CPUC Workshop - 2021-02-03
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California Public Utilities Commission
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
We take this responsibility very seriously and hope that the two year update to the plan can help us continue to incorporate the goals of the plan in all aspects of our work. Environmental and social justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, especially those that have historically been left out of environmental decision making, which directly impacts their health and well-being. Practices such as redlining and placing industrial centers in low income communities have caused indigenous, black, and Latino communities to carry an extremely high environmental burden resulting in desperate disparate excuse me health and financial outcomes in comparison to other communities largely along racial lines. These same communities also end up spending a large portion of their monthly income and utility bills, a dynamic which has been exacerbated by the COVID-nineteen crisis. We also know that certain regions are disproportionately impacted by industries which create much of California's carbon and methane emissions.
The Central Valley's often poor air quality, for example, is largely a result of agricultural industry and heavy duty vehicle emissions. These regions also suffer from water shortages and pollution in addition to other consequences of climate change. In 2019, the CPUC adopted the ESJ action plan under the leadership of commissioner Guzman Oceves and commissioner Raksha. Excuse me. Both of whom have advocated strongly for environmental and social issues and have worked hard much of their careers towards a greater representation of
Speaker 2
I greatly appreciate their leadership for this initiative as well as their ongoing support to institutionalize the principles adopted under this plan. We have made considerable strides to incorporate the strategic directives in the plan into our regulatory work from including environmental and social justice considerations into scoping memos to allocating funding especially especially to to specific vulnerable communities. Our work, however, is far from over. Today's workshop is an effort to further develop the principles and the actions in plan in the plan to ensure that we take lessons from our previous two years of implementation as well as current thinking into consideration during our regulatory processes. We want to ensure that this plan contains meaningful and actionable steps to both proactively include vulnerable communities in our challenging decision making processes as well as develop policies and programs that directly benefit these communities.
In addition to commissioner Guzman Aceves and Rexhaven, I would like to thank Monaco Palmera, Sarah Sharp, Yuliya Schmidt, Nicole Cropper, Amy Mezobian, and Kathleen Yepp for organizing this outstanding workshop. The effort to increase accessibility by live streaming today's event on Twitter and Facebook as well as providing real time translation services during portions of this workshop is greatly appreciated and models, we will like to continue to encourage greater accessibility and participation in all of our public processes. I would also like to thank our group of industry division staff ESJ liaisons for leading the implementation of the environmental and social justice efforts in their respective divisions and engaging on a daily basis with these issues. This workshop is one of a growing number of examples of how the CPUC is improving accessibility to our decision making process and we look forward to brainstorming with you and hearing from you your input on ways that we can continue to build upon these principles. Thank you for joining us today,
Speaker 2
all the public comments that we receive about ideas and actions that we must incorporate into the update of the ESJ plan. I welcome my fellow commissioners who have joined us today and thank you for being here and everyone please participate strongly. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thanks so much, president Thatcher. We're we're really lucky to have you here today. Also have commissioner Kusmana Seves, and also commissioner Charoma here. You all are scheduled to speak at other times throughout the two day workshop, but I to invite you all if you'd like to say anything at this point before we dive in, if you'd like to say anything.
Speaker 5
Nothing from you, Monica. Just happy to be here. Look forward to the discussion.
Speaker 6
Maybe just briefly, I wanted to respond to one of the comments. Any concerns around ex parte or do not have any concerns with that. This is a publicly noticed meeting. So you're welcome to speak about all issues, and and that is why we followed all of those badly keen rules and prop properly noticing this. So I look forward to the discussion.
Speaker 2
And likewise, thank you for coordinating the two day workshop to the team. I look forward to learning and looking at what else we can and must do at the Commission for Environmental and Social Justice. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you all so much. Okay. So I'm going to dive into kind of the format of the workshop and what you all can expect and how to participate, and then we'll spend some time doing a bit more of an overview of what the plan is and the purpose of today. So if I could just get the slides up, and we can dive into that.
Speaker 1
Perfect. Next slide. Okay. So for today's workshop, we're doing a two day half day workshop, and the intention is that folks be in and out of different sections, but the overall purpose of the workshop is we have three main goals with the workshop. The first is to increase awareness and knowledge about this plan, that we have it, that it exists, that it's in place amongst stakeholders and staff so folks can reference it, look back at it, hold us accountable to it.
The second purpose for this workshop is to foster dialogue and get feedback regarding ways that we can deepen our work around environmental and social justice issues at the PUC, And third is to collect as much concrete information, suggestions and action items that we can incorporate into the update of the environmental and social justice action plan. We'll talk a little bit more about this when we give an overview of the plan, but the plan was adopted in 2019 and calls for us to update it every two years. So here we find ourselves in 2021, and we're looking for fresh action items to incorporate into the plan. Next slide, please. Alright.
So, order to get at those goals, the format of today's workshop will be primarily discussion based. So, you're hearing some presentations right now at the beginning, just to level set, and one of the panel tomorrow morning that's about data collection will be a little bit more presentation oriented, but for the most part, all of the sessions will be discussion oriented. So how they will work is that you will have two facilitators who will be co leading a session together. They will frame up some of the issues at the beginning of the session, kind of provide some background and their perspective on the issue at hand. From there, they will pose questions to all of you, the attendees, to get the dialogue going, to get the conversation going.
You could almost think about this as a large table.
Speaker 1
hear from you. We want your ideas, your feedback and your comments. By the most of the sessions will be here in WebEx events, and there are two different links for each day. At one p. M.
Each day, we will have some breakout sessions where we will focus on specific industry divisions at the PUC. So we can dive into issues related to water, energy, transportation, wildfire, etcetera. So those will also be a part of the workshop. Next slide, please. Alright.
So this is how participation will work and also kind of how it looks on your WebEx event space. So at the bottom of your space, you should be able to see where you can click and you can see a participant list, and you also can see a chat icon. We encourage you to have both of those up on your event space. And the way that we're going to ask folks attendees to participate is if we're in one of the sessions and you have a comment you'd like to give or a question to ask, we're going to ask you to raise your hand by clicking the hand icon. That will let us know that you want to speak and say something, and that will notify us of that.
What will happen is somebody will call your name and unmute you and allow you to give the comment out loud in the session. Once you're complete with your comment, you will be muted and put back into the queue. We also, because we may not be able to get to everybody's comments, we also are utilizing the chat function to be able to get feedback and your ideas and your thoughts. So if you look at your chat function, you'll see there's different options that you can take to who to message in the chat. If you want the message to go to everybody that's here, all two fifty of us or so, make sure you mark all I'm not sure I have their language right because I can't see it.
It's all attendees. So, all attendees, we can all see your thoughts, your reflections on what's happening in the session. If you have more of a logistical question or technical issue, feel free to message all panelists. Panelists are the folks you see at the bottom of the screen, like myself and the other speakers, and we can help sort of triage an issue in that space if that's more appropriate space. But we want to have the chat open, so if we're not able to get everybody verbal comment in, we can have that chat feature and get ideas flowing there.
Next slide, please. Alright. So just to reiterate a little what I mentioned and just highlight the three main ways to participate and provide feedback through this two day workshop. The verbal comment or question, click your hand to raise your hand. When we are able to call on you, the event host will call your name, unmute you, and when it is your turn to speak, And again, just keep in mind we are going to do our best to incorporate as many people and as many voices as we can, but we may not get to everybody depending on the volume.
Therefore, you also have the option of the written comment or question in the chat box to everybody, all attendees. We will
Speaker 1
we can from the chat box into the discussion. One final option that you have is if you would like to email comments, if you have something more substantive or if something doesn't get incorporated in, please feel free to email us. We will also be taking your feedback there. The email address is esjactionplancpuc. Ca dot gov.
So at any point, if you just want to put anything in an email, feel free to send it there, and it will also be part of the whole body of feedback that we're getting through this workshop. Next slide. Alright. And a few final reminders before we dive into the to the meat of this. It's come up in the chat, it's been mentioned, but just to emphasize again, this workshop is being recorded, and the breakouts will also be recorded as well.
And we will make those recordings available on our website after the workshop. It may take a few days, and you can send an email to everybody to let you know when those are posted. But yes, all of those sessions will be made available. Know we will try to capture the comments from the chat even if they're not incorporated into discussion. Again, feel free to use that as a venue to provide some of your feedback.
