California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

https://www.propublica.org/article/she-noticed-200-million-missing-then-she-was-fired

by js2 • 6 years ago

609 213 6 years ago

Call me cynical, but Stebbins likely faces a decade long legal battle which shell very likely end up settling to be done with it, the board members will get even better jobs in or out of government, and the $200 million will remain missing. Yknow, justice.

js23• 6 years ago

She uncovers incompetence and gets fired. The article makes no allegations that she stepped on Newsom's toes, but it sure seems like it. She deserves a medal, not to be fired. The article doesn't say who hired her in the first place, just:

Stebbins was hired as the agency’s executive director in February 2018 to bring fresh scrutiny to its finances and operations.

Who hired her?

Also:

“I find this outrageous!” Batjer wrote to her old colleague. “I’m terribly worried. Thanks much for any advice/help you can get before this gets much worse.”
“Let’s get together and figure this out!” Lee responded. “We will help you fix, don’t stress.”

I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've used an exclamation mark professionally. Batjer then proceeds to essentially conspire with other board members to fire her, breaking the law in so doing.

jasonboyd• 6 years ago

"I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've used an exclamation mark professionally."

I feel self conscious now.

TwoBit2• 6 years ago

Sounds like you are judging that exclamation points are unprofessional.

brighton36• 6 years ago

Professionalism is nihlism. It's mostly the same thing. Hence why it's improper to exclaim.

sokoloff• 6 years ago

I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've used an exclamation mark professionally.

What does your preferred language use for the logical negation operator?

TomSwirly2• 6 years ago

I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've used an exclamation mark professionally.

You probably come off as a bit stiff then.

Of course, in formal documents, you never use it, but in person-to-person communication in 2020, you use it about once in any email or text as a softener.

"Good to see you the other day! [...] Let's do this."

Or the exclamation mark comes at the end, which might be a bit too much for me.

This has been the habit for a couple of decades now...

harrisonjackson• 6 years ago

I agree this use of ”!” is unprofessional. This is like yelling at someone in person where as the sibling examples are being extra cheerful and thankful.

specialist6• 6 years ago

Is there a whistleblower's playbook? Case studies and legal stuff.

Imagine some day I decide to expose something. What steps should I take? How should I proceed? What's the calculus for deciding? I imagine it'd resemble spy craft.

Also, I'd like some philanthropic group to become a resource for whistleblowers. Pretty much like outreach programs for victims of domestic violence. Anonymous, no strings, coaching. Plus a mountain of cash for legal stuff. I imagine your case worker would help you assess the merits of your case. They'd plug in some numbers and predict the enormity of the undying hell you're about to unleash.

I looked a bit after the Sibel Edwards event. The whistleblower NGOs I found seemed little more than a support group with other survivors.

I keep thinking of that group of lawyers that's made huge money suing pharmaceutical (or maybe it was pharmacists) under the whistleblower statutes. Surely more such groups could pop up, each with their own expertise.

hliyan• 6 years ago

What you say will probably come to pass, but this sort of cynical, fatalistic attitude is part of the problem.

CyberDildonics5• 6 years ago

It is not part of the problem, it is a symptom of it.

boomboomsubban9• 6 years ago

Please inform me of the actions you are taking to fix the problem.

jiveturkey• 6 years ago

heal thyself, physician

Simulacra• 6 years ago

The title needs some work. It sounds like the person who was fired for exposing $200M, has herself gone missing. Perhaps it could say.

Edit: Thank you for changing it from the original "California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed $200M missing" to ""California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M"

Not sure why that earns me downvotes.

js23• 6 years ago

Edited slightly.

underseacables• 6 years ago

I think there is a rule about nitpicking titles. The original was confusing so they changed it.

dxdm• 6 years ago

Thank you for mentioning the original title.

hh3k0• 6 years ago

In response to detailed questions, commission spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said that Stebbins’ allegation of $200 million in missing fines and fees was the result of a misunderstanding of the commission’s accounting practices.

