The Brief

For 49 years, the Twidwell family enjoyed idyllic living in the Portuguese Bend area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The marine layer that engulfed the rest of the peninsula stayed clear of their neighborhood so the weather was always sunny. Shari Twidwell’s two best friends were also her neighbors: bikes in each other’s front yards, in and out of each other’s homes with three sets of parents.

But, in the last two years, above average rainfall has led to unprecedented land movement, breaking up the neighborhood and relationships that have spanned decades.

A water main broke from landslide activity in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes on Sept. 3, 2024.

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Since last October, movement of the Portuguese Bend landslide complex has been dramatic. Twidwell said when they first moved into the neighborhood 51 years ago, land in the area was moving at 2 millimeters a year. Now, city officials say it’s shifting at 1 foot a week in some places, slowly tearing apart homes, roads, and other infrastructure.

“The sliding activity that has been going on that has been catastrophic is very new,” Twidwell said. “So, that's been eight months of sliding activity that has been out of this world. Totally bananas.”

The movement is so bad the historic Wayfarers Chapel had to be disassembled and moved out. Some driveways now drop 6 to 10 feet from the homes they once connected to. Utility poles lean ominously. Power and gas have been shut off indefinitely for more than 200 homes. And Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency.

Landslide damage to properties in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes on Sept. 3, 2024.

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The breaking point

KC King’s family bought the house next to Twidwell’s 30 days after she was born in 1974. Growing up in Palos Verdes, she said, was “special and magical.” But the magic has turned into a slow moving disaster.

In the last year, the backyard has “lifted up” and started “twisting.” To get into the back of the house, she said, you have to walk up the backyard.

Land movement made a section of Narcissa Drive impassable in September.

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When they cut off the gas, her mother wanted to stay. But then came the power shut-offs, prompting King to relocate the couple to where she now lives in Davis.

“I think that this is all just like, whoa, it's a lot to take, especially to be uprooted from the place that you thought you were going to live out the rest of your life,” King said.

Looking at alternatives

For Twidwell, the land movement has caused minimal damage to the home she grew up in. But she said it’s not just about her family.

“Any time that somebody says, ‘You know what, I give up. I give up. I'm done. I can't do this anymore,’ that's a loss for all of us,” she said. “It's not just that they're losing their home or the place that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives. But it's, we all lose. We lose a member of our family.”

Twidwell lives with her parents. Her 88-year-old father, she said, has advanced Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration and is blind. Her mother, a nurse, cares for her father full time while Twidwell is his backup caretaker. Twidwell herself has multiple sclerosis. Their home was remodeled 20 years ago on the condition that “everything would be flat and everything, the counters, would be accessible in case anybody was in a wheelchair,” she said.

Now, the power shut offs have forced her to temporarily move her parents to a hotel.

As a therapist, Twidwell said, she can’t underscore the community aspect enough, adding, “My parents are in as good a shape as they are because they have community.”

She’s been exploring finding a battery for the solar panels they had previously installed. They won’t power up the entire house, but she said it will be enough for one or two rooms, a fridge and Wi-Fi up.

Aerial view of damage because of land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes.

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“We're sort of taking things bit by bit because we're kind of waiting for the next shoe to drop,” Twidwell said. “How else are they going to limit us or our abilities to live here, right?”

If the temporary plan works, she said she’ll look into adding more solar panels and buying a backup generator for cloudy days. But she knows it won’t be forever. Her family plans to remodel a home they own in Torrance to be ADA accessible “because we're pretty sure that once it starts to rain something else terrible will happen here.”

Can the land movement be slowed down?

A de-watering pump and above ground water lines and in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes on September 3, 2024.

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City officials have said that while they cannot stop the land movement completely, they hope to slow it down. In June, crews began drilling holes in the ground to find where water had concentrated so they could install hydraugers to drain the ground. But when they drilled the holes, they found they were dealing with a deeper, much larger landslide.

Now, city officials say they’re moving away from the hydraugers project and prioritizing deep dewatering wells.

Meanwhile, all residents can do is watch their community continue to tear.