And then just a courtesy that we ask our folks if you're giving verbal comments at any point during the workshop, but we ask that we do try to keep your spoken comments to about two minutes so we can include as many people as possible and get as much feedback going as possible. Please understand and please be respectful if a facilitator may prompt you to wrap up your comment. Just know, again, it's all in the spirit of getting as many voices in as possible, and please make use of the chat and the email if you would like to further elaborate on your thoughts and reflections. And then, again, last thing, presentations will be posted like this presentation will be posted on the recordings at ctuc.ca.gov/esjactionplan. So that is it on that.
Any questions? I'm going to turn to participants. We're going to give this a try right now. Any questions regarding that participation? Feel free to type them in the chat or raise your hand.
Are we seeing anybody with a I don't think we have any questions. Okay. Straightforward. We'll continue to reiterate the sort of protocols at beginning of each session as we have new people join us. Oh, I do see a question in the chat.
How can the captions be turned on? So the captions are available on stream on admin monitor. If either we will I'll type in how you can get the closed captions on Admin Monitor, but that is where you can have closed captions both in English and in Spanish of the sessions, the WebEx sessions today, but I will add more detail there. And Joe actually has shared that link in the chat now, so feel free to go there. All right.
Next slide, please. Okay. So now we're going to dive into about the action plan, an overview and kind of where we're going with this update to the plan. I really want to thank the folks that are going be doing this presentation with me, Yulia Schmidt, Sarah Sharp and Nicole Cropper. They have been instrumental in the creation of this workshop alongside Amy Nizrobi and Kathleen Yip from the Energy Division, who you will see at other points in this workshop in putting the vision together for this, designing the sessions and helping to coordinate all these details.
I'm glad to be able to do this presentation with them. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of the plan, the goals, some accomplishments that we've had thus far, and what we hope to update some of what we're hoping for with the update. So to kick us off, I'm going to have Julia Schmidt from Commissioner Rex Shuffling's office give us a little background about the plan and what it is.
Speaker 4
Thank you all. It's very heartening and encouraging to see so many attendees today. I know there are well over 200 of us online right now, and the stakeholders represent a variety of communities, organizations, interests across the state, and we're thrilled to have you. I just wanted to give a couple of minutes of background on how this action plan came to be. The Commission started this effort actually in 2017 because we noticed that our work, and Sarah will touch a little more on this, deals with environmental and social justice issues across a huge number of proceedings and initiatives and individual actions, but we did not have a single coherent document that expressed our policy vision and sort of gathered all these actions in one place.
We undertook a pretty lengthy effort, probably about two years of drafting, getting feedback from internal and external stakeholders to publish this action plan in 2019. It intends to serve two purposes. The first, and I sure hope all 200 of you have read the plan, but in case you haven't, the first part is a policy statement as to what the Commission views environmental social issues to be, and our role, or the Commission's role within them. And the second is quite a comprehensive list of those actions, as I said, across numerous proceedings, and actually just about all of the sectors that the CPC works in. So we regulate various aspects of energy, water, telecommunications and transportation, just to name a few.
Those decisions have far reaching impacts on communities identified in the plan. One final element that we built into the plan that has already been mentioned, which is this regular update, a biannual update, that allows us to take a fresh look at the actions that are listed in the plan. That is the accountability mechanism to you, the public, and to ourselves that we can report out on what progress has been made. It allows us to add new actions as they arise that we would like to undertake in the ESJ space and to reflect on the policy portion of the document. So as previous speakers have said, we really look forward to the feedback we get here.
We will be taking it very seriously as we revise the plan for these upcoming two years.
Speaker 9
Should I just jump in? Yes. Go for it, Okay. Next slide. Hi everybody, I'm Sarah Sharpe.
I'm an advisor for Commissioner Guzmana Sevres. The nine environmental social justice goals that are included in the action plan are the bread and butter. They are the main substance of the plan. I'm going to read them aloud for those who are not able to see the slides, as well as anybody who may be listening to the Spanish interpretation. But first, I would just say that these nine goals were intended to be comprehensive and inclusive of all the ways the CPUC policy decisions, programs, and administration can advance environmental and social justice within our jurisdiction, as Eulia just mentioned.
Goal one is to consistently integrate equity and access considerations throughout CPUC proceedings and efforts. Goal two is to increase investment in clean energy resources to benefit ESJ communities. Goal three is to improve access to high quality water communications and transportation services or ESJ communities. Goal four is to increase climate resiliency in ESJ communities. Goal five is to enhance outreach and public participation.
Goal six is to enhance enforcement. Goal seven is to promote economic and workforce development. Goal eight is to improve training and staff development within the CPUC. Finally, nine is to monitor the CPUC's ESJ efforts. As Julia mentioned, that is our accountability goal.
I did shorten all of those, the language of those goals for the sake of time, but now you can get the gist of them. While the goals are broad, we identified 95 discrete action items that are associated with these goals. The ESJ liaisons, which I think we'll talk about later, and the core team who is presenting now are responsible for monitoring our progress on these action items. A status report on the items is presented to the Commission every year in order to achieve goal nine. The first status report was presented on 05/07/2020, which is also available on the ESJ action plan landing page on our CPUC website.
During this workshop, we hope to receive feedback on the relevance and any suggested edits or additions to the goals and action plans in the first ESJ action plan. Nicole Proper will be walking us through some of the highlights of the implementation of these goals and action items in the first two years. With that, I'll pass it to Nicole. Next slide.
Speaker 8
Perfect. So, as Sarah was saying, over the last two years, we have taken many steps forward to include environmental and social justice principles into our decision making processes. One of the first action items in the current iteration of the plan, Actions one point one and one point two, tasks the Commission with incorporating environmental and social justice issues and impacts into our decision making process. Before I get into that, like how we've managed to do that, I would like to personally thank Assistant Chief Anthony Colbert and Judge Eva Tran, along with Monica, Yulia, Sarah, and our previous Legal Intern and Commissioner of our office, Jessica Gendura, who helped out in the early days to draft the broad policy statement that we will use and it will be considered inappropriate proceedings, as well as developing internal guidance to help us consider those impacts. Next slide, please.
Related to proceedings, we have actually had quite a few highlights that I would like to talk about. In the wildfire mitigation planning proceeding, we incorporated new enhanced requirements related to in language outreach before, during, and after a wildfire to communities with limited English proficiency, setting an important precedent for other proceedings related to outreach. The climate adaptation proceeding adopted a definition of disadvantaged vulnerable communities to be utilized by utilities in their planning for climate change impacts. Our affordability proceeding created the first of its kind metrics to assess the affordability of essential utility services, and we will be releasing a report on the findings and conclusions, I believe later this quarter. Across several proceedings from electric vehicle charging to battery storage technology, more and less funds are being prioritized for disadvantaged and low income communities.
A large portion of environmental and social justice is included in is including, excuse me, impacted communities in the decision making process. Education as well as meaningful engagement is crucial to this process and requires forethought on how to intentionally bring these communities into the conversation. Several actions that task the news and outreach office primarily facilitating access of environment and social justice communities to our processes and decision makers. Steps taken towards implementing this goal include creating a new public comment feature on the docket card, which is very exciting. We have also started to push out regional stakeholder newsletters and increasing the focus on environmental social justice more broadly.
News and Outreach is also working on increasing outreach to community based organizations that have not traditionally participated in the Commission's activities, and the virtual environment has in some ways increased that participation in our public meetings. And we'll continue to look for ways to institutionalize these practices. Goal seven of the Embramble and Social Justice Plan directs the Commission to promote workforce development opportunities. I'm very happy to announce that we have signed and executed a Memorandum of Understanding with the California Workforce Development Board to provide expertise and recommendations on our programs. We have chosen a handful of existing programs such as energy efficiency, building electrification, renewable energy, transportation electrification, and vegetation management programs to either review the success of existing workforce development initiatives or as opportunities to develop workforce standards.
The CWDB are experts in their fields, and we will definitely leverage their expertise to continue work on this goal. Finally, a priority for the ESJ working group is to promote opportunities for staff to learn about issues and tools to address environmental and social justice in their work. About a year ago, and this was in pre COVID days, several ESJ liaisons participated in a community outreach engagement training that was hosted by a partnership with state agencies with plans to adapt the training for our Commission specific audience. We also held a Callen Biroscreen training, which was open to all staff this past summer, to familiarize staff on the Office of Environmental Health Equity assessment tool. While this certainly is not the only tool to identify disadvantaged communities, it is a great resource and we want to encourage folks to become comfortable in referencing this tool in their daily work.
