GSM Investigation · Energy · Santa Clarita
In the Name of Safety
SoCalGas wants $485 million more from you.
Edison already took the biggest base-rate increase in its history.
Every request wears the same badge — safety.
Follow the money, and the badge starts to look a lot like a price tag.
Scan for reporter profile
By
Investigative Reporter · Good Shepherd Media
Business Fraud • Misuse of Land • Zoning Violations • City Responses to Local Issues
Santa Clarita, CA · October 29, 2026
Your one chance to speak to the judge in person
Monday, November 9, 2026 — 2:00 p.m. or 6:00 p.m.
El Monte City Hall East, Council Chambers, 11333 Valley Blvd., El Monte, CA 91731. CPUC Public Participation Hearing on the SoCalGas rate increase, Proceeding A.26-06-014. No reservation needed — sign up at the Public Advisor’s table when you arrive.
Can’t drive to El Monte? Speak by phone December 9 or 10, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. or 6:00 p.m.: call 1-800-857-1917, passcode 1673482#. Full instructions at the end of this article.
The email landed on October 28 with a friendly blue headline: “Share Your Thoughts at a Public Participation Hearing.” Underneath was the bill.
Southern California Gas Company is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $485 million more in revenue — a 10.5 percent increase — and for an automatic formula that would raise its revenues another 5.5 to 6.2 percent every year from 2029 through 2031. The very first reason SoCalGas gives, before modernization, before compliance, before technology and insurance, is this: to “enhance safety.”
That word has become the most expensive word in California. It is printed on your gas notice. It is the CPUC’s own explanation for why your Edison bill has doubled. It is the reason your lights get shut off on windy days, and the reason you will keep paying a line item on your electric bill for a wildfire fund until 2045. Nobody is against safety. That is exactly what makes it the perfect word to put on an invoice.
Good Shepherd Media went through the rate filings, the CPUC decisions, the Public Advocates Office reports and Edison International’s own investor and SEC filings. The record does not show that safety is fake. People died in the Eaton Fire, and we say so below. What the record shows is something the utilities would rather you not think about: in California’s utility system, safety is not just a cost. It is a profit center.
How a utility makes money on “safety”
A regulated utility is not paid for selling you gas or electricity the way a store is paid for selling you groceries. It is paid a guaranteed rate of return on the money it invests in pipes, poles, wires, meters and buildings. Regulators call that pile of investment the “rate base.” The bigger the rate base, the bigger the profit — for decades, because customers pay it back with interest over the life of the equipment.
That turns the usual incentive upside down. A normal business tries to spend less. A utility earns more when it spends more on capital — and the easiest capital project to get approved is one labeled “safety,” because no regulator wants to be the one who said no before the next fire or the next pipeline explosion.
The CPUC sets those returns. For 2026 it authorized Southern California Edison a 10.03 percent return on equity on a capital structure that is 52 percent equity (Decision D.25-12-043, December 18, 2025). Edison had asked for 11.75 percent. SoCalGas was authorized 9.78 percent. Remember those numbers; every “safety” dollar that goes into the rate base earns them.
Safety is the justification. Rate base is the business model.
The SoCalGas rate increase: back for more, again
This is not SoCalGas’s first trip to the well. In December 2024 the CPUC decided the company’s last rate case and set its 2024 revenue at $3.806 billion — $324 million, or 9.3 percent, more than 2023, with further increases built in through 2027. SoCalGas had asked for $4.434 billion. The CPUC’s own press release announcing the decision said the money was to operate the system “safely and reliably.” Customers started seeing those higher rates on February 1, 2025, retroactive to January 1, 2024.
Now, less than two years later, the new request (filed June 15, 2026):
- $485 million more, a 10.5 percent increase, which SoCalGas’s notice describes as covering 2027–2028; the rate-case filing asks for it to take effect January 1, 2028.
- An automatic 5.5 to 6.2 percent increase every year from 2029 through 2031. Compounded, that is roughly 17 to 20 percent more by 2031 on top of the 10.5 percent — without SoCalGas having to come back and justify each year line by line.
