The puzzle pieces are starting to move, as a plan announced yesterday to reorganise utility regulation in California takes shape. Assembly constitutional amendment 11 was taken off the senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee’s agenda yesterday, and a second hearing, by the senate’s elections and constitutional amendments committee, was cancelled this morning.
ACA 11 would have put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot, asking voters whether they want to end the special, and largely independent, status granted to the California Public Utilities Commission. The author, assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles), was one of the three legislators that worked with governor Brown to develop a grand package of CPUC reforms. Gatto was reported to have said he would pull ACA 11 and it seems he has.