Helpful Energy-Saving Tips for the Governor

As the summer season kicks off, we have a few helpful energy saving tips for the Governor:

• Please keep the lights off in your Capitol office when you are not using it, which is pretty much all the time.
• Stop using your high-powered stage lights at your campaign events. We have tracked the state’s power usage and have seen a massive spike in energy usage on the days that the Governor does an event.
• Stop blowing hot air. Clearly the voters have already rejected the hot air you have been blowing the past six months.

Speaking of energy, this has been a tough week for the Governor’s energy plan. After pledging to “blow up the boxes” and talking about massive energy reorganization, the Governor’s scaled back energy reorganization plan was finally dropped on the Legislature last month.

Today’s newspapers report that this plan is hitting a few more bumps in the road:

• “Parts of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious plan to create a Cabinet-level energy agency headed by a statewide energy czar are unconstitutional, the Legislature's legal counsel said in an opinion made public on the eve of a key hearing on the governor's proposal. Schwarzenegger's plan to consolidate the work of a number of state commissions and departments into a new California Department of Energy would unconstitutionally infringe on the authority of the state Public Utilities Commission to approve the siting of electricity transmission lines, natural gas pipelines and natural gas storage facilities, according to an opinion by Legislative Counsel Diane F. Boyer-Vine. Boyer-Vine issued the opinion at the request of state Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland), an opponent of the Schwarzenegger plan. Late Wednesday, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer submitted a similar legal opinion to the state Little Hoover Commission, a 13-member independent panel that promotes efficiency and effectiveness in state government programs.” (Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2005)
  

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