“If a tornado comes through and rips up your town it takes five minutes. If a hurricane comes, it takes maybe five days. If there's an earthquake, that's instantaneous and this is something that has no end that we can put our finger on,” King said. “I don't know when the end is, it is a ridiculous thing that can never end, but the landslide feels a little bit like that.”

This spring marks the end of an era for the Community Solidarity Project, a mutual aid nonprofit with a longstanding footprint in Mid-Wilshire. It will no longer run Bernie’s Coffee Shop, a community space located in the historic landmark Johnie’s Coffee Shop, famous for appearing in The Big Lebowski and Miracle Mile.

This year, the organization also stopped running a free supply center called the “Really Really Free 99 Store.” The Community Solidarity Project has provided mutual aid to Angelenos for years and started the distribution center last year to help those affected by the L.A. fires and immigration raids.

Co-founder Michelle Manos is the first to admit she had no idea any of her organization’s projects would last as long as they did.

“If you would've told me in 2016 that we would have a 10-year run here, I might have looked at you like you're crazy or I might have died of shock right there on the spot,” Manos said.

The use of Bernie's Coffee Shop as a community space traces back to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign.

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Manos has been a steward of Johnie’s Coffee Shop ever since she helped throw a one-night takeover during Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign (that’s how it got the name Bernie’s Coffee Shop). From then, she started a partnership with the Gold family to continue to use the space — first as a campaign center, then as a hub for organizers’ meetings, mutual aid distribution, art events and even on-location shoots with student filmmakers.

Manos said she is “ extraordinarily grateful” for their time in the space, as the Community Solidarity Project looks to extend its work running a free, volunteer-run, large-scale mutual aid distribution site. In order to do so, it is raising the funds to be able to continue operating in a new space.

Getting the project off the ground

The “Really Really Free 99” project started at the beginning of last year, as Los Angeles was reeling from the impact of the L.A. fires. The team at the Community Solidarity Project immediately pivoted to providing mutual aid for fire victims, since it had built up the experience during events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following those distribution drives, the Community Solidarity Project connected with a multinational mutual aid organization that had an extra tractor trailer’s worth of resources to donate.

At that moment, with the then-vacant location of the 99 Cents Only store right next door, Manos realized there was an opportunity. The coffee shop and the adjacent store are owned by the family of Dave Gold, the founder of the 99 Cents Only chain.

“I reached out to our partners in the Gold family, and I asked for and received permission to be able to start storing those items inside the 99 next door, which is the original 99 Cents store here at Wilshire and Fairfax,” she said.

From there, the organization started to focus on giving out these supplies and finding more about what residents needed. The Community Solidarity Project’s Ralph Green maintains many of the organization’s relationships with suppliers, including building partnerships with brands and big stores that might otherwise throw out materials.

“They know it's going right back out to the community,” Green said.

The Free 99 distribution center offered all kinds of goods, including hats and apparel.

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Green said the Community Solidarity Project also partners with mutual organizations across Southern California in order to share and trade the resources they’ve been given.

“My personal philosophy as an organizer has always been to say yes to resources and opportunities and then figure it out,” Manos said.

That often means the organization’s members and volunteers end up dedicating large amounts of time to ensuring resources get shared — like one day when Rosalind Jones traversed L.A. County for 14 hours to distribute about 10 pallets’ worth of plant-based ice cream.

“When I tell people our core team is like six or seven people, they're like, ‘That sounds impossible. How did you do that?’” said Jones, who ran the Free 99 distribution center. “I don't know. It just happened. We just started moving things and doing stuff, and then it all came together.”

Some displays at the distribution center, like this one, even resembled a free version of the 99 Cents Only store.

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About the Free 99

As more and more donations came into the Free 99, it distributed food, hygiene products and other necessities, plus other goods like family-planning supplies and hot meals when available. Eventually, it was able to accept donations of beds, desks and bookcases so people displaced by the Eaton Fire could refurnish their apartments for free with quality furniture.

Members of the Community Solidarity Project unloading furniture.

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Karla Estrada, who ran the organization’s furniture distribution program, said they were able to give out more than 150 pieces of furniture to 70 families. She said one woman who came in for furniture even showed her pictures of a new apartment, excited to show off where everything would be going. Estrada said when the woman was saying goodbye, she said, “Thank you for saving the world.”