A misunderstanding of accounting practices?

SpicyLemonZest• 6 years ago

Like in many accounting controversies, the fundamental problem here is how to account for future expectations. If you’re owed a big sum of money but you know for sure payment is coming soon, your accounting statements should show you as much wealthier than the actual money you have on hand, because receiving a payment you already knew you’d get shouldn’t change how you measure your financial status. The commission says that’s all that’s happening here and the “missing” money will come in over the next year, while Stebbins says they have no reason to expect this and aren’t actually keeping track.

chii• 6 years ago

you know for sure payment is coming soon

and there-in lies the catch - you cannot know for sure something that hasn't happened yet. There can not be accounting practises that count money that has yet to be received on hand.

forgingahead2• 6 years ago

How to account for this isn't controversial -- you put the expected money to be received on your balance sheet, either under "Accounts Receivable", which is listed as an asset, or another similarly related account that shows the money is due. Of course, you can't have "Accounts Receivable" for eons with no update, at some point an auditor will say the money should be collected, or you have to write it off as a bad debt. But you must account for it one way or another.

The article seems to say that this money was not accounted for at all in the documents, and that in general, the accounting is a mess. If you don't know all your financial information, then how do you make financial decisions?

Well it doesn't matter in CA apparently, you just ask the state govt for more, who then either says they are underfunded and need to raise taxes, and/or ask the federal govt for more. The whole thing is a racket - be very very suspicious of any entity that is purposefully opaque by design, and gives you a shrug/"gee-willickers" reply to how this is just the way it is and can't be changed.

chrisgd• 6 years ago

This doesn’t seem to be a recognition issue though. It’s not AR or deferred, it’s not being accounted for at all or tracked

rangoon626• 6 years ago

Between this and the "pork" that was recently scrutinized, I am completely disgusted that local, state and federal government thinks that they have a blank check care of tax payers. Of course it's been this way forever, but this is getting out of hand.

200m missing, and the state is having massive forest fires, electrical outages and way too many people living in tent cities.

What an absolutely disgusting waste.

gedy2• 6 years ago

It's the 5th largest economy in the world, ahead of even India, and with 2% of the population to take care of. Must be all Prop 13's fault, no waste here behind the curtain. /s

novok• 6 years ago

Prop 13 incentivizes cities to reject new housing because it is net revenue negative compared to commercial properties. That and it disincentivizes old people to politically advocate for affordable housing, because they don't have skin in the game / are free riders and thus do not feel the pain like everyone else. They end up ferociously protecting their boomer bank account (house value) because they cannot see beyond their own personal situation.

Justin_K• 6 years ago

The sad part is that CA remains a one party state and this will just get swept under the rug. The power is too unchecked.

legulere• 6 years ago

As a European I ask myself why there’s no proportional voting system at all in the US. The states should be independent enough to introduce one for themselves, and there are also referendums.

AnthonyMouse4• 6 years ago

A switch to proportional voting could require constitutional changes in most places. Also, proportional voting introduces all kinds of unnecessary problems like not having districts and thereby constituents having their votes diluted and not having a specific representative. Which is one things the American system gets right.

What we really need is a switch from "first past the post" to approval/score/range voting, which would dissolve the two party system by eliminating spoilers and thereby making third parties viable.

Score/range voting is "that thing the Olympics uses"; approval voting is "that thing the Olympics uses if the only possible scores a judge can give are 0 or 1".

As far as I can tell the biggest impediment to this is a lot of people proposing alternative systems that aren't as good (e.g. IRV) and then no change is made because proponents of change are divided on which change to make.

grandmczeb• 6 years ago

The US actually had quite a few cities with proportional voting in the early-mid 1900s. NYC for example had it from 1936 to 1947 when it was eliminated via referendum[1].

