Edison told the government that Calderon was an ‘executive.' Now it claims she wasn't.
Southern California Edison has repeatedly insisted that its former government affairs manager, state Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), was never an executive with the company.
But that's not what Edison told the federal government.
Calderon is sponsoring legislation favored by Edison that would slash the credits that many homeowners receive for generating electricity with rooftop solar panels.
Edison has objected to The Times' identifying Calderon as a former executive for the utility, claiming on its website that the news organization is 'choosing sensationalism over facts.'
But in its official reports to the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Edison International — the utility's parent company — listed Calderon's occupation as an executive in more than a dozen filings made before she left the company in 2020 to run for office.
All the filings were signed by the PAC's treasurer saying that 'to the best of my knowledge and belief' the information 'is true, correct and complete.'
Asked to explain the contradiction, Edison spokeswoman Kathleen Dunleavy said that the company was referring in its filings with the commission to a broad class of individuals that met requirements for executive as defined by the commission, but not by Edison itself.
Edison uses the term to 'designate someone in a high position of authority,' she said, such as 'an employee director, vice president or similar title.' Because Edison didn't consider Calderon an executive, she said, others shouldn't either.
Calderon told The Times earlier that she was a senior advisor of government affairs at Edison International. In other biographies, she is described as government affairs director. On Monday, she said her official title was government affairs manager.
For years, she managed the parent company's political action committee.
In a statement, Calderon said she had not filled out the political action committee's reports. Instead they were prepared and filed by the company's law firm, she said.
'Due to her professional responsibilities, she was categorized as an executive for FEC filing purposes,' her office said. 'That does not mean that she was an executive at Edison.'
Calderon's AB 942 would sharply reduce the financial credits that the owners of rooftop panels receive when they send unused power to the grid.
The bill applies to those who installed the panels before April 15, 2023. It would limit the current program's benefits to 10 years — half of the 20-year period that the state had told the rooftop owners they would receive. The bill also would cancel the solar contracts if the homes were sold. It wouldn't apply to customers served by municipal electric utilities.
Edison and the state's other big for-profit utilities have long fought to reduce the energy credits aimed at getting Californians to invest in rooftop solar panels. The popularity of the systems has cut into electricity sales.
Calderon, Edison and other supporters of the bill point to an analysis by the California Public Utility Commission's Public Advocates Office that found the energy credits given to the rooftop owners were increasing the electric bills of those who don't have solar panels.
The bill's first hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Edison has been under scrutiny since Jan. 7, when videos captured the devastating Eaton wildfire igniting under one of its transmission towers. The wildfire killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses and other structures in Altadena.
Edison says it is cooperating with investigators working to determine the cause of the inferno.
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How the federal immigration raids could disrupt California's economy
President Trump promised a new "golden age" for America, but it's been anything but that for Los Angeles, with its dependence on trade and immigrant labor - two backbones of the region's economy. First, the president's tariffs cut deeply into traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and now his push to arrest undocumented immigrants at work sites, which has spurred massive protests after Trump deployed the National Guard, threatens a one-two punch to a region just starting its recovery from January's firestorms. "The reality is that the U.S. economy is largely today dependent upon foreign born labor - and in California more so," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. "For the country as a whole, we're getting towards 1 out of 5 jobs being filled currently by somebody who was born abroad. In California, it's more like 1 in 3." The crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California that have become increasingly dependent on immigrants, here legally or not, economists say. The surge in international migration in the last two decades - both by legal and undocumented workers - has been key to the growth of California's economy. A number of industries such as construction, leisure and hospitality, health care and agriculture rely heavily on immigrant workers. Foreign-born Californians account for one-third of all workers at restaurants and warehouses; about 40% in home healthcare and child day care; almost 50% at trucking and lodging businesses; and 60% at services for landscaping and cleaning buildings, according to a Times analysis of 2022 Census Bureau data. 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Yahoo
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Environment, social justice groups withdraw support for governor's key groundwater protection bill
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Since 1989, three critical groundwater management areas have been identified in Oregon. They are all still considered to be in critical condition due to nitrate contamination, almost entirely from agricultural fertilizers and animal manure, and none have seen vast improvement in the last two to three decades. Groups heavily involved in addressing water contamination issues in northeast Oregon — including the nonprofits Oregon Rural Action, Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch of Oregon, Columbia Riverkeeper, and Friends of Family Farmers — consulted with Kotek's environmental advisers on the bill and offered testimony supporting it in recent months. But in advance of a public hearing and vote on Monday in the Senate Committee on Rules, the groups released a statement saying they could no longer support it. They wrote that a proposed 39-page amendment posted late Friday at the request of state Sen. 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'Governor Kotek showed great initiative in putting this bill forward to learn the lessons of the LUBGWMA (Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area) in eastern Oregon, but this legislation doesn't go far enough to put those lessons into practice,' she wrote. 'Polluters continue to get whatever they want, while the communities directly impacted by pollution are denied what they need and have been asking for – to enforce the law and stop the Pollution.' The Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, designated as critically impaired in 1990, has gotten worse under state supervision. A volunteer committee established in 1997 to tackle problems has had little to no impact. Thousands of residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties — mostly Latino and low-income — have been drinking from contaminated wells, which is dangerous because nitrates consumed over long periods can increase risks for cancer and birth defects. In September, Kotek and state agency officials released a comprehensive plan for curbing nitrate pollution in northeast Oregon that 'will take decades' to achieve. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Legislators advocate for bill banning ghost guns, untraceable firearms
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a federal firearm regulation aimed at reining in ghost guns, untraceable, unregulated weapons made from kits. In this photo, a ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House April 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by) Lawmakers and community members held a press conference Tuesday morning to back legislation prohibiting ghost guns and other untraceable weapons. Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake) organized the event to garner support for Senate Bill 409: 'Ban Ghost Guns & Undetectable Firearms.' This measure would prohibit the sale and possession of ghost guns, which are firearms without a unique serial number. Undetectable firearms can be purchased in separate components and assembled at home, or manufactured through a 3D printing process. Chaudhuri filed the bill in March, when it was initially introduced to the legislature and assigned to the Senate Rules Committee. The bill has not moved since then. 'At the time when the General Assembly is set on passing permitless concealed carry bills… we're ringing the alarm bell about the need to address a real 21st century firearms threat: ghost guns,' Chaudhuri said. Senate Bill 50, 'Freedom to Carry NC,' would remove the permit process for individuals to carry concealed firearms. This legislation will be heard in the House Rules Committee Tuesday afternoon. Sen. Val Applewhite (D-Cumberland) collaborated with Chaudhuri on SB 409. She emphasized that the measure is not about infringing on gun ownership. 'This is about untraceable, unserialized weapons, often assembled in basements or garages that are increasingly finding their way into the hands of people with no intention of using them responsibly,' Applewhite said. 'These are weapons with no paper trail, no accountability, and no way for law enforcement to do their jobs effectively.' Courtney Banks-McLaughlin, a Fayetteville city council member and appointed member of the governor's crime commission, spoke at the conference as a grieving parent. Banks-McLaughlin lost her 15-year-old daughter, Coryonna Treasure Young, to a ghost gun. This week, Young would've graduated high school with her peers with her family cheering her on, Banks-McLaughlin said. She had dreams of joining the Air Force and becoming a pilot. 'No parent should have to stand right where I'm standing, no community should have to grieve a child who has a name that will never be called again at a dinner table,' Banks-McLaughlin said.
