing, there's PG's "charity." Community groups, 
political groups, civic groups, all sorts of San Francisco 
organizations have received donations from PG. (That, apparently, 
is now slowing down: one group that received money from PG last 
year, Deedee Workman of San Francisco Beautiful told the Bay 
Guardian that PG had declined to give any money for 2001, saying 
that all the available cash was going to programs to give rate 
relief to low-income ratepayers who are swamped by high bills.)
 						
Nobody at any of these groups has ever admitted that the money 
comes with strings attached, but the results are plain to see. In 
years of reporting on this issue, we've never found a single 
civic group that received money from PG that was willing to 
openly support public power. That pattern continues: to our 
knowledge, not one of the groups on our list has come out in 
favor of either of the public power measures on the November 
ballot.
 						
"It's one of the greatest structural con games ever devised in 
American economic history," consumer advocate Ralph Nader told us 
in an interview this week. "PG takes the consumers' money and 
gives it to politicians as political payola and then to charities 
as grant payola. Then the politicians and the community groups 
are all neutralized by the money, and there's no countervailing 
force to fight the utility."
 						
PG also spreads its money around the local legal community. The 
list of law firms that PG hired in the past year reads like a 
who's who of the local legal world – almost every big law firm in 
town got some of the action. Among the most notable: Cooley 
Godward, which employs Paul Renne, husband of City Attorney 
Louise Renne; Coblentz, Patch, Duffy and Bass, the firm of 
legendary local power-broker Bill Coblentz; and Cooper, White and 
Cooper, which for years represented the San Francisco Chronicle.
 						
"That's part of the scam," Nader said. "They spread all that 
money around to the big law firms, so there's no major firm that 
can take on PG. Then they enlist the political power of these law 
firms to press their agenda."
 						
PG is also a member of several key business organizations that 
have considerable influence at City Hall – and while it's 
certainly safe to argue that the interests of businesses in 
general in San Francisco are not always identical to the 
interests of PG (businesses also pay soaring electric bills), all 
of these groups have historically supported PG's private-power 
position. Even now, in the midst of an energy crisis that's 
causing financial problems for numerous businesses, and with PG 
in bankruptcy and service declining to the point where some 
businesses have to wait months to get hookups, not one business 
group has come out in favor of public power.
 						
The members of PG's board also serve on the boards of several 
major local companies, along with the directors of other local 
companies, including the Hearst Corp., which publishes the 
Chronicle, and Bechtel, which critics say is trying to privatize 
the city's water system.
 						
"Even when businesses are consumers, they don't speak up," Nader 
noted. "The private utilities have the establishment neutralized. 
You can't beat them; you have to displace them with public 
power."
 						
Research by Ben Sayre.   				 			

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