- SoCalGas estimates the average residential customer using 35 therms a month would pay about $5.67 more per month. That figure is the delivery and system portion only. It does not include the price of the gas itself, which SoCalGas passes through separately and which spikes in winter, when Santa Clarita families actually use the heat.
- Intervening parties in the case have calculated that the request is roughly 34 percent above 2024 authorized levels. Eleven parties filed protests.
- Running alongside it is a separate SoCalGas application (A.25-12-019) to replace its advanced gas meters for about $3.76 billion. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office has asked that the meter project be folded into the rate case, so customers can see the whole price at once instead of in pieces.
- At the same time, SoCalGas has proposed closing all 43 of its remaining customer branch offices (A.25-05-001) and pointing customers to third-party payment locations. Less service, higher bill.
Look at SoCalGas’s own list of reasons again: “enhance safety, modernize and maintain the natural gas system, meet compliance requirements driven by government regulations, improve technology, and address rising costs like insurance.” Some of that is real, required work. But “modernize,” “improve technology” and “address rising costs like insurance” are not safety. They are ordinary business costs and capital choices — the kind of costs that, in any other business, come out of the owner’s pocket before they come out of the customer’s. SoCalGas is owned by Sempra, a publicly traded company that answers to shareholders.
The fair question for the judge on November 9 is simple: of the $485 million, how much is work the law actually requires, and how much is discretionary spending that happens to earn shareholders 9.78 percent? SoCalGas should have to answer that line by line.
Edison: the template
If you want to see where SoCalGas’s path leads, look at your electric bill. Santa Clarita is Southern California Edison territory, and Edison has been running the “safety” play for a decade.
On October 1, 2025, Edison raised its average residential rate from 31.2 cents to 35.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. The typical residential bill went from $171.17 to $193.23 a month — $22.06 more, a 12.9 percent jump in one day, according to Edison’s own rate advisory. Compilations of Public Advocates Office data put Edison’s average residential rate up roughly 101 percent since January 2016.
Why? You do not have to take our word for it. The CPUC’s own September 30, 2025 report to the Legislature on electric rates (the SB 695 report) states that the largest contributors to rising electricity rates are wildfire-related costs, and forecasts Edison’s residential rates rising about 7 percent a year through 2028 — faster than PG&E or San Diego Gas & Electric. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office counts Edison’s 2026 wildfire-related revenue requirement at $2.69 billion, 14 percent of everything Edison collects, up from 9 percent in January 2023.
Then came Edison’s 2025 rate case. In Decision D.25-09-030 (September 18, 2025), the CPUC set Edison’s 2025 base revenue at $9.664 billion — $1.082 billion, or 12.6 percent, more than 2024, with more increases locked in for 2026, 2027 and 2028. Over four years, about $41.8 billion. The CPUC announced the decision as a win for affordability because it cut $4.39 billion from what Edison asked for. It was still the largest base-rate increase in Edison’s history.
The seven-to-one choice
Here is the clearest window into how the incentive works. Edison has two main ways to harden power lines against fire: covered conductor (insulated wire on the existing poles) and undergrounding (burying the lines). In its rate case, Edison asked for $4.232 billion to underground 580 miles of line and install 1,250 miles of covered conductor. The CPUC’s own fact sheet on the final decision shows what it approved instead:
Cost per mile, Edison 2025 rate case (CPUC-approved budgets)
Undergrounding: $941 million ÷ 177 miles = about $5.3 million per mile
Covered conductor: $1.272 billion ÷ 1,653 miles = about $0.77 million per mile
Source: CPUC Decision Fact Sheet, SCE 2025 General Rate Case, A.23-05-010 (Sept. 18, 2025). Per-mile figures calculated by GSM.
Burying a mile of line cost roughly seven times as much as covering it. The Utility Reform Network (TURN), the ratepayer watchdog, told the CPUC in testimony that Edison’s own risk modeling identified covered conductor as by far the most cost-effective way to harden the grid. Edison’s own chief executive told investors in July 2025 that the CPUC’s proposed decision found covered conductor highly effective against wildfire.