In addition, we are creating research assessments and examples of past commission proceedings, which have had an environmental and social justice impact, so that staff has access to real world examples of how to apply these principles. Finally, in coordination with our training office, and I would like to give a little special shout out to Antoinette Seguenza for helping in this effort. We are in the process of creating a new employee training module, which focuses on environmental justice and how these principles can be incorporated into our work. The efforts that I just highlighted are a very broad overview of what we've done over the last couple of years, and we definitely look to successes for takeaways on how to best incorporate ESG items, and I look forward to the conversations that we're going to have over the next few days to kind of keep this work moving forward. So thanks, Monica.
I'll turn it back to you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Nicole. I think I'm going to go one or two slides forward, please. One more. Yes, here we go. Great.
So, this was alluded to in terms of how we are implementing the action plan. I just want to highlight it for everybody to know how we're operationalizing this at the Commission. You know, we've been so fortunate to have strong leadership over the years with Commissioner Rexhoff and Commissioner Guzmana Seva really spearheading the creation of this plan, and where we are now is that we are really trying to operationalize it and systematize the actions and the intentions across ourselves as staff. So, the way we're implementing this is that we have the core team, which is myself, Nicole, Yulia and Sarah, who help to kind of direct and oversee what's happening within the plan and the action items that are within it and try to move things along across the Commission. But key to our work is our environmental and social justice liaisons, or ESJ liaisons.
We have one in each division of the Commission, and we are meeting on a regular basis to talk about lessons that we are learning across our work, sharing best practices amongst ourselves, going to training and doing training, like Nicole talked about, so that we can better understand how we can implement these principles and these practices, and just generally working together in a cross commission kind of way to promote these issues. So that's been really fun to get to know people across the commission and to really feel some solidarity in this work. Next slide. Alright, so now we're at that update to the plan, and just want to give you all a sense of some of what we're looking at in terms of how to kind of structure the plan and what direction we want to take in this update. These are just, you know, ideas that we've had as a core team and as ESG liaisons in where we are today in implementing these goals and where we think we need to go and how the plan can best do that.
So first is in the spirit of the working group being cross divisional and cross commission, we want to prioritize having more cross divisional and cross organizational action items. If you look at the plan today, the action items are very proceeding specific and do a really good job of cataloging all the different ways that we are promoting investment in communities or taking a look at environmental and social justice communities in different ways, but we want to challenge ourselves to kind of do that in a more cross commission and coordinated fashion. So, we're going to be trying to look at action items in that spirit. Second is that we want to ensure that the action plan is a resource to CQC staff and stakeholders. So, we want it to be a document that can be referenced in proceedings, in resolutions, in advice letters with definitions and key items that can help further the principles in the actual policy work that happens.
The third goal we have is to streamline the ability to track the actions and increase accountability. Like Sarah mentioned, we have 95 action items in the plan, which is tremendous, and we don't want to, you know, we're not trying to say that we want to have less actions at all, but we do want to make sure that we have action items that we can track and that we can hold ourselves accountable to in a meaningful way. That's a goal of ours. And the fourth is to distribute action items equitably across industry divisions. So, we want to make sure that all of our divisions are taking on these issues, thinking about them thoughtfully, and it's not necessarily one division or two or three divisions doing most of the thinking in this space.
We want to make sure this is a whole commission, whole organization effort, and that the action items represent that. Next slide. So as far as timeline and where we are, so just like anything with the pandemic, we are trying to create timelines. Things change so much, and there's so much uncertainty, but here is what we're hoping to hold ourselves to right now. So we continue to have liaison working groups on a regular basis.
As Sarah I think mentioned, we did do a status report presentation to commissioners back in May 2020, and that presentation is available on our ESJ action plan webpage as well as the accompanying report if folks want to check that out. Now we're here in February doing this workshop to kick off the process for this update. Our plan is to revise the plan and post a draft, hopefully by no later than early summer, hopefully, and we will allow folks to comment on that as was allowed in the first iteration of the plan. We also, I don't have it listed here, but I also want to highlight the disadvantaged community advisory group, which we have at commission that Kathleen Yip helps to manage. They have also been really instrumental in providing important feedback and leadership on the design of this plan, and we intend to have them help us out too.
So we definitely want to have a plan and a revised plan up and get some more feedback before bringing it back to the Commission, hopefully by late summer or early fall for an actual vote. So the Commissioners will actually be able to vote and codify this and that it has some teeth to it. So that's generally where we are going with the timing that we
Speaker 1
And that's about it. I just want to, you know, we've had a couple of thank yous so far, but a tremendous thank you to so many dozens and dozens of people who have helped make this workshop possible all across our commission, our workshop planning team, the IT team, all of the facilitators and summarizers and note takers and interpreters that you will see, as well as our ESJ liaisons all across the Commission and our division directors, our administrative law judge division and our legal division that helped also with the creation of this agenda. So thank you. That's pretty much what we're up to and the overview of the plan, and we're pretty a little ahead of schedule. If folks have any questions or comments, feel free to raise your hand or put it into the chat, and we can take those now.
In a few minutes. I'm not seeing any hands. Oh, we have a question from I think Joe, are you able to
Speaker 10
Great. Thanks very much. And thank you to the commission for holding this very important session. It's really heartening to see the type of outreach you're doing and continually impressed with the work the commission is doing. I just had, I guess, question and a bit of a comment regarding access.
And you mentioned that part of what you're trying to do is sort of develop a methodology for how you're moving forward. And wanted to sort of understand the degree to which that's going to be transparent evaluation criteria. So as an example, public comments that are really wonderful to see now for each proceeding. Will there be a methodology for how those comments are evaluated so that we understand how they'll be leveraged in proceeding? Will the administrative law judge take those comments and use them in their rulings, understanding if you're coming to a public meeting and you take your two minutes at the podium, how that information will be evaluated.
I just really think it's a wonderful step forward that you presented and just sort of putting some real specific evaluation criteria methodology for how it's reviewed within the proceeding and more generally would go a long way to action the plan that
Speaker 1
Thank you so much for that. I can maybe try to chime in on that, but I will invite any of our commissioners or executive director, not to put you all on the spot, but if you would like to respond to that, please feel free. And I am happy to
Speaker 1
go ahead and take that then in terms of how we're thinking about that. So yes, correct. So we do have public comment available on the docket card now, and you're right, we are trying to get the word out about the availability of that and incorporate it into our decision making process. I understand, and we don't have administrative law judge division on the first session now, but I encourage you to bring that question back up at the two p. M.
Session today where we will be talking a little bit more about that, you know, that kind of topic. I think there's still a lot of room and opportunity to think through and inform how public comment can be incorporated into the record and into the decision making process. I think there isn't one way that that's happening, and perhaps in conversation we can think through what that should look like. But I encourage you, if you're able to chime in at the two p. M.
Session, we will have administrative law judge representation there, and we'll definitely take that comment and build on it. It's one of our really best avenues to support putting more environmental and social justice considerations onto the record, and so it's definitely a priority of ours to figure out how to make the most of that.
Speaker 2
Hi, Monica. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the question. I only raised my hand to second what Monica just said.
First off, we're having a session on exactly that topic in as part of today's workshop. And then Monica is exactly right. It is one of the questions that we have to think through and, really be, very thoughtful and deliberate about. Because while we do want there is room for, including more public comments in our decision making process, We also definitely always have to take into consideration due process and other considerations as well. So, largely to second what Monica said, it's an ongoing question that we're all engaged in.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Okay. I'm not seeing any other questions in either the chat. Oh, we have one hand up. Joe, if we can Alright. Yep.
We can hear you.
Speaker 7
Okay. This is Abigail Solis with South Health Enterprises. Hi, Monica. Commissioners, thank you for the time and for allowing me to ask this question. So, you know, I very, you know, pleased with everything that the CPUC has done to ensure equity and access considerations throughout the CPUC proceedings and as well as staff.
But I'm wondering, what are you doing to ensure that that same equity and access considerations are reaching beyond proceedings and onto the projects and the programs that come out of your proceeding?
Speaker 1
Once again, I'll invite any commissioner or or executive director to to reply. If not, I'm happy to take that.
Speaker 5
Abigail, this is Commissioner Rechtschop, and one answer, it's a partial answer, is, as Nicole said, we have an MOU with the Workforce Investment Board, and we're discussing how to incorporate workforce training and development standards into programs that the PUC funds. That is one way where we're trying to have an impact on the projects and the communities that are affected. We've done this to some degree in our energy efficiency portfolio spending, but not across the board for our other programs. So that is one concrete way we're trying to have a broader impact, but that doesn't answer your the other parts of your question. So I'll let others weigh in.
