CPUC Hearing - 2026-02-06

6 February 2026

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Thu, 5 Feb 2026 California Public Utilities Commission

Follow its sittings

00:04 - 00:08

Speaker 1

The feed for this streaming event brought to you by adminmonitor.com.

00:41 - 05:26

Speaker 2

Come to order. Today is 02/06/2026, and this is the 2PM remote public participation hearing for the commission to receive public comment on Southern California Gas Company application for approval of the branch office's closure proposal or application twenty five zero five zero zero one. Southern California Gas Company, or SoCalGas, is proposing to close all 43 of its existing branch offices that currently provide customers the ability to pay their bills, inquire about their accounts, and complete other service transactions in person. My name is Carrie Sisto, and I am the administrative law judge assigned to the proceeding. We are joined today by the assigned commissioner, Darcy Hauk, and her adviser, Caleb Jones.

We will be paying careful attention to your comments today as we would like to better understand how SoCalGas' branch office's closure proposal would affect you or your communication with SoCalGas. Our court reporters will be transcribing everything said today into a written transcript, which will be filed on the docket for this proceeding, which is available to the public at apps.cpuc.ca.gov/c/a25050001. Before we begin, I will note that if you are a party to the proceeding already, this public participation hearing is not the proper venue for you to provide input during the public participation portion of this PPH. The public comment portion of this hearing is to provide more context for the proceeding and then hear from members of the public who are not parties to the proceeding. For members of the public that intend to speak, your comments may only be made over the phone line.

If you intend to speak and have not yet called in, please call 1808571917, and press 1 on your phone to be placed in line. This information is also avail available on the slide in front of you. After pressing star one, you will be prompted for your name and affiliation, if any. When called upon, please state and spell your name and restate your affiliation. If you are an elected official, I would appreciate it if you could provide that information when you begin to speak.

And, again, please state and spell your name and identify your title and which locality you are representing. Any member of the public may ask to speak at any time before we end the forum by pressing star one and providing your name and affiliation. The audio and visual feed of this hearing is being recorded and is also will be made, accessible on the CPUC website. If you do not wish to be recorded, please do not provide public comments. Before we start today's discussion, I would like to give you a brief overview of what the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, is, what it does, and then provide a brief overview of this proceeding.

The CPUC is the state agency that regulates privately owned utilities that provide essential services such as electricity, gas, and water. The five CPUC commissioners are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the California State Senate. The five commissioners will make the final decision on whether to authorize SoCalGas to close its remaining 43 branch offices. As the assigned administrative law judge, I manage this proceeding to evaluate all of the documentation and information received, including the public input provided during the public participation hearing with the assistance of commission staff and the assigned commissioner's advisers. A proposed decision will be published by me, the assigned administrative law judge, for public comment before a final decision is prepared for a vote by the five commissioners.

Commissioner Haupt, do you have any opening comments before we get started on the public comment portion?

05:28 - 06:46

Speaker 3

Thank you, Judge Sisco. Really appreciate all of your work in managing the proceedings. I want to thank our staff for making the virtual hearing possible. I know this is one of several public participation hearings that have been held. My advisor, Caleb Jones, has attended those hearings, and there is a transcript that I will be reviewing.

I am looking forward to hearing members of the public provide their today at the hearings that we'll be having today now at 02:00 and later this evening. We understand this is an important issue that affects people and how they're able to pay their bills and manage the ability to do that. So, I definitely want to hear from you. And as the judge said, we'll be considering what we hear in this hearing and the hearings prior to this. So, I'm going to keep my comments short because I want to we're here to hear from you today, but want to just make sure that you know that we are listening and we do understand the decisions that we're going to make in this proceeding do affect people.

So, with that, I will turn it back over to Judge Sisco and again thank everyone, the applicant, the parties, court reporters, our IT staff, and Judge Sisco that made today's hearing possible.

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