{"id":24566,"date":"2026-06-17T13:01:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/17\/san-diego-city-council-endorses-10-state-bills-aimed-at-utility-profits-kpbs\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T13:01:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:01:44","slug":"san-diego-city-council-endorses-10-state-bills-aimed-at-utility-profits-kpbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/17\/san-diego-city-council-endorses-10-state-bills-aimed-at-utility-profits-kpbs\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego City Council endorses 10 state bills aimed at utility profits – KPBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday voted to endorse 10 bills in the state legislature aimed at lowering electricity rates and making investor-owned utilities more accountable to ratepayers.
Some of the bills include changes to the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities, directing the agency to put greater scrutiny on requests to increase rates.
One bill, SB 905<\/u><\/a>, seeks to limit the profits that investor-owned utilities make on wildfire mitigation. The bill would also tie executive pay to lowering rates and expand lower-cost public financing for energy infrastructure projects.
SDG&E did not have a registered position on SB 905, though the state’s other two investor-owned utilities oppose it. SDG&E opposes several of the other bills endorsed by the council.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who sponsored the council’s resolution in support of the bills, said investor-owned utilities are incentivized to put profits above all else.
“For years, I’ve heard from families across San Diego, especially in City Heights, Stockton and Mt. Hope, who are making impossible choices between keeping the lights on and putting food on the table,” Elo-Rivera said. “So this isn’t a political statement. It’s about dignity and economic survival.”
Council President Joe LaCava said that as the second-largest city in California, San Diego was sending a message to state lawmakers that they need to prioritize energy affordability.
“We are calling on Sacramento to take action to hold investor-owned utilities accountable, unlock clean energy savings for residents and end the cycle of infrastructure buildup on the backs of ratepayers,” LaCava.
SDG&E filed a request<\/u><\/a> to the CPUC on Monday to increase rates by more than 8% in 2028, attributing the change<\/u><\/a> to “required safety, compliance and infrastructure needs, as well as external factors such as insurance and health care.”
After the council’s vote on Tuesday, SDG&E spokesperson Anthony Wagner told KPBS in an email the utility is looking at \u201cremoving nonessential charges\u201d for customers.
\u201cWe share the goal of making energy more affordable for all Californians,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cSDG&E is focused on actions we can take today, including reducing our operating costs, removing nonessential charges from bills, and advancing longer-term solutions that improve affordability over time.\u201d
As the bills await final approval in Sacramento, San Diego is continuing its exploration of forming a public utility. The council is set to discuss a “phase II” public power feasibility study<\/u><\/a> next week.
The study seeks to take inventory of all the infrastructure San Diego would be required to purchase from SDG&E in order to form a municipal energy utility. An earlier feasibility study in 2023 found a public utility could offer lower rates<\/u><\/a> than SDG&E, though the utility disputed the study’s methodology and assumptions.<\/p>\n

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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday voted to endorse 10 bills in the state legislature aimed at lowering electricity rates and making investor-owned utilities more accountable to ratepayers.Some of the bills include changes to the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities, directing the agency to put greater scrutiny on requests to increase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}