P. G. AND E. UTILITY'S COSTLY DEFEAT
P. G. and E. Utility's Costly Defeat [FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWS] IN five successful attempts to defeat municipal distribution of Hetch Hetchy power in San Francisco the Pacific Gas & Electric...
...Its management may now reflect upon whether it has done either San Francisco or its own stockholders a favor by its costly resistance to the inevitable...
...P. G. and E. Utility's Costly Defeat [FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWS] IN five successful attempts to defeat municipal distribution of Hetch Hetchy power in San Francisco the Pacific Gas & Electric Co...
...What was accomplished by expenditure of large sums of money in elections could not be accomplished in the courts, of course, so today, after investing a princely fortune to keep San Francisco from distributing its own electric power, the P. G. & E. has lost the battle by court decree...
...spending over $59,000, more than twice as much as in any previous election...
...As it turned out the court ruled the other way, a decision the supreme court reversed last month...
...Money talks eloquently in elections, P. G. & E. money in these fights had about the same relative weight against the other side as the German total war columns had against the Hollanders...
...spent a total of $142,678 in real cash plus such indirect sums and services as it did not have to report to the state railroad commission...
...Herein lies a sufficient explanation of why public ownership has suffered repeated setbacks in this community...
...In the light of its experience, will the P. G. and E. invest more money in camnaigning to defeat municipal distribution or will it withdraw and let the issue be decided upon its merits...
...Meanwhile its rates have been forced down, partly by action of the railroad commission and partly by the threat of public ownership that has hung over it all these years...
...Consumers of electricity have not been without gain therefore even during the time the company was fighting so expensively against public ownership...
...Now it will have to retire from the field as a distributor, either by leasing or selling its system to the city...
...Possibly another power election will be coming up in the near future...
...Municipal ownership advocates were able to raise and spend only a meager fraction of that sum in their campaign to attain municipal distribution...
...It soemcd like a good time for a big push of that magnitude since the U. S. circuit court had the Raker act violation case under advisement and a decision unfavorable to the city (and the company) was possible...
...From this standpoint the people of San Francisco have secured some of the benefits of public ownership while the company was resisting it...
...In the last election, that of 1939, wherein the voters were asked to approve a 55-mil-lion-dollar bond issue for a distribution system and enlargement of the Hetch Hetchy generating plant, the private company laid itself out in a big way...
Vol. 10 • June 1940 • No. 25