“That is why we do the things that we do,” Estrada said. “It's because we love our communities. That itself is the gift for me, and I'm very proud of that work.”

Rosalind Jones said many people who came into the distribution center couldn’t believe they weren’t being charged. Some even came up to the checkout counter with bills in hand, ready to pay.

She says she personally assisted people who came in, including an unhoused trans woman who distributed supplies to others in her encampment and a mother whose husband was detained by immigration agents and needed help taking care of her two children.

The end of an era

As of last month, the “Really Really Free 99” project has ended after the landlord began taking on paid leases, starting with a 99 Cents Only-themed art show. The Community Solidarity Project’s leadership was aware of the possibility and had been bracing no longer to have access to the space.

Still, the Free 99 store being asked to leave turned into a flashpoint on social media, as commenters panned the art show for seemingly pushing out the mutual aid group, a situation Manos called “unfortunate.”

 ”We never had any issue with the gallery itself or the artists themselves, especially the local, smaller artists who had the opportunity to work with some of the larger artists that were participating in organizing that gallery,” Manos said. “We're well aware that when a local artist sells a piece of art, they use it to feed their family, they use it to make a repair on their car.”

Manos said she also saw value in how the pop-up gallery provided a third space for people to gather, which is also part of the Community Solidarity Project’s mission with spaces like Bernie’s Coffee Shop.

The Community Solidarity Project's Michelle Manos (left) and Rosalind Jones.

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“If we can find more ways to use spaces that are empty around our city to build community, to build the arts, those things are important,” Manos said.

Manos said vacating the space was difficult, especially since community members — many of whom they didn’t have contact information for due to privacy concerns — needed to be notified, and the store’s stock needed to be moved out quickly.

The Community Solidarity Project now is being asked to leave that space as Metro prepares to open a nearby D-Line stop — no word yet on what it’ll be replaced by — but its members are optimistic they can build on that work as a proof of concept wherever they land next.

“Part of the fantastical part to me is that we're a group of poor people that has found a way to be extraordinarily generous, and it's not something that we could have done alone,” Manos said.

Their hopes for the future

Manos said now that the organization is starting a new chapter, it is hoping to raise funds — at least $30,000 — to secure a new, more permanent location.

Long before running the Free 99 store, the Community Solidarity Project organized other kinds of mutual aid, like mask giveaways.

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Courtesy Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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“We would hope to be able to continue a version of the free store, as well as a version of the community gathering space,” Manos said. “That has been the magical part, when the community is here and when we're able to pay it forward.”

In addition to monetary donations, the organization also is looking for volunteers to help coordinate mutual aid and staff events, including its annual Queer Fair.

“We're not exceptional in that we thought of something that's never been done before,” Jones said. “We just did something that seemed like it was really hard and seemed like it might even be impossible with the resources and the amount of people we had. But we did it.”

A forensic audit released by Orange County on Monday found ex-Supervisor Andrew Do and his top aide had a longstanding pattern of misspending public money far beyond the scandal that led to federal corruption charges and landed Do in prison.

The report released Monday was the first phase of a forensic audit the OC Board of Supervisors commissioned last fall into county contracts in the wake of LAist’s investigation of the Do meal money scheme and his corruption conviction. The audit is being conducted by the firm Weaver.

The report details how Do and his chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn, undermined procedures meant to prevent abuse of county money, while using their influence to steer taxpayer money to friends, family and businesses that quickly donated to his election campaigns — often with little information about the services being provided.

“The pattern of contracts being awarded to vendors that contributed to former Supervisor Do’s political campaigns raises questions and concerns about potential ‘pay-to-play’ schemes,” the report states.

Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who was elected to replace Do in 2024, said in a statement that “Do’s federal bribery conviction was the tip of the iceberg” and called on law enforcement to investigate.

“For years, I have known that Andrew Do was a criminal, acting as the Godfather of Little Saigon — strongarming political opponents and pressuring his minions to do more,” Nguyen said. “Now the county has evidence of all of it, and I’m hoping the federal DOJ, FBI, state attorney general, the district attorney and the [California Fair Political Practices Commission] investigate.”

[Click here to read the forensic audit report.]

Do’s attorney, Paul Meyer, declined to comment on the audit findings, saying that would be “inappropriate.”

