Politics

Suit Against California's Public Utilities Commisioners To Be Heard In San Diego

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published March 14, 2013 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 11 years ago.

A Superior Court Judge will consider a suit that claims community stakeholders are being excluded from a private meeting with five Public Utilities Commissioners in San Diego.

Attorney Maria Severson, who filed the suit on behalf of public advocates, said the commissioners plan to meet with elected officials in La Jolla the day before their publicly noticed meeting in San Diego.

"The PUC is essentially acting like a bouncer at a night club where it is picking and choosing who gets to go into the club,” Severson said. "It is disinviting and preventing people whose message it apparently does not want to hear from coming in the doors.”

Become a KPBS sponsor

The CPUC said the meeting is one of a series being held around the state, which are always followed by a publicly noticed meeting open to everyone. The meeting will be organized so no more than two of the commissioners meet with invited stakeholders at any one time, but stakeholders circulate so all commissioners have an opportunity to meet all those invited.

Among the issues to be discussed at the public meeting is a controversial vote to build two so-called "peaker” power plants in San Diego, Quail Brush and Pio Pico.

The agenda of the publicly noticed meeting on March 21 does not include the question of whether rate payers should continue to pay for the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which has been off line since January 2012.

A CPUC hearing on that question is promised in San Diego at a later date.

Tags

Politics Energy

Alison St John

twitter

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.