Speaker 2
I'll also offer a partial answer. Here's another example. Another person who I believe is on the panel during the workshop is our new Tribal Advisor, Kenneth Holbrook. And with his appointment to the CPUC, we have been engaged in a good amount of thinking and action on how the CPUC engages in our tribal consultation and where there are additional opportunities for tribal consultation. Kenneth is working with a couple of folks, Stephanie Green, who was already implementing our tribal consultation work.
But Ken has really focused, for example, on ensuring that the electric utilities are in close contact with tribes when they conduct de energization, the public safety power shutoffs that they conduct when fire risk conditions are high. And so that's another example of how we are looking
Speaker 1
And I'll just chime in to wrap up the question, and I thank you, Abby, for that question. So Nicole mentioned that we're trying to work on incorporating environmental and social justice considerations in things like scoping memos, so in our proceeding process, starting to scope in issues at the beginning of the proceeding so that it gets incorporated into the record throughout the whole process, but it's not something that comes in at the end. So we're working on trying to put in place, you know, guidance and just a systematic way of doing that, but one thing that is not one thing that we want to do to take that further is not, but also consider advice letters, resolutions, things that happen on the implementation side, exactly what you're alluding to, to make sure that we don't leave that behind. A lot of attention is on the proceeding process, and rightfully so, because that is where a lot of policy gets made, but we haven't forgotten about the advice letter process and all of these other things, and we intend to take the lessons that we're learning in starting to do this in scoping memos and put it into some of these other processes we have.
We just haven't admittedly gotten there yet. So that's the answer for me, and then I think Commissioner Gonzalez wants to say something.
Speaker 6
Thank you, Abby. It's good to hear from you as well, and I just want to recognize that this is a real issue across the board for many of our decisions and in in a very parallel track. One of the things that we've been looking at is, you know, we have this these great policies that we set up forward, great programs that we set forward, and many of those ensure things from consumer protection to prioritize investments. And, you know, in the implementation, it often results in a different outcome. And one of our major focuses, President Batcher and Commissioner Rexhaufen have been leading, is our enforcement policy because one of the mechanisms for some of our programs and policies is having a citation program tied to the programs that we approve.
And in some cases, I'll give the disconnections proceeding. Those are very clear rules. You know, you have to provide people at at minimum a twelve month payment plan or you can't charge people reconnection fees anymore. Those are clear rules. They can be guarded through a citation program.
Some of what we've learned in the scene proceeding is different than that. And so we have a different challenge about how we make those policies implementable. It's not going to be through a citation program. It's a little more difficult because it's about almost to the verge of a cultural transformation. So I just want to recognize that and I certainly am eager to hear about recommendations about how we ensure that what we put out in our decisions are truly implemented.
And so I just give a citation example as something where we have had a historical realization that some of our rules are not being implemented and that was a mechanism we did to ensure implementation. For some of our programs, particularly our incentive based programs, we need a mechanism. And I certainly don't know what it is today, but I I do wanna acknowledge that it's a very real issue about what you're speaking to. So thank you very much, and I don't know if there's a particular work session that can be dialogued around, but Monica, I'll leave that to you, Monica.
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, implementation in every session should be discussed. Then enforcement, there's an enforcement breakout tomorrow at one P. M. Okay, everybody.
So it is, we're at 08:11 We had hoped to take a five minute break, but being that this is virtual, just encourage everybody to kind of take breaks as you need. But we will take just a minute or two to transition to our next session and make sure our facilitators are ready and have everything ready. So we will stop there and get ready for our eleven a. M. And start in just a minute or two.
Thanks so much. And then Kathleen and Ami, if you guys are ready to start, free to take it away.
Speaker 12
Let's get started. Hi, everyone. Feel free to trickle in, get a cup of coffee. We're just going to go ahead and get started. Welcome to the defining environmental and social justice session.
I'm Kathleen. I work on a variety of equity issues I'm joined today by Amir Abal from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, APN, and we are also joined by Kapil Kulkarni from the PUC Energy Division. Me and Amir are the facilitators for the session today. In this session, we are going to be talking about the different definitions and terms we use at the PUC to define and identify underserved and vulnerable communities. These definitions are important because they are the basis for eligibility for many of our equity and low income focused programs.
And it's a question that we're really constantly grappling with what counts and what doesn't count. So, the goal of this session is really to raise the issues around the different definitions that we have and have discussion to develop some potential new action items to put into the ESJ action plan update as it relates to definitions of our underserved and vulnerable communities. Before we get into it, just a quick reminder. As many have mentioned, we are hoping to make this as much of an interactive discussion as possible, and we really encourage you to participate. A few reminders on ways to do that.
The first is to give a verbal comment or ask a question. Click the hand next to your name in the participant list. The event host, Joe, will call on your name and unmute you when it is your turn and you'll be able to speak. As Monica and many others have mentioned, please keep in mind that we may not be able to get to everyone, but we'll do our best to get as many comments and questions into the discussion as possible. If you prefer to make a written comment or question, type your comments into the chat box and please send to all participants.
And we will try to weave in as much as we can from the chat box into the discussion. Even if we can't bring your comment into the discussion, the chat will be saved, and we will record your feedback. Finally, if you'd like to submit written comments that are a little bit more substantive via email, for example, you can email your thoughts to esjaactionplancpuc. Ca dot gov. Lastly, before we start, another reminder that this session is being recorded so that we can save all feedback and comments.
I think that Joe mentioned, just wanted to remind us also that people that are only on the phone line, you can dial 3 on your phone to make a comment. So, that's another way to participate as well. All right, let's get started. I'm going to hand it over to Ami.
Speaker 13
Great. Thank you, Christine, and good morning, everyone. As mentioned, my name is Ami Raval. I'm Research Director with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, I'm really excited to be here facilitating the conversation, offering some of our experience and expertise as a community advocate, having been doing this work for about five years at APN and really having learned a lot along the way. So I'll just be doing a little bit of framing before I pass it over back to Kathleen.
Really again grounding in the community perspective as an advocate engaging in PUC proceedings and legislative advocacy and with many other agency programs. Some of the takeaways that I or sort of, I guess, top lines I'd like to offer for us to think through and discuss together. First, start with the just how important definitions are in our work. Definitions really matter if we're trying to achieve targeted investments and protections, especially for the places that have experienced historic burdens, historic inequalities and historic disinvestment. To make that more concrete, I want to uplift CalEnviroScreen, which many folks today are likely familiar with.
CalEnviroScreen is a powerful tool that for especially as environmental justice advocates has helped us really policymakers identify where these communities are in California in order to be able to sort of target those protections and investments. And I think while there has been political dynamics and over the years of in its implementation as it's been strengthened and updated, debate around sort of how the tool has been applied, ways that it might manifest in regional sort of dynamics, we assert that CalEnviroScreen is the sort of not only powerful, but a scientific model for applying data and decision making, Whether that not only be around investments, but land use decision permitting enforcement and other examples. So I just want to say that for us, that tool is really an exemplary model and it's one that we really highlight and uplift that's robust. And again, over the years has been updated and continues to be refined to be sort of accurate and aligned with the ground truthing and the lived experiences of the communities we organize. So that's sort of one I want to highlight.
That's a foundation that we've used in decision making around environmental policy. But I also want to uplift some emerging work that APEN has been doing around climate vulnerability and resilience. We are really building off the work and strength of TALENVIROUS Cream, want to answer a complimentary question around sort of who and where are the communities disproportionately impacted by climate change threats. And partly that's because telemiro screen was never designed to really capture those threats like wildfires or sea level rise or extreme heat. And to name that, it's not a replacement, but it's a complimentary set of questions, complimentary set of mapping that can help us really depict those challenges.
Because what we know is that our communities face a multitude of challenges and they're complex. No single tool can really depict all those complexities. And so our communities really need a suite of tools to sort of uplift and visualize those impacts. And so just as a preview, I want to highlight that we are working with the Office of Planning and Research to sort of make this vision for a climate vulnerability platform real. It's come up in many spaces including at the PUC around there's not a robust framework for climate vulnerability like there is for sort of environmental health burdens and pollution.
And so we wanna have something analogous that can be accessible and user friendly for these complimentary questions. So that's the piece on definitions. My second of three points is around really having an adaptive approach. We have been learning along the way through our advocacy in different proceedings and programs, particularly about the lessons that we are learning through implementation. And different stakeholders have different perspectives, whether a program should take a more targeted approach and really have a narrowed set of definitions for eligibility, or whether we're trying to be more inclusive and really sort of reach as many communities as possible.
