Politics: No on Prop 16

Prop 16 provides that if a government (city or county level) wants to enter into the electricity business, a 2/3 vote of the affected populations would be needed to approve the plan.

In California, residents get their electricity through investor-owned utilities like PG&E (the major backer of this proposition), city owned utilities like DWP or electrical service providers which I believe are companies that buy electricity off the market from various generators and provide it for their customers.

Some city and county governments are looking into running their own versions of electrical service providers called community choice aggregations.

PG&E, the largest utility in California, recognizes that they could lose business to these government run entities and have placed this measure on the ballot to make it more difficult for such entities to be formed.

As a general rule, I prefer investor-owned companies because theoretically, even in highly regulated industries like electricity, they make their decisions on financial considerations and market forces yielding a price that matches the product while government run entities are subject to political pressures.

However, PG&E has hurt the positive case (giving the public the right to vote on government entry into the electric business) for this initiative by making the barrier so high (2/3 vote) and other restrictions that this goes beyond giving the people the right to vote to using the ballot box to defend their market share. PG&E should win more business by offering superior service at a good price not by stiff-arming competition at the ballot box.

No on Prop 16.