By Jason Fordney

The California Public Utilities Commission will vote later this month on a $98 million settlement agreement regarding its own improper communications with Pacific Gas and Electric related to the fatal 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion and other matters.

The commission will vote April 26 on the proposed decision of Administrative Law Judge Robert Mason regarding ex parte communications with PG&E after the company’s San Bruno pipeline exploded and killed eight people, as well as seven other proceedings.

The five CPUC members that will vote on the agreement April 26 were not involved with the improper communications several years ago. The parties listed on the settlement include PG&E, the city of San Bruno, The Utility Reform Network (TURN), city of San Carlos, and the CPUC’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates and Safety and Enforcement Division.

But the agreement does not close the San Bruno ex parte matter, instead kicking off a new proceeding to explore additional archived emails that PG&E provided to the CPUC in September 2017 that rocked the yearslong settlement process. (See Probe Reveals More CPUC-PG&E Contacts on Pipeline Blast.)

“This proceeding shall remain open to consider whether PG&E’s newly disclosed email communications violate the commission’s ex parte rules and should result in the imposition of additional fines,” the settlement says.

PG&E said the new batch of emails it submitted to the CPUC last September in the ex parte proceeding were “a recent development” from an unrelated government agency inquiry. The utility said that while the emails dating from 2013 and 2014 were new, “their general nature is not new.”

The “unrelated government agency inquiry” that PG&E referred to appears to be a concurrent investigation into former CPUC Commissioner Susan P. Kennedy that directed her to provide the California Fair Political Practices Commission with communications from 2012 to 2017. The investigation sought communications between the PUC and Kennedy and others at her company, Caliber Strategies, that mention PG&E and legal, legislative or regulatory actions regarding the San Bruno explosion, as well as other matters.

That CFPPC investigation led to a $32,000 fine against Kennedy in February for unreported lobbying for ride-sharing company Lyft and San Gabriel Valley Water Co., an investor-owned public water utility, but the CFPPC decision did not mention any communications with PG&E. (See Former CPUC Member Fined for Lobbying Violations.)

Kennedy was chief of staff for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, deputy chief of staff and cabinet secretary for former Gov. Gray Davis and previously communications director for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She is also founder of Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS), a prominent California energy storage company whose investors include Schwarzenegger.

TURN was successful in pressuring the CPUC to consider the emails submitted by PG&E in September separately from the agreement to be voted on this month, rather than lumping them together with the previous violations. But TURN spokeswoman Mindy Spatt told RTO Insider last week that the provisions could still be changed in PG&E’s favor before April 26. Still, she said the settlement “looks pretty good from our perspective.”

The CPUC said the settlement agreement “has, to a great extent, put an end to years of disputes … that has spanned at least nine separate proceedings following the San Bruno tragedy.”

Settlement Mentions Ferron, Florio, Peevey

The new settlement document describes some of the ex parte communications at issue, including an email from PG&E consultant Jerry Hallisey to then-PG&E Vice President Brian Cherry in September 2011. The email described a meeting with then-CPUC Commissioner Mark Ferron to discuss support for a gas pipeline project and cost-splitting between shareholders and ratepayers. Ferron served on the CPUC from 2011 to 2014 and is now a member of the CAISO Board of Governors.

Also listed is a November 2011 email from Hallisey to Cherry and others that described meetings with former CPUC Commissioner Mike Florio, now a private consultant, regarding cost recovery and pipelines.

It also lists an email from Kennedy to Cherry that summarized a meeting with former CPUC Chair Michael Peevey and Kennedy regarding “an independent forensics analysis.” A Jan. 1, 2013, email from Cherry to PG&E Senior Vice President Thomas Bottorff described Cherry’s meeting with Peevey regarding gas settlement mediation and return on equity changes, among other exchanges.

In a separate matter, Peevey’s unreported ex parte communications with Southern California Edison during negotiations of the San Onofre nuclear plant closure led to a reworking of the $4.7 billion deal. (See CPUC Orders Renegotiation of San Onofre Settlement.) Peevey resigned from the CPUC at the end of 2014.