From an environmental justice perspective, it depends, but when there is a finite set of resources, and we really want to see substantial investments that can deliver meaningful community benefits versus spreading resources out to thin. And so that balance is tricky and it's an elegant balance we have to strike between inclusivity and targeting. But again, knowing that the communities that we organize, working class communities of color have experienced this historic disinvestment, we really advocate for making sure we are being really targeted to the places that need it the most. And so some of that thinking around sort of what that definition is really depends on the problem the program is trying to solve. So you have to really start there when you think through the right set of criteria.
But there are a set of considerations to evaluate that those sort of sub questions and landing the right answer. And we go through our own process as advocates to think through to sort of think through that program by program. And so what could it look like just to plant a seed for there should be more guidance available through a framework to allow advocates and policymakers alike to have this set of questions to think through when. Definitely talk more about sort of what that could look like and how it could be helpful for policymakers as well. But from our end, we just do a mental exercise of sort of like, is it is it focused on climate vulnerability and climate change impact?
Is it pollution? Is it is there a constraint on resources? Do we need to really, capture a certain percentage of the state? Like, as some examples. And I'm sure folks here can name more.
And then the last point I'd like to make is just, again, the community perspective. So to speak to data sources, we really advocate for being holistic, that we can't just rely on sort of environmental exposures or climate projections alone, that the science needs to be complemented with socioeconomic factors and neighborhood conditions that we know are closely intertwined really relate to how communities experience and accumulate risk, whether that be from pollution or climate change. And so that's a justice lens that really, again, takes into account those historic inequalities. And that's fundamental to our advocacy. So we're always trying to bring the social, economic, the people centered factors as part of approaching definition.
But I will say, through our advocacy and work in local implementation, it has it still continues to be hard for communities to access the programs that we advocate for. And we often hear from partners that sometimes overly complicated or restrictive eligibility can make it hard to access funding. And so we know we need to keep that in mind and not sort of create burdens for our folks to actually access these programs through the eligibility. And so I'd love to I want to as the discussion continues, what are creative solutions to help sort of streamline access to all these programs to navigate across all the various eligibility criteria and make sure that our communities are able to benefit across these programs and maximize benefits. So I'm gonna stop there because I wanna make time for the rest of the discussion and I'll pass it back to Kathleen.
Speaker 12
Awesome. Thanks very much, Ami. And that was such a good overview of like the challenges that the community is facing, our stakeholders are facing. And maybe before getting into some discussion with the public, I just wanted to give maybe a little bit of thinking behind some of the next steps that we are taking at the PUC. So, as Amit had mentioned, we do have many definitions.
We have the definition in the Environmental and Social Justice ESJ Action Plan. We have the definition that was provided by the Disadvantaged Community Advisory Group, the DECAD Equity Framework. We have definitions that are created in proceedings that are assigned to us by the legislature. We have definitions borrowed from elsewhere, so many. And we also have all these terms.
We've got low income, we've got disadvantaged community, we have hard to reach underserved. We have in really all these terms are just a little bit different, which as Ami had mentioned, creates confusion, not just among stakeholders, but also, I would say, and program implementators. And so, a lot of and from there also a lot of staff resources and time is spent recreating the wheel in every proceeding, figuring out what the definition should be. And we understand that definitions, they shift based on the particulars of the proceeding or who the target population is. As Ami had mentioned, sometimes we want to create eligibility for a large portion of the state, but sometimes we want to focus resources in the most affected areas of the state.
So, one of the things that we are thinking about and wanting to get some feedback from you all on is whether or not we should create some sort of framework or template like definition that guides staff to a definition that already exists and meets the specific needs of the policy or program that is being created. And the first step in that, which we are kind of starting now, is to catalog all the different definitions that we have to help even understand the universe of definitions we have across the PUC. And following that, then we can start to think about what a potential baseline or template definition could be where we can plug in some modifications. So, we have all these income eligibility thresholds. I mean, we have some that are based on federal poverty limit.
We have some that are based on area median income, state median income. And so, that would be one piece of it. Another piece that we're thinking of including in this framework would be tools like Talendvirus Screen and tools beyond Talendvirus Screen. As Ami mentioned that, you know, not Talendvirus Screen doesn't capture everything. It is very focused on communities most affected by air quality burdens.
But I've come up in the climate change adaptation context, that tool doesn't capture the vulnerabilities for every situation.
Speaker 12
aren't realistically going to be able to have one definition that suits every purpose, but we are exploring the idea of having this baseline definition where we can plot in modifications. So, we are that's kind of some of the preliminary thinking that we have right now. And I would kind of open it up to comments or initial feedback before we get into some questions. Any thoughts, panelists? I think we have one question.
Constance, I think that your line is open.
Speaker 15
Hi there. Constance Leider Pierre with TURN, the Utility Reform Network. I'm just curious to know if by aggregating kind of all of these definitions, the goal is for the commission to come up with own definition that would be applied in proceedings and across the different divisions of the PUC to kind of address or get at these or is yes, that's my question, initial question.
Speaker 12
Just to make sure that I'm understanding, so are you asking if we're going to have just one definition across the Commission?
Speaker 12
Okay. Maybe I'll start and welcome Ami and others to chime in. I think that we don't think that we're going to have one definition because we don't I think we're not going to have one definition that suits every need. Mean, some definitions are going to be so for example, a program that Kapil Kapakarani is leading is the energy assistance programs and those we're trying to create eligibility for that program on a larger swath of the state where so that income eligibility will be a little bit different. Eligibility for that the definition for that would be potentially different as opposed to the climate change adaptation proceeding that Omni and APEN was very involved in.
There was a finite set of resources that we wanted to very laser focus those resources into the most affected parts of the state. So, are two separate definitions, but I think that one of the things we're trying to understand is how do we what is the baseline of definitions and how can we pair related programs and proceedings? How can we pair those definitions together? I mean, I don't know if you want to chime in as well.
Speaker 13
No, I think that it's helpful to hear from the sort of staff perspective because I think as I mentioned no one definition can sort of, I think apply alone across a multitude of applications and programs. Think that could be really reductive and part of the reason we're adaptive and maybe slightly modify again, not only because we're learning along the way, but because the set the problem statement, the set of issues that proceeding or program might be trying to address are distinct. So that's, I just want to name that, that the set of criteria, indicators or data that are usually depend on that. But I do think this piece Kathleen, as you mentioned of a foundation, a baseline and even just the analysis of where there's sort of overlap like where their shared approaches and then distinction, all of that as a foundation to guide folks as we're continuing to engage in different proceedings will be really helpful. So, yeah.
Speaker 12
All right. I'm going to open it up to the next question. I think we have Martha on the line.
Speaker 15
Armas, Kelly with Catholic Charities. You know, what I'm hearing is really great discussion. However, one thing that I'd like to add to that, it's not enough just to have a name or an identity or a word or, acronym or whatever you wanna call it. It's really putting mindful approach to when we're even calling any one group or even identifying one group to understand that some of those groups have names, right? So wherever we're able to say you know West Modesto or let's say Oak Park residents in Oak Park that we be conscious of the of of their identity.
If they identify themselves as a group that we are consistent with that and identifying them and giving them the due respect in who they are and where they identify and using the right terms, so so to speak. A lot of times, I've I've viewed a lot of RFPs, different documents, and they say, you know, disadvantaged communities. Well, let's call them by what they are. You know? Like like, give them their name.
You know? If we're talking about residents in Sacramento, if we're talking about residents in Los Angeles, wherever it is at, we need be conscious that that these people that are living in these environments are are duly being affected by our decision making, and we need to be respectful. I think it's so important that that we're even looking at these paradigms, you know, of environmental justice, social equity. But what do we mean when we say social equity? Identifying what we think and what another person believes in as far as equity could be very different.
You know? So so being mindful, letting the others know as we start today, we're going to look at equity. And equity to us means x, y, and z. It may mean a b c to you, and we're more than willing to accept and include your your connotation of what it means to you and being mindful and respectful. It's so important.
And and I'm really excited to be here today. I I I was looking over your budget, and one thing I did wanna say is I noted that on the budget for lifeline program that you were having some problems with outreach. So my thought process was, like, are we really involving other CBOs and FBOs to the table to participate in those efforts to to get those grassroots individuals to be part of your your outreach? And in such, are we able to have an opportunity for compensation or or some type of subsidies? Because if I see the people that are out there promoting the free phones, and I think if these opportunities were afforded to other people that are just trying to get by and and we're respectful of their time and who how they are able to do these opportunities for our program, let's let's make some provisions so that we can stipend or, actually give give something back rather than just expect to meet our our deliverables.
