http://www.h2oecon.com Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:01:44 -0700 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss brian@h2oecon.com 1440 RSSeditor v0.9.54 (http://www.rss-info.com) http://www.examiner.com/a-826584~Letters__July_13__2007.html Brian Browne
Brian Browne

The City ]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-826584~Letters__July_13__2007.html Brian Browne
Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.h2oecon.com/L2EDMay2507.pdf Brian Browne http://www.examiner.com/a-739359~Water_rate_system_criticized.html Brian Browne The city is struggling with an optimal rate structure for allocating water use. There is no such animal. No deus ex machina will mysteriously reveal such a regime. We need a better system for ratemaking where truly knowledgable ratemakers listen carefully to all stakeholders. The disparate and ongoing opinions made public in the Examiner should be the choice of last resort. This system must permit only reasonable and allowable cost recovery. If the mayor wants to award bountiful and unjustified salaries to political hacks for high paying jobs at the SFPUC, these salaries should come from the general fund, not from user-rates. If the GM wishes to appoint unskilled friends to senior positions, this should come from the GM's own salary, not the rate structure. People should pay for cost of water based on the marginal value they place on water consumption and the marginal cost to produce this water.]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-685010~Letters__April_20__2007.html Brian Browne
The Examiner article (Ammiano: City may offer green power to residents, April 18) merits comment.

San Franciscos Public Utility Commission is a municipal provider of electric power to both the public and private sector. This authority comes from the 1913 Raker Act, a 1928 Supreme Court decision, the city charter and AB1890. The City has been buying and supplying power to public and private customers from Hetch Hetchy hydro and aggregated sources for decades.

The SFPUC can wield power over PG&E wires to new and existing customers and gradually ascend the learning curve without incurring additional debt. The task force encouraged the SFPUC in 2000 to pursue a renewable and green approach to gradually expanding their municipal service area with an entrepreneurial and competitive approach. Ignored!

Having the SFPUC, with its stable of resume misfits and dismal track record, as a lead power agency and authority to issue another $1.2 billion in revenue bond debt is a grave concern for San Franciscos economic well-being.

Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-455550~Letters__December_14__2006.html Brian Browne
The Rent Board, with Board of Supervisors acquiescence, now allows a PG&E power pass-through to be based on the landlords PG&E bill in 1980 subtracted from his PG&E bill in 2005 (and so forth). The 1980 bill is not indexed to reflect CPI, PG&E costs or rent increases. It is just cast in stone in nominal 1980 dollars. The greater the time difference, the greater the regressive tax on aging.

This is an illogical and meaningless calculation that has one sure outcome it penalizes renters for getting old in San Francisco. Rent control and age discrimination should be separate issues. It seems that they have been irrevocably joined by the Rent Board and Board of Supervisors with the new Rent Board Rule 6.16. This is truly half-baked economics by a lot of so-called regulatory and legislative progressives.

Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-325680~Letters__October_3__2006.html# Brian Browne The regulatory morass of San Francisco is clearly an extension of political ambitions. Some private-sector entrepreneurs are not even allowed to recover their original rates as a function of the CPI, let alone recover all reasonable and allowable costs to maintain viable service sectors for San Francisco.

Meanwhile, opportunistic entrepreneurs seem to have the political clout to change large apartment complexes into virtual hotels, avoid hotel taxes, and act as an unregulated investor owned utility provider, selling into a monopoly service area. The California Public Utilities Commission should step in and end this activity. Clearly The City will not.

This repricing of power, water and wastewater has a lot of negative impacts. The Rent Board is actually overseeing a power-passthrough that is a highly regressive tax (double dipping) on long-term tenants, who are usually the elderly and infirm. The outsourcing of the sale of water and wastewater to a billing agency with a utility type name appears in conflict with Propositions A and E of 2002.

Much of this is happening in progressive District 3, where the main efforts appear to be renaming major geographical areas and writing job descriptions for some mayoral appointments. Crikey mate, havent you heard that charity begins at home?

Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-704156~Letters__May_1__2007.html Brian Browne
The existing stock of affordable housing in San Francisco is seriously being eroded by hotelization and upscaling.

At a pre-election meeting of District 3 voters in 2004, candidate Aaron Peskin promised to be the Exorcist and excise an odious Rent Board rule that allows a landlord to not only recover his PG&E costs in his normal rent increases, but to receive an additional unearned benefit from the tenant by apportioning the difference between the landlords PG&E bills in 2006 and 1980, etc., back to the renter as a power pass-through.

The Exorcist, his progressive court and the compassionate mayor have not been heard from on this issue. Meanwhile, hotelization and upscaling of previously dedicated affordable housing units continues. The benevolence of the Rent Boards pass-through rules for landlords and weakness of the hotelization ordinance encourage this process.

The outcome of the Rent Boards pass-through system is that long-term San Francisco renters must agree to unevenly subsidize upscaling and hotelization via illogical pass-throughs, or move. These entrepreneurial landlords also have an entire arsenal of adjunct disincentives to hasten long-term renter (affordable) emigration from The City.

Brian Browne

San Francisco]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-691202~Letters__April_24__2007.html Brian Browne
We do know that one of the chief architects of the Iraq invasion was Paul Wolfowitz. He has not been held accountable for his poor judgment in pushing the U.S. into Iraq. Au contraire, President Bush promoted him to head the World Bank. His schemes continue at the World Bank, where it has been uncovered that he signed off on a promotion for his girlfriend. Firing this man as head of the World Bank wont bring back any lives or restore national treasure and prestige, but it will be a beginning in ensuring that those responsible for this Iraq invasion will at some time be held accountable. Our two senators, Feinstein and Boxer, and Speaker of the House Pelosi must demand Paul Wolfowitzs resignation.

Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-667522~Letters__April_11__2007.html
Is the Golden Gateway Center, downtown San Franciscos largest residency complex, doing something similar?]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-620117~Letters__March_15__2007.html Brian Browne
In defending the concerns of citizens regarding the recent outage in water supplies, SFPUCs general manager stated the $4.3 billion capital improvement program was on track [Can S.F. run a public water system? March 14]. Just which track is the concern of many citizens.

Prior to the 2002 election, the SFPUC, without massive access to revenue bond funding, predicted a future of horrific water outages from a litany of natural catastrophes, especially earthquakes and droughts. Never fear, the SFPUC boldly proclaimed: We have a plan. Give us the money and we will fix the system ASAP.

Proposition A gave the SFPUC a down payment of $1.6 billion and Proposition E a blank check by transferring from voters to the board the right to approve of all future revenue bond issuances.

Score card: $233,451,544 has been spent on the capital improvement projects (probably many paper studies and high salaries) since November 2002. This translates into approximately 5.4 percent of the $4.6 billion CIP budget, while about 30 percent of the state-mandated (AB1823) time for completion (2015) of the fix-up has passed.

Brian Browne

The City]]> http://www.examiner.com/a-620117~Letters__March_15__2007.html Brian Browne
In defending the concerns of citizens regarding the recent outage in water supplies, SFPUCs general manager stated the $4.3 billion capital improvement program was on track [Can S.F. run a public water system? March 14]. Just which track is the concern of many citizens.]]>