Wangsaporn declined to speak with the auditors, according to the audit report. He has not returned LAist’s multiple requests for comment over the past year and a half, including Monday.

The forensic auditors plan to present their findings at the Board of Supervisors’ public meeting March 24.

More payments to Peter Pham

Among its many findings, the report found Do routed more money than previously reported to companies affiliated with Peter Pham, a central figure in the meal fraud scandal that sent Do to federal prison.

The report notes Do routed money for county events in his district to businesses linked to Pham. One was Aloha Financial Investment — the same company that received most of the diverted meal money in the corruption scheme and paid the down payment on a house for Do’s daughter. The other was Pham’s construction company, Hua Development, which also did business as HD Construction and HD Entertainment.

The findings echo an LAist review of county contract records, which found over $500,000 in county funds were directed to Hua Development and Aloha Financial Investment — largely for events in Do’s district dating back to 2016 and for public service announcements during COVID.

Pham’s construction company, auditors noted, also “appeared to have performed a kitchen remodel of former Supervisor Do’s personal residence in March 2021.” LAist discovered the renovation work in permit records and reported on it last year.

At the time, Do was routing millions of county meal dollars to Pham’s nonprofit, Viet America Society, in the bribery scheme that later led to Do’s criminal conviction. Do admitted in his plea deal that nearly $8 million in meal funds to the nonprofit were diverted, including $385,000 to purchase the home for Do’s daughter.

The new report notes the forensic audit is limited because auditors were not able to make non-county officials and organizations provide documents or answer questions.

More payments to 360 Clinic

Additionally, the auditors found Do authorized an $814,650 county payment to 360 Clinic — the county’s main provider of COVID-19 tests — despite concerns from county staff that the company was double billing. The findings largely echo LAist’s previous reporting on the issue. In all, auditors wrote, the county paid 360 Clinic $3.4 million for uncollectable claims, despite the fact that state and federal law required private insurance or the federal government to fully pay for all coronavirus testing claims at the time.

An internal county report obtained by LAist last year found that 360 Clinic had double- and triple-billed for some testing services. In the report released Monday, auditors found the company submitted more than 4,000 potential duplicate COVID-19 testing claims, with the same patient name and same date of service.

The auditors wrote that they examined documents indicating insurance providers had already paid for some of the claims submitted to the county for repayment. Other claims were for services that weren’t eligible for reimbursement, the auditors wrote.

“While additional review on a claim-by-claim basis would be required to quantify the extent of such denied claims, it is questionable at best as to whether these denied claims should have been invoiced to the county,” they wrote.

‘Not to be questioned’

The audit found Do and Wangsaporn had a pattern of steering contracts and grants to businesses that either employed an immediate family member of Do, contributed to his political campaigns shortly after being awarded a contract, provided a media platform for Do or were involved in the annual Tet and Moon festivals in Do’s district.

Do and Wangsaporn “were very involved in procurement decisions and established a culture where decisions related to District 1 contracts were not to be questioned,” the report states. County procurement staff, it adds, were “concerned that they would receive a phone call” from Do or Wangsaporn “if their requests were not approved.”

Among the decisions Do and his chief of staff impacted were “lump sum advanced payments” to vendors, “directives to pay vendors and contractors for invoices with open issues under review and the selection of vendors and grant recipients.”

Board’s approach obscured money flows

The county’s spending during the COVID-19 pandemic was obscured by the process the Board of Supervisors set up, auditors found.

Contracts were approved without competitive bidding or public approval by the board, which “limited visibility of purchase amounts and vendors selected,” the report states.

During the pandemic, Do and the other county supervisors set up a process where millions in taxpayer spending was directed without the usual public transparency on meeting agendas to show where money was going.

Do used the board-approved closed-door process to quietly direct millions of dollars to the nonprofit at the center of the meal scheme.

The audit also found that the county lacked policies requiring invoices detail what taxpayers were paying for. Do’s office had a common pattern of issuing contracts where payments were made on invoices that had few details about the services provided or itemizations of costs, the report states.

Supervisor cites reforms in the scandal’s wake

“As expected, the most recent audit again exposes criminal Andrew Do for habitually using his position of power to financially reward family, friends and donors through crony capitalist contracts at the expense of Orange County taxpayers,” Supervisor Katrina Foley said in a statement.