[1] https://www.fairvote.org/new_york_s_proportional_representat...

logicchains2• 6 years ago

Funnily enough, California's system did used to be slightly less one-sided, but an amendment introduced that was claimed would make it less one-sided actually ended up making it more.

ashtonkem9• 6 years ago

Because the parties that currently control all legislatures would lose out. In some areas a ballot initiative can eventually implement proportional voting (Maine passed an initiative for ranked choice), but that’s a very high bar to clear.

It seems like the best way to get proportional voting is to create your democratic system with it that way from the beginning.

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

As a European I ask myself why there’s no proportional voting system at all in the US.

Because change in voting systems has well-studied partisan and ideological impacts, and many of the people who know enough to understand the way that our current voting system contributes to widely-recognized problems in governance also have studied the issue well enough to understand those impacts, and many of them, even while accepting the problems as problems, think that the likely shift in ideological outcomes would be more adverse to their preferenced than the current set of problems.

The states should be independent enough to introduce one for themselves

They are, but they don't want to. The only major voting system reform that has anywhere close to critical mass is IRV, which should have minimal impact (which is actually why it is within the space of possibility, though obviously not something advocates publicly trumpet.)

wwwwwwwww• 6 years ago

As another European: proportional voting has nothing to do with it. Its more about ideologized voters who care more about ideology than merit when voting.

wott• 6 years ago

As a European I ask myself why there’s no proportional voting system at all in the US.

As a European, the elections in my country are:

-- Presidential: uninominal majority (of course).

-- Assembly: uninominal majority.

-- Senate: no universal vote, voters emanate (mostly) from municipal councils majorities.

-- Regional: allegedly proportional lists, but in fact a majority vote, since the leading list gets a majority bonus of 25% of the seats, and then only proportional applies (and still, it is a two-round vote in which lists under 12.5% are evicted from the first round, and then can be evicted again at the second round, even from proportional). So in practice the leading list is always granted more than 50% of the seats.

-- Departmental: uninominal majority

-- Municipal: in large towns, allegedly proportional lists, but in fact a majority vote, since the leading list gets a majority bonus of 50%!!! so there is not even a slight theoretical possibility of having a balance; in villages: plurinominal majority (so a list where every member gets 50%+1 votes gets 100% of seats).

So, not a single actual proportional election, even in those which purport to be such.

(That's France, if you wonder.)

As a practical note, I would like to add that concerning the Assembly, the uninominal voting system used to produce a sort of balanced result, because of differences in history, culture, sociology, traditions and so on in different voting districts; but at present the populations are mixed, the medias are national, everything is more standardised, and so votes are more uniform, and as a consequence a party who has a small lead now has it almost everywhere and can get an overwhelming majority of seats despite only having that small lead.

burlesona• 6 years ago

We have the system that made sense to the people in 1792. It’s a system that is practical with their technology, and it responds to the very specific political problem they had at the time: getting 13 independent countries to surrender their sovereignty to a federal government.

That system mostly worked, but it still required a civil war to prove the Union was really was sovereign and states could not leave.

When you’re baffled by things happening over here, remember that the United States is less analogous to France or Germany and more analogous to the European Union. The individual states are more analogous to EU nations. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s helpful.

AngryData• 6 years ago

States do have complete power over elections, the problem is most state governments are just as corrupt as the feds and changing voting methods or procedures puts both republicans and democrats at risk of independent party members taking positions. It is about the two major parties trying to maintain political power despite increasing voter dissatisfaction going on decades.

specialist6• 6 years ago

Our one saving grace is our "Democratic Party" is branding for 1,000s of individual party organizations. Ditto Republicans.

For instance, in my state, official (legally recognized, meaning access to the ballot) parties are organized by legislative, county, and state wide. Depending on the whatifs, who's got the real power changes over time and context.

And the intraparty Democratic fighting is far worse than the interparty stuff. IMHO.

