At the CPUC, UCAN is an “Intervenor” in regulatory proceedings affecting energy, tele-communication and other corporations. An Intervenor, upon showing a justifiable interest, is permitted to become a party to a proceeding. Intervenors are full participants in the proceeding and make legal arguments, conduct discovery, file testimony, cross-examine witnesses, and are themselves, if they testify, subject to cross-examination by the other parties in the case.
As a public agency, the CPUC depends on input, questions, and feedback from the general public. By hearing from different perspectives, the Commission is better able to make informed decisions that consider the impact of utility costs and services on all Californians. The Intervenor Program is intended to ensure that utility ratepayers have effective representation in proceedings of the California Public Utilities Commission.
Intervenors help to level the playing field for California’s hard-working ratepayers. Individual consumers typically lack the financial ability to hire experts and lawyers to argue against utility companies, but utility companies have seemingly limitless resources to bring lawyers, economists, geologists, and other professional experts to make their case to the CPUC. Nonprofit organizations intervene on behalf of consumers, our health, safety, privacy, the environment, and the voiceless, such as immigrants, the poor, and the disabled, when a profit-hungry utility company brings a rate case or rulemaking to the CPUC.
Since 1983, UCAN has a proud history of many and significant achievements that have yielded over $500M in savings to San Diego consumers.
- Through intervention in various General Rate Cases and other CPUC proceedings, UCAN saves SDG&E ratepayers more than $500 million!
- UCAN led the fight in which Pacific Bell was fined over $20 million for deceptive and misleading sales practices of local residential telephone customers – the largest fine ever against PacBell.
- UCAN works with the City of San Diego to create a voluntary program to help low-income water customers – funded with ratepayer donations – called Help to Others or H2O.
- UCAN Intervenes in SDG&E 2007 Wildfire Cost Recovery Proceeding (WEMA) and saves San Diego ratepayers $400 Million
- Over the years, UCAN has helped thousands of individual ratepayers and consumers with billing issues, utility shut-offs, and questions about energy, water, and telecom services. In just the last decade, first through its Fraud Squad Unit and now its UCAN, We Can program, UCAN has worked more than 2,000 cases helping individual customers maintain or restore services and save wrongful billing costs.
- In the 2019 Cost of Capital proceedings, UCAN hired experts, filed briefs and cross-examined SDG&E’s witnesses to show that their requested record-high rate of return on equity was unjustified. The CPUC rejected SDG&E’s numbers and denied their requested high rates. Millions of dollars in savings to the ratepayers resulted.
For a history of UCAN, please see here