So why did Edison ask for 580 miles of the expensive option? Because under the rules, both options go into the rate base and both earn the same 10.03 percent. The more expensive the safety, the more the shareholders earn. The CPUC cut Edison back to 177 miles — but the request itself tells you which way the incentive pulls. Edison now has a separate 10-year undergrounding plan pending before the CPUC (A.26-02-005).
Meanwhile, at Edison International
While Santa Clarita customers absorbed a 12.9 percent overnight increase, here is how the parent company did, from its own filings:
- Rate base: Edison projects Southern California Edison’s rate base will grow from $47.6 billion in 2025 to $67.9 billion in 2030 — about $20 billion more for shareholders to earn on — on a $38 to $41 billion five-year capital plan.
- Earnings: core earnings per share rose from $4.76 in 2023 to $4.93 in 2024 to $6.55 in 2025 — up about 38 percent in two years, in the same year as the Eaton Fire.
- Dividend: raised for the 22nd straight year, to $3.51 a share for 2026, up from $2.55 in 2020.
- Executive pay: Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro’s total reported compensation was $14.9 million in 2023, $13.8 million in 2024, and about $16.5 million in 2025 — roughly 20 percent more, and about 75 times the pay of the company’s median employee, according to Edison’s 2026 proxy statement. In fairness, the board cut his 2025 cash bonus by about 40 percent because of the Eaton Fire. His total pay still went up, because most of it is tied to financial performance, not safety.
You are also their insurance company
In 2019, after PG&E’s Camp Fire, the Legislature passed AB 1054 and created a $21 billion state Wildfire Fund to pay fire victims when a utility’s equipment starts a catastrophe. Much of it is paid for by a non-bypassable charge on your electric bill. In September 2025, SB 254 added an $18 billion “continuation account.” Half of it, $9 billion, comes from ratepayers, by extending that bill charge from 2036 to 2045. Utility shareholders put up the other half.
To be fair, SB 254 also did something important: it bars utilities from earning a shareholder return on the first $6 billion of new wildfire-mitigation capital. That is the Legislature itself admitting that the profit incentive on “safety” spending is real.
Then the Eaton Fire. It ignited January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon, killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes in Altadena. Edison has told the SEC that a “viable explanation” is its own idle transmission equipment; it has not conceded the cause, and the official cause has not been publicly determined. The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County have both sued. And in April 2026, according to Utility Dive, the CPUC granted Edison’s request to collect an additional $274 million to $650 million from customers this year to cover Eaton Fire costs. Customers fund Edison’s self-insurance first; the Wildfire Fund, which customers also fund, comes after.
Ask yourself who carries the risk in that arrangement. It is not the shareholders who collect the 10.03 percent.
When “safety” means sitting in the dark
Canyon Country, Sand Canyon, Bouquet Canyon, Agua Dulce and Castaic know Edison’s other safety product: the Public Safety Power Shutoff. In January 2025, customers “from Piru to Sand Canyon” were left without power for days. In October 2026, Edison warned about 259,194 customers that they could be shut off, many in the Santa Clarita Valley — and then admitted it had sent shutoff alerts to some Santa Clarita Valley residents by mistake.
When the power is cut for safety, the spoiled food, the lost medicine, the closed small business and the generator fuel are generally yours to pay for. Edison does not publish shutoff counts for Santa Clarita, and has declined to give local figures to the press. On October 19, 2026, Rep. George Whitesides introduced H.R. 10854, the Public Safety Power Shutoff Data Transparency Act, to require that kind of reporting.
A charge for simply being a customer
Since November 2025, almost every Edison household that is not enrolled in a low-income program pays a $24.15 monthly Base Services Charge whether it uses a lot of power or almost none. Usage rates were trimmed in exchange. For a retiree in a small home who conserves, that is a bill increase dressed up as reform.
