Solar panels are pictured in 2018 at the MCE Solar One site in Richmond. MCE is a community power provider that serves an estimated 1.8 million people and businesses in Marin, Contra Costa, Solano and Napa counties.

Breaking up, as Neil Sedaka warned, is hard to do.

So why are California politicians acting like a PG&E divorce would be easy?

The behemoth shareholder monopoly is nearly everyone’s favorite money-grubbing, outage-causing villain these days, as off-the-charts energy bills compound Californians’ affordability crisis. Gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer claims he can slash those bills by “introducing competition.” State Sen. Scott Wiener’s “Breakup Bill” would help cities use eminent domain to take control of local PG&E assets.

Article continues below this ad

I’m cheering them on. But I live in Marin County, where the questionable behavior of our local alternative energy provider has recently dashed my own hopes of easy energy independence.

Sixteen years ago, trendy Marin led a thrilling effort to wrest power from PG&E. A 2002 state law allowed cities and counties to create new entities, wonkily named Community Choice Aggregation, to buy or generate electricity. The law wasn’t ideal; investor-owned utilities would keep charge of delivery, billing and maintenance. Yet for a captive PG&E customer like me, Marin’s new local power plan, now known as MCE, seemed close to a tree-hugger’s dream, with advocates promising cleaner energy and lower prices. The great idea, then and now, was that ratepayers shouldn’t have to choose between protecting the climate and worrying that they are being fleeced. 

MCE grew rapidly after its 2010 launch. Today, the $800 million agency serves an estimated 1.8 million people and businesses in Marin, Contra Costa, Solano and Napa counties. Since everyone was automatically enrolled, some may not even know they’re customers. You have to opt out to return to PG&E.

See more S.F. Chronicle on Google

Mournfully, I did just that this month.

Article continues below this ad

There’s too much worrisome smoke surrounding MCE these days — thanks in large part to Steven Rosenfeld’s tenacious reporting in a recent Marin Independent Journal series — including credible concerns about its governance. The Marin Conservation League claims MCE has purchased a controversial type of carbon credit to make itself look greener — a charge the company denies. Meanwhile, the statewide nonprofit Clean Coalition has joined other critics in raising questions about MCE’s transparency and accountability regarding its budgeting, contract decisions and public communications.

It was only after repeated public pressure, including warnings that it might be violating the law, that the agency recently retracted its claim of being “100 percent fossil-free” since 2018.

MCE is also no bargain for ratepayers.

For 16 years, virtue-signaling away, I paid extra for the Deep Green plan, which promised to match my usage with purchases of 100% clean power from solar and wind. But today, after several small PG&E rate cuts, even MCE’s default “Light Green” option costs more than a comparable PG&E plan — about $30 a month more for 2026. A 14% rate cut and a small temporary credit approved on March 19 should make up some of the gap, lowering bills starting April 1 by an average of $11 to $12 a month, according to MCE spokesperson Jenna Tenney.

That gap is partly but not entirely the company’s fault. PG&E charges a fluctuating monthly fee to Community Choice Aggregation customers, in addition to its charges for generation and transmission. It’s called the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment, jargon that helps disguise the irritating truth that PG&E is essentially fining us for not buying its electricity. The rationale is that PG&E has to pay for energy contracts it signed before ratepayers joined the CCA. Last month, my toll was $55.

Frankly, I’d be less annoyed about spending more on local power if, in 2024, the latest year for which State Controller’s Office records are available, MCE hadn’t paid more than $817,000 in wages and benefits, which included an $84,826 “lump sum” payment to CEO Dawn Weisz. That was nearly 60% higher than the total payment that year for the CEO of the Clean Power Alliance of Southern California, which serves more than 3 million customers. (MCE lists Weisz’s 2026 package as $701,114.64.)

“There is a real disconnect between that very high compensation … and the multiple well-documented deficiencies in MCE’s process, financial results and transparency under Ms. Weisz’s leadership,” says Mimi Willard, president of the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, which is investigating the MCE.

MCE has accused the Independent Journal of “factual inaccuracies and disinformation” and requested retractions of statements in its series. (The paper has not published any such retraction to date.) One point of contention: The Independent Journal quoted board member and Larkspur Mayor Stephanie Andre as citing California Energy Commission records showing the power provider purchased 117 natural gas contracts in 2022 and 46 in 2025, even as it claimed to be “fossil free.”

Weisz didn’t deny this was true, but told me the contracts were purchased to meet state “resource adequacy” rules requiring energy providers to procure additional energy beyond expected demand, as insurance for times when renewable supplies aren’t adequate to keep the lights on.

“They were not gas contracts,” Weisz wrote in an email. “They were capacity contracts.”

As for her compensation, Weisz said: “It’s important to look at both the years of experience, the size of the budget, the size of the CCA, and the size of the board … and it’s also important to benchmark against the private sector.”

Under fire, MCE’s 34-member board has begun enacting reforms, including endorsing a governance review by outside consultants and moving forward with creating a finance committee for oversight, which most other large CCAs already have. They may be one step ahead of Marin County’s civil grand jury, which has begun investigating the power provider, according to the Independent Journal.

These troubles don’t mean public energy can’t work. As of last year, only Marin and San Francisco’s CCAs charged their customers more than PG&E, according to the Clean Coalition. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a century-old electric utility serving the Sacramento region, serves customers at half the cost of private utilities, while pursuing an ambitious plan to be zero-carbon by 2030.

Nonetheless, the drama in Marin County reveals what seems like a flaw in state law, which defers to CCA boards for oversight. Even the way-too-tame California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees PG&E, may be preferable to trusting large groups of unpaid, overworked and generally inexperienced board members.

I’d love to see essential heat and light — and health, for that matter — treated as public goods, rather than profit opportunities. But that demands a more rigorous and ongoing ability to hold public servants accountable.

Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.

Read more about our transparency and ethics policies

Moving fast and breaking things may be trendy, but boring old good governance still matters so much more.

Katherine Ellison is a Bay Area journalist, author and member of the San Anselmo Climate Action Commission.

© San Francisco Chronicle