DesertBlog

Bauder Debunks Spin on Sunrise Powerlink

Great article on the Sunrise Powerlink in this week’s San Diego Reader by Don Bauder: “Spinrise.”

The article covers the Union-Tribune’s hatchet job on the Utility Consumers Action Network from a couple of Sundays ago, which claimed that SDG&E ratepayers shouldn’t have to pay for UCAN’s efforts to stop the Sunrise Powerlink. Bob Kittle, the author of the U-T editorial, allowed no time for UCAN’s Michael Shames to provide information rebutting the charges, which came straight from SDG&E/Sempra. Nor does he seem to have checked with the California Public Utilities Commission about its intervenor system, even though he calls for dismantling it. And since the editorial appeared, the paper has refused to print a response from UCAN. Thus, many San Diegans are left with the false impression that their utility bills are higher because of UCAN. Bauder’s article corrects this scurrilous charge (our rates are actually much lower than they would be without UCAN’s efforts), and many more.

Bauder reports that several U-T subscribers cancelled their subscriptions in response to this blatant and biased attack. I too was tempted to cancel my subscription, until I remembered the great work being done on the Sunrise Powerlink issue by business writer Dean Calbreath, and Craig Rose before him (and Bauder, of course, was once a business columnist for the paper). We can only hope that the upcoming sale of the U-T will result in more of this type of balanced coverage, and less of the blind boosterism and political hatchet jobs we’ve come to expect from our city’s major daily newspaper.