The result shows up in the arrears. The Public Advocates Office reports that 812,073 Edison customers — 17 percent — were behind on their bills in early 2026, owing an average of $833.
The watchdog found no invoices
When someone actually checks the receipts, the “safety” label does not always hold. In a pending Edison application (A.25-12-002), the company is asking for $62.2 million in extra 2024 wildfire-mitigation capital beyond what its rate case already funded. The CPUC’s own Public Advocates Office recommended approving only $13.2 million of it, and found that for some “professional and administrative support costs” charged to wildfire mitigation, Edison offered “no invoices, no unit quantities.”
No invoices. For money labeled safety. That is what happens when the word does the work that documentation is supposed to do.
Our corrupt independent and democratic government leaders are allowing these energy companies to rape our pockets till their dry! and we will still have the fires and all that their safety claim lies are supposed to address!
At the pump: same playbook, different label
Gasoline is not regulated by the CPUC, and the justification there is usually roads and climate rather than safety — but the playbook is the same: a noble purpose, an automatic escalator, and no vote when it rises.
- California’s gasoline excise tax rose from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents a gallon on July 1, 2026 (CDTFA), and it is indexed to rise again every July automatically.
- With other state fees, California’s state taxes and fees on gasoline total roughly 73.6 cents a gallon, the highest in the nation, before federal tax and sales tax.
- California’s average price was $6.003 a gallon in the week of September 21, 2026 — $1.53 above the national average (EIA).
- The chair of the California Air Resources Board told a Senate committee in May 2026 that the state’s cap-and-invest program “does have a gasoline cost pass through.”
In fairness, economists at UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas found that the recent Los Angeles and Benicia refinery closures raised the local wholesale premium only about 4 cents a gallon, and argue that California’s gap is driven mostly by a concentrated, isolated refining market. Taxes and fees are not the whole story. But they are the part that is chosen by government and guaranteed to rise.
What the utilities will say — and what is true about it
Good Shepherd Media holds itself to the same standard it asks of the utilities, so here is the other side:
- The fires are real. The Camp Fire killed 85 people. The Eaton Fire killed 19. Power lines in high winds start fires, and hardening the grid saves lives. Nobody serious argues for doing nothing.
- Regulators did cut requests. The CPUC cut $4.39 billion from Edison’s rate case, cut its requested return from 11.75 to 10.03 percent, and trimmed undergrounding from 580 miles to 177. It cut $628.7 million from SoCalGas’s last request.
- Covered conductor works. Edison has installed thousands of miles of it, and state regulators credit it with reducing ignitions.
- Credit matters. If utilities could not borrow, their borrowing costs — also paid by customers — would rise. That is the stated reason for the Wildfire Fund.
All true. And none of it answers the central question: why is the system built so that the people who decide how much “safety” to buy are the same people who profit when it costs more? Ratepayer advocates like TURN and the Public Advocates Office generally do not fight safety itself. They fight the mix, the markup, the guaranteed return and the missing receipts. So should you.
Five questions to put on the record
- Itemize it. Of SoCalGas’s $485 million, how much is work the law actually requires, and how much is discretionary capital that earns a 9.78 percent return?
- No autopilot. Why should SoCalGas get an automatic 5.5 to 6.2 percent raise every year from 2029 to 2031 without proving each year’s need?
- Show the whole bill. Will the CPUC put the $3.76 billion meter replacement in front of ratepayers alongside the rate case, so the total cost is visible at once?
- Who pays for insurance? If insurance premiums are rising because of the utility’s own risk, why should customers carry all of it while shareholders carry none?
- Cheapest safe option first. Will the CPUC require every “safety” project — gas or electric — to prove it is the lowest-cost way to reduce the risk, with invoices, before it goes into the rate base?
How to be heard
In person — Monday, November 9, 2026, 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
El Monte City Hall East, Council Chambers, 11333 Valley Blvd., El Monte, CA 91731. Arrive 15 minutes early and sign up at the Public Advisor’s table to speak. Bring two printed copies of your remarks (one for the judge, one for the court reporter). Signs must be no bigger than 8.5 by 11 inches and may not be on sticks.