(Though I've attended Republican events, having never participated in their orgs, I can't compare. Though from popular press accounts, insurgents like the Tea Party, taking on their establishments, sounds comparable.)

Then we have all sorts of non partisan politics. Like interest groups, lobbyists, agencies, media, etc.

So while doupoly sucks, and PR would be so much better, our current system is not monolithic.

ianhorn• 6 years ago

I firmly believe that better voting systems are the highest ROI changes we can make to government. Unfortunately the people the current system over-favors are the ones who need to do it. It’s a microcosm of the whole problem of politics :(

justin66• 6 years ago

They might get away with it, but another metaphor is called for. Thanks to propublica they’ve pretty thoroughly failed to sweep it under the rug.

forgingahead2• 6 years ago

Many scandalous issues are raised by outlets like ProPublica - this is a good thing, but only half of the process. If there are no consequences for the culprits, followed by systemic change to prevent this from occurring again, then this is essentially shouting into the wind.

Parent is making the point that due to the one-party system, the latter outcomes will never happen.

claudeganon• 6 years ago

I don’t think Republican opposition is the answer, as they’re demonstrably just as corrupt and self-serving. But California could certainly benefit from some primary challenges from the left. LA is seeing this happen with the election of Nithya Raman and George Gascón (who were vehemently opposed by mainstream Democrats). Interested to see how they might shift the terrain.

twblalock4• 6 years ago

Democrats getting defeated in primaries from the left only results in Democrats being replaced by other Democrats. We would still have one party in charge of the state, with a veto-proof majority in the legislature.

refurb3• 6 years ago

From the left? It doesn’t get more left than SF and the corruption is rampant here.

I’m not sure why you equate corruption with where you sit in the political spectrum.

ardy422• 6 years ago

The sad part is that CA remains a one party state and this will just get swept under the rug. The power is too unchecked.

And I'm guessing the reason for that is that politics has gotten too nationalized, and the state-level opposition is too unwilling to distance itself from its national party to make itself competitive.

minot• 6 years ago

Corruption isn’t a partisan issue. California Republicans are just as if not more corrupt than California Democrats.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/23/editorial-santa-clara...

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25190668

dgoldstein03• 6 years ago

From what I've seen in California elections, as a California voter for the last 7 years:

- Republicans running for Congress (Senate and House of Reps) tend to be aligned with the national party platform, and therefore sound super out of touch to me. For this reason, I doubt we'll see a Republican Senator from California anytime soon. - Republicans running for state positions tend to be more moderate, and sound a lot more palatable as a result. Doubly so for the less political positions like state auditor and treasurer, which are not about making policy as much as just making sure we use the state's resources appropriately. At least, for the candidates I see on my ballot in San Francisco.

twblalock4• 6 years ago

I've got my signature form to recall the governor printed out, but what is holding me back from mailing it in is the fear that we could end up with someone even worse in charge if the recall succeeds.

ncmncm3• 6 years ago

It happened last time.

Drew Davis was recalled when he refused to pay $80B in enbezzled utility costs, and started an investigation of the embezzling. Arnold had the state just pay the $80B.

Somebody got every penny of that $80B.

hnruss2• 6 years ago

The power is checked by the voters, and every election Californians keep electing Democrats.

It’s only sad to Republicans, and only because it’s not their party in power.

jimbob45• 6 years ago

???

I’m not sure that party affiliation has anything to do with the level of corruption. I would imagine that corruption tracks far more closely to regional GDP - more money, more backroom deals.

sumedh• 6 years ago

and every election Californians keep electing Democrats.

So some democrat can make it his core issue to stop corruption and the people can vote for him/her.

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

In a one-party system (e.g.: China), you can only vote for candidates from one party. CA is not a one-party system.

If you constantly criticize the state and their elected officials, or do something unpopular like pissing off 38% of the state population (Hispanics/Latinos), do not expect your party to achieve anything significant in this state.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

The national Republican party has money which they can dynamically allocate to different states. If they want to pitch exciting offers to California, such as solutions for transportation or healthcare, then so be it.

