Public Power Now!

San Francisco--Brian Belknap joined about 50 protestors in a march down Mission Street today. He stated that, "this particular fight is disgusting. When they new this crisis was coming, PG&E (which now says its broke) siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars at the last minute into their parent company. Now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (in a back room deal) has said that's entirely legal and those assets that were sucked out of ratepayers and put into the parent company's pockets are immune from paying off PG&E's debt. Who has to pay it? We do. The ratepayers. I think there's never been a better case for public power and public owning of our utilities." (February 24, 2001)