Residents brace for higher bills if increase is OK’d

The Desert Sun

Warren Horton spent more than $7,000 installing a high-efficiency refrigerator and air conditioning system in his Cathedral City home, trying to drive down his electric bills as low as they could go.

Now he fears those bills could rise again if the California Public Utilities Commission approves a rate restructuring plan from Southern California Edison, which covers roughly the western half of the valley.

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Fierce Enterprise Communications
by: Chris Rizo

Industry-backed legislation that would bar California officials from regulating Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service in the Golden State drew opposition this week from lawyers at the California Public Utilities Commission.

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The Huffington Post
By Bonnie Kavoussi

State governments are losing out on much-needed tax revenue from rich online retailers, even as they’re forced to lay off teachers and policemen.

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San Francisco Chronicle
by: Andrew S. Ross

Losing end: That 9.8 percent figure the New York Times came up with in its highly publicized report on how little tax Apple pays has been disputed by the company. It’s the same figure Berkeley’s Greenlining Institute came up with in a survey of Fortune 500 high-tech companies released last week.

What is not open to dispute is the magic kingdom of tax havens that Apple lives in. Most telling in the Times report were the words of De Anza College President Brian Murphy, whose campus is a mile and a half from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

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A new study finds the number of bank and thrift offices has risen 8.4% since 2006 in areas with median incomes of $100,000 and up, but fallen 1% in areas with median incomes of less than $25,000.

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The Washington Post
By Hayley Tsukayama

A weekend story from the New York Timesshared a surprising statistic: Apple paid just $3.3 billion on $34.2 billion of profits last year — giving it a tax rate of just 9.8 percent.

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CBS 5 San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— The California Public Utilities Commission has announced a settlement where NRG Energy will pay $20 million in cash and spend $100 million on building new electric vehicle infrastructure.

The settlement is based on market manipulations and alleged overcharging by the power provider from over a decade ago.
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Los Angeles Times
By: Dean Kuipers

In an unforeseen upside to the electric-power market crisis of 2001, a new proposed legal settlement between utility NRG and the California Public Utilities Commission would bring more than $100 million in new electric-vehicle charging infrastructure to the state.

Under the terms of the settlement, announced Friday by the commission and the Greenlining Institute, an advocacy group, NRG would be installing at least 200 public fast-charging stations and the infrastructure for 10,000 plug-in units at about 1,000 locations across the state. Some of the new equipment would go to low-income neighborhoods, where such infrastructure is in very short supply.

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Central Valley Business Times

The days of rolling blackouts that plagued California have a benefit a decade later.

It’s an agreement hammered out between the state and NRG Energy Inc. that the California Public Utilities Commission today filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

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The Huffington Post
by: Bonnie Kavoussi

General Electric’s CEO has a message for people angry about reports that the company isn’t paying enough in taxes: Move along, nothing to see here.

“Pay your fair share!” Occupy Wall Street protesters shouted during a speech by GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt in Detroit on Tuesday, according to several news outlets. “We pay taxes, and you should too,” they shouted, according to CBS Detroit.

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