Kevin McCarthy is the house minority leader for the GOP and he's using his airtime by talking about how the presidential election is a fraud. That's a taste of the calibre of counter-narrative the GOP chooses to air.

I would argue there's more healthy idea generation within party than between party.

yostrovs2• 6 years ago

Half the country thinks it's a fraud just like half the country thought the last election was a fraud. And just like last time, the next few years will have to take up this matter for discussion and ripping society apart. The only difference i see is that there won't be a federal investigation into the matter this time, leaving a lot of people convinced that indeed this was a rigged election.

vkou• 6 years ago

CA will remain a one-party state as long as the Republican party continues to push absolutely insane policies and candidates.

Which will keep happening, because the sane ones get primaried out.

refurb3• 6 years ago

Are you arguing the democrats are putting out sane policies and candidates? Have you seen SF?

WarOnPrivacy3• 6 years ago

The sad part is that CA remains a one party state

A duopoly is a fraternal monopoly, marked by common self-serving behavior.

Both parties trade law and power for campaign funds on a massive scale - every day of the year. It's unclear why one flavor of that might be preferable.

specialist6• 6 years ago

I agree it's unlikely anything will happen.

This is deeper than partisanship, one party rule, pay for play.

Robert Caro's The Power Broker is one primer for how true power works in our system of government.

I'm still clueless what the remedies are, indeed if there are any.

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

Well, she wasn't hired to cause problems and rocks people's boats. Now these hard working fellas even got bad press

May sound sarcastic but...

drtillberg• 6 years ago

It's never the original problem, it's always the cover-up. Seems like an interesting project for an ambitious Assistant U.S. Attorney.

known• 6 years ago

TRUTH is always suppressed in the name of trust/loyalty/compliance/privacy/conspiracy/discipline/patriotism/sedition/job/national security/unity/intellectual property

0x445442• 6 years ago

Slightly off topic but indirectly relevant... Any acceptance of a Government backed crypto currency should be contingent on moving all Government transactions to an open blockchain ledger.

IG_Semmelweiss2• 6 years ago

the sad truth in this story is that the former top boss hired Stebbins and did the right thing....

then former top boss gets fired due to the the CA wildfires fiasco.... which very likely accrued for a long time, well before the former top boss' got the job.

So now the hero, has no protection from the top, and new bureaucrat goes in for the kill.

Now the person that hired the hero, and the hero herself.... are out, for trying to make things better. The good guys get grinded out of the system , by the system itself

Kapura2• 6 years ago

It feels like I live in a country where every level of government is unbelievably corrupt, but also completely unfixable. How are you supposed to address the sorts of issues that lose $200,000,000 of state money if the people who try to do so get fired? I don't see a way out of this mess, and it makes me want to move somewhere... better.

tekproxy• 6 years ago

Systems tend to break down over time. This is normal. People getting fed up and trying to fix it is normal too.

"Hard times create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times create weak people. Weak people create hard times."

We only get the leaders and government we deserve.

swiley• 6 years ago

The problem with California is that they tend to keep putting all their eggs in the same broken basket.

aliljet• 6 years ago

I'm curious what that broken basket is?

zarkov99• 6 years ago

Where?

AlwaysRock• 6 years ago

I very much feel the same way. Unfortunately it is not easy to move to another country long term and work there. Also obviously every other country also has its own issues, many that one likely wouldnt discover until after making a move.

Kapura2• 6 years ago

Fortunately, I am blessed with friends who have already made the jump, in many different directions, so I have firsthand testimonies of the pros and cons of moving to a variety of different countries. Japan sounds nice.

FooHentai• 6 years ago

You will also hit the travellers paradox - the more places you visit the less any on place will satisfy you to settle down as you have more alternatives against which to compare the good and bad of a place.