By phone — December 9 and 10, 2026, 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Call 1-800-857-1917, passcode 1673482#. Watch live at adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc.
In writing — takes two minutes, any time before the record closes
The CPUC’s comment form for this case opens on its own site. Click the button, choose the “Public Comment” tab, type your comment, and submit. You will see “Your public comment has been successfully submitted.” Always reference A.26-06-014.
On your phone? Scan to comment
Questions about participating, or need an interpreter or accommodation (at least five days ahead): CPUC Public Advisor’s Office, 1-866-849-8390, 505 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102, or by email:
Questions for SoCalGas about the request: 1-800-427-2200, 8326 Century Park Ct., M/S CP 31E, San Diego, CA 92123, or by email:
Where the votes actually happen: CPUC voting meetings on November 19 and December 3 (Sacramento) and December 17 (San Francisco), 2026, each at 11:00 a.m., take public comment by phone at (800) 857-1917; check the meeting page on cpuc.ca.gov for that day’s passcode. Agendas post about ten days ahead.
The hearing notice says the judge wants to hear “your thoughts.” Here is one worth repeating in El Monte: we will pay for safety. We will not keep paying a guaranteed profit on every dollar that gets called safety. The utilities have lawyers, economists and lobbyists in that room every day. The only people missing are the ones paying the bill.
Sources. SoCalGas hearing notice for A.26-06-014 (email, Oct. 28, 2026); CPUC Docket Card A.26-06-014; SoCalGas General Rate Case page; CPUC press release on the 2024 Sempra rate case (Dec. 19, 2024); SoCalGas rate advisory; CalRegulatory on the 2028 rate case protests; SoCalGas meter replacement application A.25-12-019; SCE rate advisory, Oct. 1, 2025; CPUC 2025 SB 695 report; CPUC fact sheet, SCE 2025 rate case decision; CPUC cost of capital fact sheet; TURN wildfire grid-hardening testimony, A.23-05-010; Edison International Q4 2025 results presentation; Edison dividend release; Edison 2026 proxy statement; Edison 2025 proxy statement; Nossaman on SB 254; Utility Dive on Eaton Fire costs; CalMatters on the federal Eaton Fire lawsuit; Public Advocates Office testimony, A.25-12-002; The Signal on October 2026 shutoff warnings; The Signal on erroneous shutoff notices; CDTFA gasoline excise tax notice L-1025; Energy Institute at Haas, Oct. 26, 2026; CPUC public participation hearings.
Good Shepherd Media · goodshepherdmedia.net · Santa Clarita, California
The public record · A.26-06-014
What 86 ratepayers told the CPUC
Good Shepherd Media read every public comment filed on SoCalGas’s rate case as of 2:00 a.m. on October 29, 2026. Not one supported the increase.
What they said, in their own terms
“I dont get a 10 percent increase in wages every year.”
— A ratepayer from Perris, in a public comment to the CPUC
Every comment, in brief — all 86 (tap to open)
Newest first. Each line is Good Shepherd Media’s own one-sentence summary of what the commenter said; names are left off. Read the full signed comments on the CPUC docket.
