Critics on Tuesday denounced Pacific Gas and Electric’s $55 million settlement with prosecutors over two massively destructive fires, comparing it unfavorably to the $51 million compensation package that PG&E CEO Patti Poppe received in 2021 and the utility’s sharply rising electric rates for residential customers.

While “Poppe was raking in the money” last year, the company’s equipment started the second largest wildfire in state history, the nearly 1-million-acre Dixie Fire, which PG&E said could cost it $1.15 billion, “much of it from homes and entire communities burned to the ground,” the Environmental Working Group, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, said in a statement.

PG&E’s rates have risen 19% for average residential customers since Jan. 1, and the utility has asked the California Public Utilities Commission for 23% in cumulative rate hikes over the next four years. (See PG&E Rate Request Prompts Protests.)

“PG&E’s customers may not know how high their monthly gas and electric bills may go this year, how they’ll pay them, or exactly how much of California the company will burn to the ground in 2022,” Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook, a California resident, said in the statement. “But when they learn that the head of PG&E earned $51 million last year, they will know this: PG&E is out of touch and out of control.”

On Monday, PG&E (NYSE:PCG) and the Sonoma County District Attorney issued separate statements saying they had agreed to settle their dispute over the October 2019 Kincade Fire, which burned down large swaths of Sonoma County wine country and hundreds of homes and commercial structures. A broken jumper cable on a PG&E transmission tower sparked the blaze, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) determined.

The $20 million settlement with Sonoma County dismisses the numerous criminal charges that prosecutors had filed against PG&E and requires it to submit to an independent monitor and to create 80 new wildfire safety jobs in Sonoma County, District Attorney Jill Ravitch said in a statement defending the agreement.

“Although criminal charges are dismissed, the level of punishment and oversight provided by this judgment is greater than could be achieved against a corporation in criminal court,” Ravitch said. “For the next five years, PG&E’s operations in Sonoma County will be closely scrutinized. Furthermore, the costs of this oversight, as well as other payments under this judgment, will not be passed on to ratepayers.”

Trust but Verify?

In a separate settlement Monday, PG&E said it had signed a $35 million stipulated judgement with the district attorneys of Plumas, Lassen, Tehama, Shasta and Butte Counties to resolve “any potential criminal prosecution” of the utility in connection with last year’s Dixie Fire, which burned through all five counties over three months.

That settlement also subjects PG&E to an independent safety monitor for five years and requires the utility to hire 80 new fire safety workers across the five counties.

None of the total $55 million in settlement proceeds will be recoverable from ratepayers, PG&E said in an April 8 report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The CPUC fined PG&E $125 million for the Dixie Fire in December. (See CPUC Assesses PG&E $125M for Kincade Fire.)

In its 2022 proxy statement submitted April 7 to the SEC, PG&E said Poppe’s total 2021 compensation of $51.2 million last year included her base pay of $1.35 million, a $6.6 million bonus and more than $41 million in stock, based partly on meeting operational performance and safety metrics.

“We are committed to doing our part, and we look forward to a long partnership with these communities [damaged by wildfires] to make it right and make it safe,” Poppe said in Monday’s news release.  “We respect the leadership of the local DAs, welcome the new level of transparency and accountability afforded by these agreements, and look forward to working together for the benefit of the communities we collectively serve.”

Plumas County District Attorney David Hollister said in PG&E’s statement that the utility’s “new leadership team has demonstrated they are committed to change and will continue to work towards earning our trust. I appreciate this commitment and, to paraphrase the 40th President of the United States [Ronald Reagan], look forward to verifying these efforts as provided by today’s agreement.”

Others were not as enthused, including some who lost family members, homes and businesses in the catastrophic fires that PG&E equipment caused in 2015 and in each of the past five years. The fires included the November 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 84 people and leveled the town of Paradise.

PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of arson in that case while it was serving five years of federal probation stemming from the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline disaster.

During its probation, PG&E started at least 31 wildfires, killed 113 people, destroyed nearly 24,000 structures and burned approximately 1.5 million acres, federal Judge William Alsup, of the U.S. District Court for Northern California, wrote in his final comments before reluctantly releasing PG&E from court supervision in January. (See PG&E Ends Probation as a ‘Menace to California,’ Judge Says.)

Survivors lamented the dropping of criminal charges and the settlement amounts, which they said were too low to deter PG&E from starting future fires.

In a statement by Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign, a coalition of 75 groups “fighting to hold PG&E accountable,” Mary Kay Benson, a survivor of the 2015 Butte Fire, asked what that would take.

“How many more burned-down towns, more lives upended, more burned lungs do we need to see until we get justice?” Benson said. “For the millionaire executives at murderous PG&E, the money in this settlement is a rounding error and is an appalling way to mistreat the families, farmworkers, forests and lives damaged by this monstrous company.”