We’ve had our differences with Irvine Councilmember Lonesome Larry Agran, but it’s hard to begrudge him the sense of vindication he must be feeling right now. He’s the only member of the Council, as I understand it, who is not responsible for this bomb going off in the Irvine budget.
From the de facto if not de jure Agran publication Irvine Community News and Views comes this story exulting in the OC Power Authority shooting off its own foot with a blast aimed from the top of its own head. Here’s the lead — with their photo, fairly used without permission, but if they want us to we’ll take it down (have Harvey contact me) — with some staid reporting that almost masks the chortling that you can hear in the background:
And hell yes, I checked out their link to the Public Utility Commission’s list of fines, and it’s true! Scroll all the way to the bottom to see the fine, just a rounding error below $2 million. The problem is that it turns out that you can’t just start a power company, switch customers to it, and not have enough power to get them through year with uninterrupted service. Or rather you can, but there will some serious consequences, of which the fine is just the first.
(However did Brian Probolsky, with all of his vast experience, allow this to happen?)
The second main point in the article is that the Irvine City Council is not allowing Agran to place even discussion items on its agenda — a trick also used in Anaheim, and one that leaves Agran even more secure against any consequences here — which means that he had to announce this calamity during his allotted three minutes of discussion. That is the sort of nasty that truly blows up in one’s face, in that the dungeon into which they thought they were placing him turned out to be the only nearby bomb shelter.
As an aside, as people know there was fake news going around that Dan C’ski. was arrested by the FBI. I still don’t think that it’s true, but it’s the best explanation I can imagine for why he missed this huge story in his own backyard! That, or maybe Melahat doesn’t want it to be covered and still has influence on the Council. Or both! I want it to be both!
Does this impact Huntington Beach — where lovelorn Poseidon Desal proponent Mike Posey just stepped away early from his position representing Surf City on the Board, or Buena Park, or Fullerton, all of whom also agreed to sign up with OCPA? Opinion online seems to suggest that Irvine is covering any debt by itself, as this was an Irvine initiative / literal-power-grab / The Music Man-style vaporware con; I don’t know that any of their residents actually got to the point of being signed up. (Even if they did, I would think that fraud claims about Irvine’s trying to sell green power — still a laudable goal, as much so as 76 trombones for the city’s band, or a new monorail!, but only actually worthy of respect if they can, you know, make it happen! — would such up as much or more of the city’s reserves than the fine.)
We’ll leave the heavy lifting about that question to our friends at the Voice of OC, who had an interesting story about Farrah Khan trying to throw Melahat to the wolves (when she should have known that the mountain lions were a better bet!), but the story doesn’t mention OCPA at all, which many people say (see, we go beyond “some people say” here!) was a Melahat project from the beginning. “Wherever there’s money to be made…” as the saying begins. That investigation should start almost as soon as they read this story — and I’m sure it will be great! We’ll link here for the prose from the pros once it appears.
I don’t know what Irvine’s reserves are, but I’d like to think that bankruptcy is not in the offings. And Irvine citizens are less likely than most to march on City Hall with torches and pitchforks! But let’s get real about something: if Irvine had to sell off assets, it would probably be just the Irvine Company and Five Point buying them, and there’s a possibility that one or both companies could have at least abetted this disaster, and IF SO that would make their capitalizing on any fire sale a bit more dicey.
We’ll have more as soon as our Irvine sources throw it our way!
3 days before she resigned, the DPOC still let Rafiei play in all their reindeer games. Connor Traut donated to Farrah Khan’s mayoral campaign. Farrah didn’t tell him about Rafiei’s perils or anyone else in the DPOC for that matter. If Rafiei told everybody, the DPOC has a lot of explaining to do. So long as Rafiei’s shortcomings didn’t become a matter of public record, the local party was a-ok with her.
https://m.facebook.com/democraticpartyoforangecounty/videos/-great-turnout-last-night-at-the-democratic-party-of-orange-countys-strolls-to-t/742478246763923/
I wonder how much Five Point would pay for the park?
You may get to find out.
Disclaimer – The following comments from Jose Trinidad Castaneda are solely from Jose Trinidad Castaneda. They are not views or opinions that reflect Jose’s employer, appointing Board Directors, OCPA staff, consultants, or any other individuals, organizations, or affiliations.
—
I can shed some light on the E-4195-0116 violation on 04/20/2022 is for $1,962,845.20 due May 20, 2022. It’s a CPUC citation for Resource Adequacy deficiency, and while it may have been presented as a gaffe, it is certainly not.
Considering that OCPA is a brand new agency in its start-up phase with a small staff size, Council member Larry Agran would do well to refrain from causing anti-CCA hysteria and using OCPA for his own political gain as he campaigns for re-election for his umpteenth term.
Last year, it was common knowledge (across the Energy Industry on the Western Grid) that the energy costs for Resource Adequacy (RA) were abnormally high. The window to purchase RA was brief, and our staff and consultants Pacific Energy Advisors were handling many complex, concurrent tasks – including securing a $35M line-of-credit from JP Morgan.