| Date | City | What they told the CPUC |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 29 | Santa Clarita | Five matching comments: itemize the $485 million, reject the automatic increases through 2031, review the $3.76 billion meter plan alongside this case, and make shareholders share insurance costs. |
| Oct 29 | Lake Forest | Calls it a multi-year increase in disguise; wants hikes capped at federal inflation and executive pay examined. |
| Oct 29 | Ontario | Says some seniors on Social Security are near homelessness; executives should try living on that income. |
| Oct 28 | Nipomo | A one-word no. |
| Oct 28 | Anaheim | An 11-point objection: about 30% more over four years, unexplained past increases, executive pay, meter costs and falling gas demand. |
| Oct 28 | Perris | A working parent says this takes food from the children; wages don’t rise 10% a year. |
| Oct 28 | La Quinta | Doesn’t trust where the money goes and fears it ends up as executive pay. |
| Oct 28 | Irvine | Says revenue would rise about 30% by 2031; SoCalGas should prove the projects can’t be paid from existing profits. |
| Oct 28 | Temecula | Says capital investment isn’t the public’s job when the parent company earns billions a year. |
| Oct 28 | Pasadena | Asks what happened to the money from the 2024 increase and wants a full accounting first. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Fed up with prices rising everywhere except paychecks. |
| Oct 28 | Riverside | Formal letter opposing approval unless costs are independently checked and proven affordable. |
| Oct 28 | Redlands | Says their bill is already up about a quarter in recent years; shareholders or the state should pay for upgrades. |
| Oct 28 | Lake Elsinore | Points to multimillion-dollar executive pay at Sempra and SoCalGas. |
| Oct 28 | Torrance | Tells the utility to spend its money more efficiently before raising rates. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Calls the request greedy while millions struggle; wants rates lowered instead. |
| Oct 28 | Aliso Viejo | Says improvements should be paid from executive salaries and bonuses, not customers. |
| Oct 28 | Simi Valley | Calls the increase inflated on top of past hikes; asks who else gets a 10.5% raise. |
| Oct 28 | Upland | Says meeting state requirements is the company’s own cost of doing business. |
| Oct 28 | Rowland Heights | Calls the increase excessive while residents already conserve. |
| Oct 28 | Lancaster | Suggests a public takeover if the utility can’t maintain its system without more money. |
| Oct 28 | Los Osos | Sees a request for higher profits that customers can’t afford. |
| Oct 28 | Sylmar | A very low gas user notes customers face rising insurance too, and no one raises their income 6%. |
| Oct 28 | Cypress | Asks the company to cut its own expenses first; the increase is far above inflation. |
| Oct 28 | Encino | Says even a few dollars a month adds up for households squeezed by housing, food and insurance. |
| Oct 28 | Santa Ana | Says repeated hikes above inflation should be capped, the way rents are. |
| Oct 28 | Downey | Lists several 2025–2026 rate increases already; cites $6.29 billion in 2025 revenue. |
| Oct 28 | Colton | Says 35 therms barely covers a one-bedroom; increases should track Social Security raises. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Asks the CPUC to test the cost forecasts through 2031 and hold the return on equity down. |
| Oct 28 | Murrieta | Formal letter objecting to the full request and the automatic increases. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Says residents are already crushed by housing, electricity and grocery costs. |
| Oct 28 | San Juan Capistrano | Opposes both gas and electric hikes; household income doesn’t rise at that pace. |
| Oct 28 | Monrovia | Wants the state moving off gas, with SoCalGas shrinking rather than growing. |
| Oct 28 | Santa Monica | Says shareholder returns should come from efficiency, not customers, as gas use declines. |
| Oct 28 | San Pedro | Says new capital spending shouldn’t fall on ratepayers. |
| Oct 28 | Glendora | Notes winter use runs about double the 35-therm example, so the real increase is about twice as large. |
| Oct 28 | Rancho Palos Verdes | Can afford it but objects; says Sempra’s profit growth means it can borrow instead. |
| Oct 28 | Huntington Beach | A low-income CARE customer says delivery charges already run several times the cost of the gas. |
| Oct 28 | Glendora | Wants utilities held to the same inflation index used for Social Security. |