Speaker 12
Thank you very much, Martha. Maybe I'll, offer a chance to respond to Ami first and maybe some other panelists.
Speaker 13
I really appreciate it that you raised that because I think sometimes in talking about definitions in particular that lens, that sort of the lived experiences and the people that are really sort of we're representing with these very technical definitions, sort of lens that it's people, these are humans, these are communities gets sort of lost. I think, just want to uplift that part of the importance there is also in addition to sort of being careful about how we name, you know, this principle of self determination that communities are also sort of name sort of refer to their places, their communities for themselves. And I think coupling any sort of workaround definitions and targeting of programs with strong community leadership and participation and ground truthing, I think is really, really critical. I know CalEnviroScreen really in its inception tried to do create that tool in partnership with community leaders and advocates.
Speaker 12
And I wanted to also maybe put Monica on the spot to maybe if you want to respond to the compensation piece at all.
Speaker 1
Hi, can you hear me? Okay, so I am not a telecommunications person, but I do know there's work happening in lifeline to really look at that, and so the timing is actually really good. I think there's going to be some opportunities to think about how the outreach can improve. So consider joining the telecommunications breakout this afternoon, but yes, absolutely, in terms of how we can, we have a lot of programs that have partnerships with community based organizations, but there's a lot of room to improve upon what those partnerships look like. So I'll just be brief with that and happy to follow-up and connect with
Speaker 12
Yeah, I just want to echo on these thanks to you for raising that, the comment that to kind of also just like really ground a lot of our work and the fact that we're working with people and calling out the communities. We really appreciate you calling that out and think that that's really important. One thing that I had heard from Julia Jordan from the leadership council was that when she was doing this discussion on outreach and engaging communities, she said kind of the same thing. She was like, you're just talking to people. It doesn't have to be quite so complicated.
And sometimes we are like so caught up in our thoughts and definitions and just kind of also being reminded that we are dealing with people and to keep that in the front of our minds. All right, moving on to, did Commissioner Rakshawaten, did you want to comment?
Speaker 5
No, go ahead and get comments from the public. I had a question for Ami, but it can wait.
Speaker 10
I think starting with the definitions is a great place to start, really foundational to how we move forward. I just wanted to inquire in terms of how you're looking at the definitions and through what lens. So what's important obviously is that, what the commission comes up with is really actionable. And so what might be environmental and social justice outside of the commission might not be exactly the lens that the commission might want to look through. And so I wanted to understand the degree to which you were thinking about aligning these definitions with the work of the CPUC that you do in terms of the regulation.
So as an example, there are specific thing specific criteria for how we're evaluating the credit worthiness of our utilities, right? So as part of social justice and how we're trying to look at this and define this is what is going to be sort of the public definition of creditworthiness. So as we're, say, as an example, increasing rates and what that does to the creditworthiness or the insurance issues associated with utility, are we expecting that we would have a life measure for how that affects creditworthiness and insurance issues within particular populations. And so, we might use a cost of living index or other types of profiles, again to be actively used within proceedings and within the commission's deliberation so that we are looking at what are the costs and benefits on who we're regulating and also the implications for the public and the communities we're talking about. Didn't know if you were sort of thinking it through in those terms.
Thank you.
Speaker 12
Really good comment. Maybe I'll respond first and open it up to Ami and other panelists. I do think that we that's a really good point. Thank you for raising that. I think that we are looking that's kind of one of the questions that we're looking to understand is what are the other indicators, what are the other tools that we should be thinking outside of the ones that we already know.
Know, coronavirus screening was brought up. We've heard, you know, social vulnerability index. We've heard healthy places index, but bringing in these others, I think that as you framed it, like life indicators data points, I think that's a really good point. Should try to figure out how we can incorporate some of those relevant data sources into our definitions. That's very good feedback.
Speaker 10
Hi there. Yes, Amit already addressed my question. This is Nathan Bengtsson from Climb Girling from PG and E. I think the definition question is so hard. And just one of the considerations is how does the baseline that you all develop tie into the broader definitions that are being developed at the other agencies?
And I'm sure that's something you've all considered, but I'm curious if there's sort of an explicit effort to think about that in this effort.
Speaker 12
Yeah. Thanks, Fariz. And I'm just browsing. Seeing your question now, I I did just wanna raise that the climate adaptation team. We did we did talk with ICARP and OTR and a couple of other agencies in the creation of the definition.
Had this term that was created disadvantage and vulnerable community. We did do a little bit of browsing around including Omni, UC Berkeley, Leadership Council, OPR. We did talk with a lot of other folks to see how we can incorporate their definition into ours. And what we learned from talking with ICARP is that they are working with APEN and others to develop some kind of tool and definition for climate vulnerability. And I think that in terms of working with other agencies, we are I think that maybe even the second part of there's this bucket of cataloging internally PUC, what our definitions are, figuring out what the baseline isn't, figuring out internally, but then also working externally.
We do often work with ARB and CEC, but I think that's like a very large effort to align amongst agencies. But I think that that's a really good we want to create more alignment, but it's a very large effort that we are we keep in the back of our mind, but it's right now, this particular focus, the smallest segment we're working on first is PUC focused and then trying to broaden it out to ARB. But we are in regular contact with ARB and CEC. So thanks
Speaker 13
I would just add there too. I've been really impressed with the CPUC's approach in particular proceedings to sort of reach out and coordinate with other agencies and offices that have more expertise. So bringing Nunantara and ICARP staff to sort of just connect and coordinate across agencies for the adaptation proceeding was really, really, really helpful. I just appreciate not operating in silos when we know the Department of Public Health similarly has a lot of expertise around these questions. But yes, as a preview, APN and green lining are in the process after, you know, a few years of advocacy to really realize a quantitative data visualization platform for climate vulnerability.
In part because it's hard to really operationalize to someone's point, make actionable a qualitative definition. And I know that utilities are, you know, working on their own vulnerability assessments, and I we hope that this can be a resource for the the work that, the utilities are doing too.
Speaker 12
the next caller, I just wanted to check-in if there was any comments or questions from the Spanish line. Okay. All right. Let's move on. Bruno, I think is next.
Speaker 16
Thank you very much. I'm kind of new here to this conversation. I just happen to have some time on my day to be able to join in and listen. I've been trying to listening to a lot of what the CPUC has been involved with just because it affects my community so much. I'm a district supervisor for the County Of Lake and we are a raw resource type of community where there's definitely been some abuses in our environment and has not helped us in reaching our economic goals for individuals within our community.
And that's where I see a lot of environmental justice issues is typically in poor areas, we'll go ahead and install certain industries or certain types economic drivers. But I'm seeing on the other side, to me environmental justice, if your definition of environment includes the social economic demographic of a community is the lack of infrastructure and COVID-nineteen is absolutely highlighting that when we do not have the broadband infrastructure because things have necessarily been deployed in less affluent areas. And so not only do we get knocked on one side where we may get some sort of industry that might pollute our lake, might pollute our creeks and other things like that. On the other end, we do not get the infrastructure to be able to move forward and keep up with the average Joneses of the state of California which keeps us even further behind. So I don't know if that's necessarily within the topic that you're talking about.
I love the topic that you are discussing and we'll continue to listen but I thought I'd at least introduce myself and express myself while I had the opportunity. Thank you so much.
Speaker 12
Nice to meet you virtually. Don't know if Ami want to respond anybody. Panelists I also invite you to respond. Go ahead commissioner Guzmana Seves.
Speaker 6
Thank you for allowing me to participate in your panel. I just wanted to respond to the supervisor in that it absolutely is. I think we see the areas of state that are not served properly in their telecommunication needs, and it's an area that is overripe for action. And I think, you know, as we look at the different strategies for meeting our goals within this action plan, we have a particular opportunity now with the new administration in D. C.
To finally get to a place where we can regulate and ensuring that all Californians have access to this service. So I absolutely this is absolutely part of the action plan, I would just encourage you to join the breakout session. Thank you.
Speaker 12
Alright. I'm going to look through the chat. We have one question. Sorry, I just lost it. Maybe
Speaker 12
get Commissioner Rexhofen to ask your question and then I'll pull up the next one.
Speaker 5
A question or a comment or I don't know, just expressing a challenge in what you said, one of the things you said. You said it's important that we have sort of simpler less restrictive definitions because it's very hard for some communities to access programs, but you also said it's very important to target programs with the people who most need them. And I think that's a challenge that we've seen in our programs. We want to design programs to get to the neediest people to the most deserving, but when we define some of our criteria a little bit more loosely, we're not always successful in doing that. Others take up some of the program budget.