As it turned out, the CPUC Resource Adequacy deficiency citation ($1.96M) was less than the costs of the abnormally high RA rates. So, from public fiduciary and consumer watchdog perspectives, OCPA fell into a more cost-effective provision.
To repeat:
In 2021, OCPA needed to buy System RA and Local RA by 10/31.In 2021, RA was more expensive than ever before.
On 10/31, OCPA didn’t buy over 90% of its System RA requirements, which triggered the CPUC fine that Larry is complaining about.
After 10/31, OCPA did buy 100% of its System RA…because it’s always required at least 45 days before the energy will be used.
Had we bought 100% of the System RA during that August – October purchasing window, OCPA would have paid way over $2.00M for the same result as paying $1.96M + cheaper rates for RA.
This is not going to happen again. A new CCA undergoes a Startup stage only once.
Regardless of Council member Larry Agran’s intentions, his Council meeting announcements, newsletters, and blog entries are misinforming the public about the way OCPA and CCAs at-large operate. By framing his announcements as news, he attempts to avoid culpability for using leading questions and pulling data points out-of-context. Posing as a watchdog fighting for climate action, while simultaneously fighting climate solutions is irresponsible. Dear Orange Juice Blog, please sift through political propaganda more carefully, as I believe we have gone way past “Holding a Public Agency Accountable” and crossed the “Shooting Ourselves In The Foot” threshold.
Author Disclaimer/Disclosure about the Commenter:
[Jose Trinidad Castaneda currently serves as Chair of the OCPA Community Advisory Committee, appointed from the City of Buena Park, and was the former nonprofit Policy Manager who led efforts to organize residents and businesses to support the creation of a Community Choice Aggregation program – from 2016-2020. Jose was very involved in many of the 34 Orange County cities, including the 4 cities who formed OCPA.]
Sources:
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/consumer-protection-and-enforcement-division/documents/ueb/ueb-energy-citations—updated-5-2-22.pdf
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-energy/electric-power-procurement/resource-adequacy-homepage
Just a little advice.
Talk less.
Nahh, he had a cogent point to make and it took that much time to make it.
It does leave me with some questions, though — first about why Michael Posey bailed so suddenly and threw the ball to Dan Kalmick just before this announcement.
I’ll have others, but they can wait.
Mr. Castaneda,
What about the OCPA’s avoidance of a timely, straightforward response to Agran’s FOIA request?
https://councilmemberlarryagran.org/news/councilmember-agran-receives-updates-to-his-ocpa-public-records-requests-edm42?format=amp
Highlighting the agenda is a staff report on the rollout of OCPA-provided power to commercial customers and an end-of-quarter financial report. The latter, listed as Item 9.3 on the consent calendar, reports an operating loss of $3,020,301 for the period July 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022. (During this period, OCPA was not generating revenue from power sales, and operated on funds borrowed from the City of Irvine.)
——————
The accountants’ letter accompanying the financial report includes the following disclaimers raising transparency issues:
“Management has elected to omit substantially all of the note disclosures required by accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America in these interim financial statements. If the omitted disclosures were included in these financial statements, they might influence the user’s conclusions about the Authority’s financial position, results of operations, and cash flows. Accordingly, these financial statements are not designed for those who are not informed about such matters.
“We are not independent with respect to the Authority because we performed certain accounting services that impaired our independence.”
https://irvinewatchdog.org/2022/05/02/oc-power-authority-board-to-review-commercial-power-rollout-finances/
————————————————-
Kim Carr’s Senate Campaign Facebook page has nary a mention of her March 13, 2022 fundraising brunch which was an event promoted by PSG post mortem (SOS suspension 11/23/2021) on February 14, 2022.
https://m.facebook.com/people/Kim-Carr-for-State-Senate/100077683832246/
https://m.facebook.com/events/359167612476781?acontext=%7B%22source%22%3A%223%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D&aref=3&__tn__=HH-R
The OCPA’s attorney is stonewalling the production of formally requested information and this guy is ‘divulging’ information as the organization’s informal spokesperson. Hmm.
I appreciate Trini showing up here with an explanation. I don’t think that this makes him OCPA’s “informal spokesperson.” Can you explain exactly who is stonewalling production” of “formally requested information”? Does this mean something more than that you wore a tuxedo while making a phone call? Assuming so, what — and were they under some legal (or other lesser) obligation to reply?
Jose T. Castaneda’s explanation totally contradicts what was written in the appeal. If his version is true, OCPA’s lawyers lied in the appeal. Any one that is interested in the appeal wording can view it by going to the CPUC website and in the search box type in K2205017 and then click on documents.
A very weak appeal. Their premise: we are small, we can’t afford it so please reduce it, we are new, we looked everywhere but couldn’t find any RA to purchase to meet the requirements on time so we should be forgiven, we had bad addresses, etc,etc.
Try using those excuses when your taxes are due.
I’d tend to believe José over the lawyers. I hope that that doesn’t get him in trouble.