Any location is a compromise, it's about weighing what's most important to you. After a decade in new Zealand I see it's problems very clearly as compared to the uk and while I've witnessed my birth country melt down spectacularly over the last few years, I can also see that my home country has a bleak future without a significant change of course.

If anyone reading this does move to a new country please take on just one piece of wisdom from me when you do so: Do NOT establish a friend group in your new country that consists primarily of other expats. You'll get stuck in an echo chamber where comparisons between places are always de jour. This should be recognized as toxic. To properly settle into a new place conversation is best done inside your own head with yourself or (sparingly) with your partner. Being careful about this can make all the difference between successfully integration and, well, other less desirable outcomes.

5tefan2• 6 years ago

Where should that be? Same in Germany. Corruption seems a noble crime and goes unpunished.

gautamcgoel• 6 years ago

Er, what do you mean by a "noble crime"? Seems like a very ignoble crime to me...

cosmodisk• 6 years ago

The problem is there is no better. Countries,names and organisations may differ, but it's more or less the same everywhere

corytheboyd• 6 years ago

This. If you have the chance, talk to people, real people, from other countries. At least in my case, this is exactly what they all told me.

humanlion87• 6 years ago

Completely agree with this statement. It's just human nature. I come from a third world country where bribery and corruption is a way of life and everyone just accepts it. When I moved to the US I thought that problem doesn't exist since it's a developed country and things seem to function smoothly. It took me a few years to realize how mistaken I was. Corruption and bribery just happen in a more "legal" (ex: lobbying), "organized" and "clean" manner :)

robocat7• 6 years ago

The problem is there is no better.

Ouch: “America is #1” is such an insidious belief system.

Have you really opened your eyes to how some countries have much, much better governing systems? Many Scandinavian countries have a higher population than most US states, yet somehow they seem to function better in so many dimensions.

I am from New Zealand and the worst interaction I have had with a government department for many many years was a breeze to deal with: competent phone help talking to a real person, emailing directly with staff, issue resolved. I am very confident the problematic process will be fixed properly within the next few years, because my experience is that every system in NZ I have ever had to deal with eventually gets fixed. For example tax returns are a breeze, and get easier each year. New Zealand has a higher population than 50% of the US states, and we are in the boondocks of the world transportation wise, yet somehow we manage to get our shit together.

Of course NZ has problems of overruns, collusion, defalcation, bribery, and corruption. Yet somehow they seem to be becoming less common... it seems to me our government keeps improving on multiple dimensions. The biggest disappointments I have had with my government have been due to pressures from the US (five eyes, copyright “reform”, trade interference, political interference, war on drugs, propaganda). I regularly read a story about the US where a structural problem just never gets resolved, or even worse, it is decaying year by year.

I have travelled the world, and you can cherry-pick areas where the US is resoundingly better than NZ (or the Scandinavian country of your choice)... I am talking about an overall measurement of functioning governance and society.

m463• 6 years ago

I found the book "the honest truth about dishonesty" by Dan Ariely very illuminating as to how dishonesty works, how it survives and when it goes away.

I suspect this article has done a good job of shining a spotlight on a situation where accountability has disappeared.

yboris• 6 years ago

I really liked the recent book by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck

Unfortunately there isn't a direct solution (if I remember right), as much as an excellent assessment of where things go wrong and why they are hard to fix (and thus a direction in which we can push to improve things).

https://www.amazon.com/Inadequate-Equilibria-Where-Civilizat...

trianglem• 6 years ago

There isn’t anything better. Sure maybe the Scandinavian countries are somewhat better but I’d rather kill myself than live in that weather. East Asia has its own host of problems plus you’ll always be an outsider.

dukeofdoom2• 6 years ago

Reminds me of this story I read yesterday. You can't question the system. Or the system questions you. So illiberal.