We have limited funds and we do want to target them to the most disadvantaged communities, but sometimes that does mean making the requirements more limited or restrictive. It's a dilemma. I don't know the answer. I'm just posing it for you to think about and for the larger group and stakeholders to help us think through how to deal with that. We don't want to be overly technical.
We don't want to exclude people because it's so difficult and so specific. But if we don't, we run the risk that the program funds will be depleted.
Speaker 13
Yes. Thank you, Commissioner, for that comment. And I do think that that is, again, a tricky complex. It's like a it's a wicked problem. It requires a lot of collaboration to figure out and really land on what's, again, not balanced.
But I I do think that, as I mentioned, being adaptive is really important and really thinking through what are the challenges. I think sometimes the critique will be, definition was really restricted, but there's no applicants, right? So there and there's other programs that are oversubscribed. So those communities don't even want the funds or they don't need them. And that's actually the wrong, I think, assumption or conclusion to make.
I think sometimes even with those risk, it's not just the restrictive definition that's the problem. It could be lack of access to technical assistance and making sure those communities who are included and eligible have the support they need to be connected and apply and secure the funding. So I do want to offer that to the group too is sometimes it's not just the definition that's the problem, but actually the technical assistance, the barriers to applying that might be the problem to solve. So there's a lot there, but wanted to offer that into to not always sort of we shouldn't just focus on the definition piece as the the the key challenge.
Speaker 12
Alright. I'm gonna move to a question from the chat, But I also wanted to remind folks that if you have your hand raised and you have already spoken, please put your hand down and let's hear another question, and then we'll get you back in the queue. So one question that came up was this question I want to first post to Ami and then invite any of the other panelists to respond. It was a question about the term disadvantaged community. Sorry, chat is moving, so I can't see who submitted it.
I'm sorry about that, but the question is basically the term disadvantaged community, the negative term. We have heard from many folks that it may not be the appropriate term to use and I wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 13
Yeah, this is an ongoing debate in conversation. And I think where we are at this stage in the sort of development of televiral screen and the codifying of disadvantaged communities and policy has meant that while that debate continues and I think is important to have, there are a lot of programs that have sort of implemented and really rely on those terms to refer to the top 25 percentile, most impacted, most burdened coronavirus screening community communities identified by coronavirus screen. Because what I just said is more it's loaded than just saying disadvantaged communities, and that's been socialized too. But that doesn't mean that debates shouldn't continue. I'll be honest at APN, while we recognize that in policy and legislation, there is a need because of what people understand making accessible to our policymakers.
In terms of our messaging, our the way we talk about our communities or and talk about ourselves, we don't say use disadvantaged communities. It's it it is it is problematic for many reasons. And again, with the value of self determination, in our advocacy, we use environmental justice communities. We use working class communities of color or communities with the least material resources. So we've thought through sort of alter I guess, adapting our language and being firm in the places that we organize about that, that aligns with what how people refer to themselves.
But in the policy sphere, it's a little bit more challenging.
Speaker 12
Great. Thanks very much, Hami. Let's move to the next comment from verbal comment on the line.
Speaker 18
Okay, great. Sorry, I didn't realize it was me. Thank you all for participating today and for offering this opportunity to engage and to get our viewpoint. I think it's really important that we contextualize where we're at today. The world is changing very fast.
Climate change is moving quickly. And I think we're getting key signals from federal and even state authorities that we need to move faster, we need to move quicker, we need to move better in our climate strategy and actions. And it really dovetails with the work of the CPUC. We are working right now, I'm with the Center for Human Rights and Environment and also the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. We're working closely with CPUC and CARB to try to find areas where collaboration interagency could really help.
And we're finding spaces where that currently isn't happening. And I think it's really important to think of ways where energy efficiency and cost benefit can also work with air quality and climate strategies because the push will be to address climate. In the AB 617 space, for example, air quality is so critically important and yet it doesn't consider urban heat as a priority. If we can promote avoided warming strategies through public utilities, that really helps bring the temperature down for certain communities that really need it. It's an environmental justice action and it could lower the need for energy.
We need to think about those cross sector, cross program, cross agency approaches and ways that we can help climate change, but at the same time help EJ communities while addressing it all through things like the programs that are coming out of CPUC. So I hope that we will be taking the emerging federal policies, the executive orders, which are just rich in this sort of approach and these issues and use those to think through this reform of the action strategy plan. Thank you very much.
Speaker 12
Thanks very much, Danielle. All right, let's move to the next question on the line. We've got Leslie. Your line is open and let's follow by let's follow Leslie with Central Valley Urban Institute.
Speaker 19
Hi folks, this is Leslie Martinez with Leadership Council. First of all, thanks so much for having us, Ami. I love hearing you speak about so many of the issues that I think we collaborate a lot in the same space. There was a few things that through this conversation I think are important to acknowledge and raise, specifically the comment regarding barriers. In the Central Valley and then in the East Coachella Valley, resources are so limited in like just overall, that there has to be some type of way where we can get those types of communities get feedback to figure out how we can get them at the table, how we can get them to ensure they, like what are their, like really figure out what exactly are their barriers and how we overcome them.
Specifically thinking about the rural communities. Often in proceedings, I think a lot of the times everyone wants a document, like a very formal piece of that describes the community. But the reality is that in order for us to, I think, in order for us to move forward is we also have to recognize that racism, red lining segregation have actually hindered so much of these, many communities that none of this information is available for them. When it comes to Census, actual number of folks that live in communities, what their boundaries are. And I mean, some communities do not exist technically, but they do, if that makes sense.
And that's really important for the rural context
Speaker 19
It's the idea that they don't even exist. So, really encouraging to think about being adaptive, but also flexible to the needs of communities to ensure that there are other ways to show that they are a community. And then the other thing that I'd also like to raise is Thinking about disadvantaged communities, also including like the geography, you know, the San Joaquin Valley turns into a bowl. So like, for example, during wildfire season, a lot of resource and attention are always focused on those areas that were definitely hit very hard by wildfire. But I think it's also important to recognize what happens when the smoke comes back to the valley and it stays here for a very long time.
And I agree with the comments made before me about climate, but I also think it's extremely important for us to not undermine the importance of health and what that means for communities, what disadvantage means in terms of health, how close are folks to hospitals, do they have access to primary healthcare? And the third part is cost. I think that an important thing that we need to recognize about disadvantaged communities is often, specifically during the pandemic, we saw so many folks lose jobs with absolutely no lifeline to help out. And I think that's what, when I think of the definition, would like to see a definition that includes, that is very, that targets these specific types of communities, where we know that they need extra help, where we know that the data is not there and it needs to be, because that is where we will create resiliency through the most effective community.
Speaker 12
am just wanting to note we have ten minutes left. All right. So I'm going to do one more verbal line. Who knew there was going to be so much interest in definitions? So that's great.
So one more question from the line and then I'm going to answer one question from the chat and then we will move to summarizing next steps. So let's move to center for who is it? Sorry. Central Valley Urban Institute.
Speaker 20
My name is Eric Payne. I'm the executive director of the Central Valley Urban Institute. Commissioners, and staff, I wanna thank you for creating space, to have this conversation. And looking at this document as a value document as it operates from a place of equity and inclusion, I want to center my comments on access. And my comments speak to the full alignment of goals six, seven, and four in your document.
Specifically, I want to talk about like when we talk about our love languages, there are many different love love languages and we we I I see this document as the the the verbal communication to affirm our love for environmental and social justice communities. But I think I want to see the action behind how this document is lived out. And when I say that, I mean, looking at the investments specifically here in the Central Valley. I I don't know. I there's not even a presence, a physical office from the CPUC and I think that's where the rubber can begin to meet the road in terms of investing in those communities that see the most environmental degradation across the state.
Giving a community that is in this somewhat of a black box in the state and giving us access to to the staff, to the leaders, and give us boots on the ground so they can see firsthand the issues that that we are experiencing here in the Central Valley. And that that will also you know it helped the organization meet this triple bottom line of right. The environmental and social justice aspect of it. Looking at the economic and workforce development components of having a presence here in the Central Valley, and then the public good and the public benefit of giving a community that that is plagued by a public health crisis centered as we center around water issues and disparities, In our schools, in our urban schools, looking at ensuring that our utility companies do what they say that they're gonna do. When you have a merger like Sprint and T Mobile and they say they're gonna put a job center here in the Central Valley, and then after they get their regulatory permits, they renege and they take a step back and say, well, no.
