Since last year’s Wine Country fires, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has been pushing hard in Sacramento for legislation to protect utility companies from full liability in case their wires accidentally spark a blaze.
And Patrick McCallum has been pushing back.
The veteran Sacramento lobbyist leads a campaign called Up From the Ashes whose sole focus is to deny PG&E the legislative victory it seeks. The campaign’s web address neatly sums up its pitch: www.holdpgeaccountable.com. The group, funded by law firms suing PG&E, blames the disaster on the utility, though California fire officials have not announced the causes.
For McCallum, the effort is both professional and personal.
Before dawn on Oct. 9, he and his wife, Sonoma State University President Judy Sakaki, woke to find their Santa Rosa house and everything around it on fire. They fled on foot and barely escaped with their lives.
“If Judy or I would have panicked — at any second panicked — we wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
Hired by the law firms to spearhead Up From the Ashes, McCallum now finds himself telling his survival story as part of his job. It’s an odd position for a lobbyist who built his reputation on higher-education issues. But he figures he’s representing other survivors who also want PG&E held accountable, if the company’s equipment did indeed start the fires.
“If I’m telling their story through my story, then it feels pretty damn good,” said McCallum, head of the McCallum Group lobbying firm.
Patrick McCallum, a veteran Sacramento lobbyist who usually works on education issues, shows a cell phone photo of what's left of his home, in front of the California State Capitol in Sacramento. McCallum, who lost his home in the North Bay fires in 2017, is now lobbying against the efforts of PG&E through his own interest group, Up From the Ashes.
Much is at stake for PG&E and other California utilities, which see wildfire liability as a major and growing threat. Behind closed doors in Sacramento, they have even raised the possibility that it could drive them into bankruptcy.
Under a doctrine known as inverse condemnation, California utility companies can be held responsible for economic damages from fires linked to their equipment, even if they follow all of the state’s safety rules. Damage estimates from last year’s fires in Northern California top $10 billion, and the cleanup has cost more than any California disaster since the 1906 earthquake.
PG&E Corp., the utility’s parent company, reported a substantial $1.66 billion profit last year. But that pales in comparison with the potential damages the company could face from the October fires, which killed 45 people and destroyed 8,880 homes.
Up From the Ashes, which has about half a million dollars in funding, has taken out full-page ads in The Chronicle and elsewhere blaming the fires on PG&E. McCallum has been meeting with legislators, urging them not to tinker with California’s liability laws.
His efforts appear to have had some success. They’ve also come under attack.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 11,500 PG&E employees, filed a complaint this month with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, calling Up From the Ashes a front group for lawyers. The campaign’s website describes itself as “a coalition of fire victims” and does not mention the source of its funding.
“The simple goal is just to make the funder acknowledge the funding source, so lawmakers and others know who’s paying,” said Hunter Stern, business representative for the union.
The IBEW worries about what will happen to utilities if state liability laws don’t change. They want to ease the burden on utilities, which must contend with a warming climate extending the fire season and ever more housing developments pushing into rural areas, factors that increase the potential risk and destructiveness of fires.
“The consumer attorneys would prefer the current structure stay the way it is,” Stern said. “And we believe, for the benefit of our members but also the (utility) customers, that it has to change.”
Otherwise, “The whole industry goes down the tubes,” he said.
PG&E, when asked about Up From the Ashes, would say only that it is aware of the group, as well as the source of the group’s funding.
Registration forms filed with the California Secretary of State in April list Frank Pitre — of the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy — as the group’s “responsible officer.” The firm sued PG&E in November on behalf of North Bay homeowners, including former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan and his wife.
“If you give them a ‘get out of jail free’ card, they have no incentive to get it right — none,” he said.
While Up From the Ashes has not yet filed any financing records with the state, Pitre said 12 law firms have put about $500,000 into the campaign.
The group’s lobbying may be having an impact.
Consumer advocates had worried that a wildfire safety bill wending its way through the state Senate — SB1088, from Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa — could immunize utilities from fire damage liability if the companies followed their own safety plans, submitted to the state. Dodd agreed to remove the language that prompted the liability concern after listening to McCallum and other speakers during a Senate utilities committee hearing in April.
“Can you imaging giving polluters a pass simply because a company met the Trump EPA’s standards?” McCallum asked at the hearing. “Of course not. ... Let the courts make the determination about civil liability.”
David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com
Twitter: @DavidBakerSF
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