Foley said she and other supervisors have implemented reforms to contract policies, “aimed at increasing competitive bidding and [reducing] opportunities for corruption.”

She called on the county to put in place additional safeguards recommended by the auditors to "further protect taxpayers and prevent this type of misconduct from happening again.”

Supervisor Don Wagner said the audit findings show “former Supervisor Do’s corruption goes beyond that for which he is now serving federal prison time,” adding that he’s “deeply disturbed.”

Wagner defended Do at a January 2024 supervisors’ meeting after reports that Do had awarded millions to Viet America Society without disclosing its close ties to his daughter.

“There are no, nor should there be, questions or challenges as to that particular grant of money because there's nothing illegal about what was done,” Wagner said at the time, while blocking a reform proposal to require supervisors to disclose close family connections to groups they award money to.

Do ultimately pleaded guilty to bribery and is serving a five-year prison sentence.

LAist reporter Jill Replogle contributed reporting to this story.

The legal aid organization that was denied a tenant aid contract last year by the Los Angeles city attorney now appears set to receive the contract after all.

On Tuesday, the L.A. City Council voted 12–1 to approve a nearly $107 million eviction defense contract with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, or LAFLA, which oversees the Stay Housed L.A. program.

The vote had been previously scheduled but delayed twice. Last week, council members said they wanted to put off the vote because of a last-minute confidential memorandum sent to council offices by the L.A. City Attorney’s Office.

LAist obtained screenshots of the memo, which show City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto warning the council against awarding the contract to the foundation. The memo argues the city should “reconsider the award of such a large contract to a frequent litigant against the city.”

Sources with knowledge of the contract dispute told LAist that Feldstein Soto opposes LAFLA’s selection in part because the legal aid nonprofit has joined lawsuits in which the city is a defendant. In one case, the city was accused of failing to adequately respond to its homelessness crisis. The city ended up agreeing to a settlement deal requiring nearly 13,000 new shelter and housing beds.

LAFLA leaders said lawsuits against the city are handled independently from the tenant defense work the city has contracted the organization to do.

“There is no conflict of interest here, because Stay Housed L.A. and any affirmative litigation LAFLA brings against the city are entirely separate,” said Barbara Schultz, LAFLA’s director of housing justice. “We do not use Stay Housed L.A. funds for anything except for Stay Housed L.A. services.”

The backstory 

With rents spiking faster than wages for many Angelenos, tenants can quickly find themselves on the brink of homelessness. The city’s elected leaders have tried to stop more renters from becoming unhoused by connecting them with rent relief and free legal defense against eviction.

LAFLA has headed the city-funded program Stay Housed L.A. since 2021. The program brings together legal aid providers to offer attorneys and legal advice to renters facing eviction.

Such legal representation is rare. One study found that 95% of landlords have an attorney in eviction court while the vast majority of tenants do not.

Last summer, the City Council and mayor approved a new five-year contract with LAFLA and its partners. But Feldstein Soto refused to sign it, arguing the contract should have gone through a competitive bidding process.

The city responded by putting out a request for proposals. After reviewing submissions, the city’s Housing Department recommended that eviction defense services continue to be overseen by LAFLA. The council approved that recommendation Tuesday after deliberating in closed session.

In addition to the $107 million award to LAFLA, the council voted in favor of giving $42 million to the Housing Rights Center for emergency rental assistance. The council approved nearly $22 million for the Liberty Hill Foundation to oversee tenant outreach and education.

Another tenant rights organization, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was approved to receive $6.6 million to strengthen awareness and enforcement of the city’s ordinance against tenant harassment.

Much of the funding comes from Measure ULA, the city’s so-called “mansion tax” on real estate selling for more than $5.3 million.

Calls for more transparency

In a statement emailed to LAist, City Attorney spokesperson Karen Richardson said the amount of funding being awarded exceeds the budget of some city departments.

“The eviction defense program is a City program and is in zero jeopardy,” Richardson said. “What is in question is a $177 million blank check to LAFLA and its partners without the reports and invoice review that is required by law.”