"Michigan’s Democratic attorney general vowed Tuesday to pursue legal punishments against attorneys who have challenged the state’s election results"

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/22/dana-nessel...

hallman76• 6 years ago

FTA

“We’ll go to the Attorney Grievance Commission on some cases, where we know for a fact that there were intentional misrepresentations that were made, the kind where there is no question of the facts,” she said, according to The New York Times.
“If you have your name attached to it and you’ve made intentional misrepresentations, I absolutely think you ought to be held accountable,” she said.

This seems pretty reasonable to me.

dukeofdoom2• 6 years ago

Election was the "most secure in American history", its a fact. Here is the official document proving it.

https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-electio...

So according to you, any lawyer that questions this irrefutable, official documented fact, should be sanctioned for misrepresenting facts. Lawyers should be punished, fined or disbarred or even imprisoned for making arguments. Perfectly reasonable position.

annoyingnoob• 6 years ago

Someone needs to explain both sets of accounting practices to the public. Its public money we are talking about. Californians pay tons of little taxes on utilities to fund improvements and service for the less privileged - we expect that money to be put to use and not to line the pockets of utilities. Its quite obviously that our utilities have completely failed when it comes to maintenance and improvements. What are the folks managing these finds doing other than fighting? Time to explain yourselves.

everybodyknows2• 6 years ago

money to be put to use and not to line the pockets ...

How about this example:

https://electricenergyonline.com/article/energy/category/ot-...

$11 million in grant funding ... 740 unserved households

First project on the list:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M355/K...

up to $7,603,656.30 ... 1,000 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 1,000Mbps upload to 588 unserved households.

So, gigabit Ethernet, at a cost of only $12,931 per household.

According to the California Interactive Broadband Map, the area only has access to dial-up service.

According to my search of that very same site just now, three competing cellular providers serve data to Williams, with T-Mobile claiming minimums of 9/4 Mbps.

https://www.broadbandmap.ca.gov/

residential and low-income broadband pricing plans ... for two years starting from the beginning date of service. ... 25 Downstream(Mbps)/25 Upstream(Mbps) - $25/month

Wondering how many of those 588 households are behind on their monthly bills just now? How many would, if given the choice, prefer to have the CPUC pre-pay for them a couple of years of cellular hotspot service, and simply refund the remainder of "their" $12,931 in cash, so they can all be assured of making their rent or mortgage payments for a while? About 588 households, I would guess.

My theory: It's a subsidy program for the broadband landline industry. Regulatory capture, as usual.

zug_zug• 6 years ago

I think there's whistleblower statute that protects such employees and even offers huge financial rewards to people who report financial frauds. I imagine she's eligible.

[1] https://www.helmerfriedman.com/whistleblower-programs-reward...

WarOnPrivacy3• 6 years ago

I like how much coordination went into framing the director vs how much didn't go into auditing.

spanktheuser• 6 years ago

I'm struck that the commission directors proceeded despite the ample evidence they knew would surface should the corrupt firing be contested. It seems that don't fear personal consequences for their actions. Disposing of limited liability or significantly weakening it seems necessary.

jayd16• 6 years ago

Can someone clear up the timeline for me? Text messages show Batjer was gunning for Stebbins for over a year but the news report seems to be pushing the juicy headline that its in response to this recent report? Does that really add up?

mleonhard• 6 years ago

San Francisco's accounting is similarly incomprehensible. I tried to download the city's annual report and failed. There is none. Or rather, there are several, and all are incomplete.

I believe there are several large scandals brewing in SF government and many government officials are committing crimes against the citizens. I hope ProPublica or another journalism organization will take on the project to uncover them. I just donated to ProPublica. I hope you will, too.

alok-g• 6 years ago

There have been orders-of-magnitude bigger issues ($31.65 Billion per the following article):

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/05/29/31-65-billion-cal...

Not those who expose, but those who cause, should be the ones fired.

everybodyknows2• 6 years ago

2014

California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

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