According to a story in this week’s Los Angeles Times, the
utility company in our story, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) had indeed
requested permission from the Public Utilities Commission to use $5 million worth
of ratepayer (customer) money on the gas line replacements and upgrades, as I
reported in the earlier post. However, it turns out that this was the second time
all of this had happened; the Company had also requested $5 million in 2007 to
perform the same work, and had given it to their senior managers as wages and
bonuses that time too…
The Times does not speculate on how many more times PG&E
might have tried the same maneuver before they were finally caught, or whether
they ever would have been had a tragic and completely preventable disaster not
occurred. I believe that we are justified in asking that question under the
circumstances, however; and if I was one of the people whose lives and property
were placed at risk so that a bunch of very wealthy people could become a
little bit wealthier, the question would be more of a lawsuit and less of a rhetorical
device…
The thing that puzzles me the most about the situation is
that no one inside or outside the company seems to have questioned these rather
questionable decisions. Some sources have claimed that amount of the
misappropriated funds goes as high as $100 million and took place over a much
longer period, and the fallout from the scandal has resulted in national
attention of the very worst kind, changes in Federal law governing gas pipeline
safety, and indictments that could result in fines of as much as $1.4 billion,
none of which even considers the ongoing civil trials for injuries, wrongful
death, and destruction of private property…
Popular culture fantasies (and nightmares) aside, most
companies in real life will tend to avoid wildly irresponsible actions even
when the possibility of natural gas explosions isn’t present, if only to avoid
being the subject of countless blogs, Internet news stories, television
programs and eventually even books and movies in which the intelligence of
their leadership is compared unfavorably to that of a newborn gerbil. In the
case of a publicly-held or investor-owned company there is a very real chance
of a stockholder’s revolt (or the equivalent) during which the entire senior
management team and the Board of Directors who were supposed to be supervising
them will all effective get fired, and even a private company would have to be
worried about banks refusing to loan them money (because they might not be
around long enough to pay it back), investors refusing to buy their bonds
(ditto), or vendors refusing to sell them anything on credit (see above)…
Nor would any reasonably sane businessperson expect the sort
of misbehavior PG&E has been accused of remaining confidential during the
Internet age. Exposure and scandal were already a problem generations ago –
look up the curious events that happened at the Watergate complex in the early
1970s, if you don’t believe me – but today it’s a virtual certainty that
anything the company does will leak out eventually. The era when any company
could go about its business and not care about how any of its actions would
look in the media has been gone for decades, or possibly centuries, and it is
far past time that managers of all types and levels stopped making choices that
even a rodent born a few minutes ago would consider insane…
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