Legislature

Documents obtained by Capitol Watchdog reveal that Governor Jerry Brown is shopping cap and trade bill language directly from Big Oil's Power Point playbook to exempt refineries from air pollution regulation.

Brown has handed Big Oil a pen to rewrite the law so that it protects refiners from making deep cuts to climate-warming emissions. The legislation blocks powerful Air Districts in the Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin from setting tough limits on emissions, like requiring refineries to install pollution control equipment.

Four Democrats currently have the power to determine who really runs the state of California’s fossil fuel policies—policymakers or a major energy company named Sempra.

The litmus test: Whether these Democrats vote for SB 57, a bill authored by Henry Stern that requires the state and Sempra’s subsidiary Southern California Gas to reveal what caused the biggest methane well blowout in US history before the Aliso Canyon gas reserve is allowed to reopen.

This Thursday morning, the California Public Utilities Commission begins a day-long public hearing during which it will vote on a staff recommendation to withhold amd redact vital records on a $4.7 billion settlement that stuck ratepayers with most of the tab to shutter a defective nuclear power station called San Onofre. It may seem perfunctory. It's anything but. What is at stake is nothing less than government transparency so that Californians can judge whether government officials are doing their jobs by representing their interests.