| Oct 28 | Rosamond | Says elderly people on fixed incomes just absorbed a big increase. |
| Oct 28 | Burbank | Says the company already makes enough money. |
| Oct 28 | Temecula | Suggests cutting the shareholder dividend to pay for upgrades. |
| Oct 28 | Fillmore | Living costs are up and salaries are flat; basic needs are hard to meet. |
| Oct 28 | Santa Clarita | Says the company should cut unnecessary spending instead of asking for more. |
| Oct 28 | Redlands | Notes the hike exceeds three years of inflation combined; rejects the inflation argument. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Says seniors, disabled people and low-income families will be hit hardest. |
| Oct 28 | Moreno Valley | Says the listed reasons are ordinary costs of running a utility. |
| Oct 28 | Rancho Santa Margarita | Asks whether the spending is the least costly option; notes the CPUC cut $629 million from the last request. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Wants executive pay and the guaranteed return on equity cut before any increase. |
| Oct 28 | Los Angeles | Opposes expanding gas infrastructure during a climate crisis. |
| Oct 28 | Los Alamitos | Points to about $9.7 million paid to six top executives; says they should absorb rising costs. |
| Oct 28 | Arroyo Grande | Wants increases capped at the roughly 3% Social Security raise. |
| Oct 28 | Northridge | Says customers shouldn’t pay for the 2015 Aliso Canyon leak. |
| Oct 28 | Cambria | A retiree on a fixed income says gas costs doubled while her income didn’t. |
| Oct 28 | Cathedral City | Says this had been the one utility not overcharging them — until now. |
| Oct 28 | Thousand Oaks | Says private investors, not customers, should fund infrastructure. |
| Oct 28 | Pasadena | A retired renter on Social Security in a drafty century-old bungalow dreads any hike. |
| Oct 28 | Van Nuys | Says CEO pay should be redirected to safety work. |
| Oct 28 | Visalia | Says service is the same or worse for more money; profits should pay for improvements. |
| Oct 28 | Glendale | Wants an accounting of how the 2024 increase was spent before another is approved. |
| Oct 28 | Arroyo Grande | Says utilities should be run as public services, not profit centers. |
| Oct 28 | Valencia | Wants prior increases accounted for first; notes about 31% growth by 2031. |
| Oct 26 | Temple City | Says wage growth lags far behind a double-digit hike. |
| Oct 24 | Costa Mesa | Says regulatory compliance is a cost of doing business; no one can predict inflation years ahead. |
| Oct 23 | Visalia | Opposes another increase. |
| Oct 20 | Visalia | Fed up with constant increases and distrusts the commission. |
| Oct 19 | Santa Maria | Says earlier increases should already have paid for this infrastructure. |
| Sep 11 | Redondo Beach | Feels comments are ignored and ratepayers have no leverage. |
| Sep 4 | Santa Maria | Opposes the increase. |
| Jul 28 | Temple City | Says customers can’t afford any more increases. |
| Jul 25 | Whittier | Asks why maintenance isn’t covered by existing revenue; faults the CPUC itself. |
| Jul 25 | Morro Bay | A 40-year resident says shareholders should carry more of the burden. |
| Jul 24 | San Diego | Says local rates are already the nation’s highest and families pay thousands more than under public power. (Filed twice.) |
| Jul 20 | Temecula | Questions locking in increases through 2031; asks whether unused money would be returned. |
| Jul 16 | Northridge | Says constant increases make the basics unaffordable. |
| Jul 8 | Redlands | Points to executives’ million-dollar salaries. |
| Jul 8 | Redlands | Calls for public ownership of utilities. |
| Jul 6 | Corona | Says families are already broke from inflation; over $1 billion through 2031 is unacceptable. |
| Jul 3 | Los Osos | Says SoCalGas is wealthy but unaccountable; many can’t afford heat in cold months. |
| Jul 2 | Exeter | A struggling nonprofit says a 10% hike is unaffordable. |
| Jun 29 | Simi Valley | Feels the CPUC rubber-stamps utility increases. |
Every comment is public and signed. Read them all yourself on the CPUC’s docket for this case — and add yours. The CPUC also offers the full list as a PDF download on the same page.
Read all comments →
Add your comment →
How we counted: Good Shepherd Media read all 86 comments posted on CPUC proceeding A.26-06-014 as of 2:00 a.m., October 29, 2026. Theme shares are approximate; many comments raise more than one point. The CPUC may post or remove comments after that time. Source: CPUC Docket Card, A.26-06-014, Public Comments tab.