After rejecting the contract last year, the City Attorney’s Office launched an audit of LAFLA. LAist asked for details about the audit’s findings but did not receive a response.

In a statement after last week’s vote was delayed, Schultz said LAFLA has provided the city with ongoing reports about Stay Housed L.A. operations.

She said Stay Housed L.A. “has consistently provided anonymized detailed data on the individual case level to the city, without compromising client identities, along with detailed invoicing.” The program has “never refused to provide any data or invoicing information requested by the Los Angeles Housing Department,” she said.

Stay Housed L.A. leaders said the program currently retains about 160 tenants each month for legal representation and provides legal advice to another 575 tenants per month. They said about 55% of the tenants they’ve represented have remained in their homes and another 40% have settled cases on favorable terms.

During Tuesday’s meeting, some City Council members expressed frustration over how much information the program has reported on its outcomes.

“The transparency requirements in these contracts, when I look at them, does not meet the level of what we as a body should be requiring of organizations that we are giving money to,” said Councilmember John Lee, who cast the lone vote against awarding the contract.

Tuesday’s meeting included voting on a flurry of amendments. Among the amendments that passed, there were calls for new reporting requirements and annual funding renewals to be withheld pending performance reviews.

What it all means for renters

LAFLA is currently overseeing the Stay Housed L.A. program through a temporary contract extension set to expire March 31. If the council hadn’t approved the new contract this week, program leaders said they would have needed to quickly stop offering eviction defense services.

The program already has had to be judicious about taking on new clients, Stay Housed L.A. leaders said. They said they didn’t want to commit to defending tenants in months-long eviction cases if the city could abruptly pull funding.

“When [the previous] contract was disrupted, it did impact our ability to serve more and more vulnerable tenants,” said Joanna Esquivel, Stay Housed L.A.’s program manager at the Legal Aid Foundation. “We are really excited to continue doing this critical work.”

The City Council passed a “right to counsel” program last year, aiming to provide low-income tenants with the right to a free attorney in eviction court. The program does not yet guarantee an attorney to all qualified renters but is trying to expand access in phases by building up the Stay Housed L.A. program.

A California appeals court this week sided with state utility regulators in a case seen as crucial to the spread of solar panels on the rooftops of California homes.

Three appeals court judges ruled that the California Public Utilities Commission was justified in reducing the rate utilities pay customers for excess energy the customers’ solar panels generate.

Environmental advocates who brought the case say the decision will exacerbate California’s energy affordability crisis. Regulators believe it vindicates a decision they took “to ensure that rooftop solar programs remain fair, sustainable and aligned with California’s clean energy goals,” CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper said Tuesday.

The case centered on the state’s “net energy metering” program, which governs how much solar customers are paid for excess power from their panels. Earlier versions of the program guaranteed customers the retail rate, which is how much utilities charge other customers when they resell the energy.

But a 2022 commission decision reduced this payment by about 75%. The commission’s decision backed utilities’ position, which was that those who have rooftop panels don’t pay their fair share of costs such as maintaining the grid, shifting the expenses disproportionately to non-solar customers. The decision resulted in a significant drop in new customers signing up for rooftop solar.

Advocacy groups sued over the decision, including the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect our Communities Foundation, and the Environmental Working Group. They argued that commissioners didn’t properly take into consideration the benefits to disadvantaged communities and customers of having local energy generation.

The case reached an appeals court, which applied, in a decision siding with commissioners, a legal standard granting them significant deference. The Supreme Court of California then unanimously ruled last August that the lower court should not have applied this standard and must delve more deeply into the substance of the arguments.

Roger Lin, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said this week’s decision is “disappointing” and the groups are “evaluating all of our options.” They can appeal again to the state supreme court.

“The whole reason the utilities created the ‘cost shift’ narrative was to preserve their profits,” Lin said. Under state law, utilities can earn a rate of return on everything they build, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars from ratepayers every year. They can’t earn that return on customers’ rooftop solar.

The decision comes amid renewed attention on California’s energy affordability crisis. Golden State residents pay the second highest rates in the country for energy after Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Ratepayers routinely admonish state utility regulators for their high bills at public meetings. And Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced an upcoming replacement of the head of the utilities commission as part of a move to focus on bill affordability.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.