Now is not a good time. So I just really wanna elevate these issues to know that, we are here for partnerships. We are here to share the experiences of the residents that we work with and that we serve. And and we have seen some of the transformational changes in this document play out in our region, especially when you talk about having the utilities have a presence here with the workforce piece. While while they came, we haven't seen the fruits of that through procurement opportunities for our small businesses and building the capacity of our micro businesses here in the Central Valley.
We know that we are at a a huge disadvantage when you talk about capacity and so my hope and my desire is that the CPUC will will look to the issues that we're experiencing and that we're elevating here in this conversation and reach out so we can move this work forward. Thank you, commissioners.
Speaker 12
Great. Thank you very much. Alright. I'm gonna do the last question and then move to Kapil to help summarize our action items. The last question that was raised was talking about basically what the baseline of questions may look like and how that will be structured.
That's something that we are looking for feedback on both from staff and from stakeholders. Our thinking is that, yes, it will be a little bit of a plug and play. If you can answer some questions, okay, you're trying to get eligibility to this percent of the state, then maybe go with this income threshold. And then if you're looking for vulnerabilities for folks affected by climate change, look at these set of tools and these set of indicators. We are looking exploring the development of tools to help staff make more informed decisions.
We're trying to build up the qualitative and quantitative kind of knowledge, I guess. So how do we use both qualitative and quantitative information to inform our thinking around definitions and our creation of definitions? So if we want to use 60% area median income, how many households does that affect? What parts of the state does that affect? And so we're trying to think through all those pieces.
So we don't have necessarily like something in set in stone yet of what we think it would look like, but we do think it's going to be a little bit of a plug and play with questions that will help you decide, this is how you're going to plug it in. One of the things that I've been thinking of, it's a little bit like Mad Libs. I don't know if that's kind of like an ancient reference, but a little bit is just like plugging it. Okay, these are the options that you have. You can plug in this way.
I know there's one last question on the line, but we're going have to skip it because we only have four minutes left. I'm going to move to Kapil if you can help us summarize and highlight the key action items or next steps from the conversation.
Speaker 21
Sure. Thanks everyone. There are a lot of good comments. I'm going try and get through kind of a high level summary as well as some action items. So Amit talked about how the tool is very useful at the organization level for identifying, you know, where actions should be taken and that the tool, you know, should be adaptive to to be able to include include be more inclusive or whether it should be kind of targeting certain communities.
And then also what are the data sources that can be used to make it a holistic exercise. The question about whether there's gonna be one definition, and
Speaker 21
the overall consensus was that there won't be one specific definition, but that it'll be inclusive of, you know, all the information out there and based on what Kathleen just mentioned about using the MADLIBs approach to inform what are the different impacts of area median income versus federal poverty guidelines and all the different definitions out there that right now are determining eligibility for many of these programs. Martha from Catholic Charities had a good comment about how the names of these definitions can impact the communities and to make sure that there are names and communities behind these definitions that we're not just using the technical definition when we're trying to do outreach or include these communities in programs. Let's see, there's discussion from Nathan and Ami about definitions from other organizations and trying to make sure that, you know, all of the different information out there can be can be utilized and not wanting to for each organization to have their own definitions. Comments about aligning definitions inside and outside the PUC, you know, relating to credit worthiness of utilities versus also credit worthiness of communities or households. Comments from Daniel and Commissioner Guzman of Service about making sure that the action plan can adapt to changing political considerations and kind of a new political environment for us address the supervisor's point about bringing more resource to areas that have been neglected in the past.
That's and then Daniel's point about interagency collaboration, is something that I think, you know, we we can all improve upon to make sure that, you know, if our if our goal is to, you know, climate resiliency that we're looking at both say energy efficiency and air quality.
Speaker 12
Awesome. Thanks very much, Kapil. I want to thank everyone, especially Ami for joining us today. It was a great conversation. Who knew that there was going to be so much interest around definitions?
Did just want to ask if you did make a comment, please lower your hand. It helps our IT process the next session. If we did not get to you today, I'm very sorry, but please do submit your comments in the, you know, please join the other sessions, make your comments there, please send your comments to us via email. Your comments and feedback will be considered and the update to the plan. We intend to release a draft of the updated plan later this spring, maybe early summer, depending on how things go and that will allow for additional public comment at that time.
So thank you again very much for joining, and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Ami, Kathleen and Kapil, for that. And thank you everybody for participating. That was the first session, so glad that we were able to figure out how to work all the different pieces. And it looks like just making sure, yeah, we don't have any comments on the Spanish line, so we're okay. So all right, so we will capture the chat and make sure all of that is saved, so if you have any last thoughts, please feel free to type them in.
And now we're going to take a lunch break from twelve to one. At 01:00, we will be in breakout sessions. So we will, have a slide up in this Webex that, has the links to the individual breakout sessions. Unfortunately, they're in individual Webex meetings. We'll also make sure the links are in the chat so that you can directly link to them.
They're also directly linked on our website and on the agenda. So hopefully everybody can find those easily, and then we will be back at two p. M. In this venue to talk about incorporating environmental and social justice into scoping memos and toward decision making process more broadly. So thank you so much, and we will see you at one in the breakout.
Thanks. Okay, Joe. Judge Eva Tran from our Administrative Law Judge Division at the PUC, as well as Mad from the Greenlining Institute. We also have Nicole Cropper helping to catch those action items in those chats and summarize at the end. So, I'll ask it to Judge Tran first.
Speaker 3
Good morning. Thank you oh, no, good afternoon. And thank you, Monica. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our breakout session today.
My name is Ava Tran, and I am one of the administrative law judges here at the commission. I am excited to be co facilitating this afternoon session with Matt Stauff from the Green Mining Institute. During the session, we will focus on the issue of systemizing ESG considerations and how we can do a better job of incorporating these ESG issues into our proceedings and processes. We discussed briefly this morning, the Commission is making strides to scope ESG considerations into our relevant proceedings. The staff here and our leadership team teams have been encouraged to discuss the goals of the ESG action plan and weave the issues and potential impacts to ESJ communities into our proceedings where appropriate.
During this session, we will discuss how this is being undertaken internally at the POC. We would like to brainstorm with parties on how we can get more parties and other stakeholders to help us support these efforts and also identify what other ways the PUC can ensure that USDA considerations are being taken into account. Our goal, of course, is to be able to get out of this session some new potential action items that we can use to update our ESJ action plan. So before I turn this over to Matt who will help frame the discussion, I will note that we really hope to make this session as interactive as possible. I'm sure we're all familiar by now, but just a few reminders on how you can participate during this session.
First, you can provide a verbal comment or ask a question by clicking the hand next to the name in the participant list. The event host will call your name and unmute you when it's your time to speak. And we apologize because we will not always be able to get to everybody, but we'll do our best to get to as many comments and questions as possible. Second, if you would like to make a written comment or question, type your comment or question into the chat box and send it to all participants. Again, we will try to weave as much as we can from the chat box into our discussion today.
But if you are not able to bring a comment into the discussion, the chat will be saved and we will record your feedback. And third, if you would like to submit written comments via email, you can do that as well. You can send your comments to esjactionplantpuc. Ca dot gov. And lastly, will remind folks that this session is being recorded so that we can save all of our feedback and comments.
With that, I will turn it over to my co facilitator, Annette.
Speaker 22
So much judge Tran and thank you all and thank you to the PUC for organizing this incredible event. My name is Mad Stano and I'm senior legal counsel on the energy equity team at the Green Lining Institute. We are a racial justice nonprofit working on community led solutions to the ongoing impacts of redlining on communities of color located in Oakland, California. I personally came to energy work at the CPUC and this conversation due to my experiences working in partnership with environmental justice communities largely in California, San Joaquin Valley as a community based attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty and Environment. And then later in my career with California Environmental Justice Alliance.
I'm not for any attorney but wanted to offer a brief grounding on the themes of this session before opening the conversation to you all. Just really wanna tee up some of the things that stand out to me, some of the tensions, some of the possible solutions, and really really just give you some food for thought to stimulate your own brainstorming on these important questions. And those themes are why we should be incorporating environmental and social justice considerations into policy making at the commission, how we can all do that from our respective roles and contribute to achieving that, and the importance of a flexible yet systemic consistent approach to incorporating environmental and social justice at the commission. A couple thoughts on why. As has already been highlighted and as many of you are aware, but it's important to always bring in the space, service is currently inequitable.
The financial burdens related to utility service are inequitable. The pollution burdens, reliability, the ability to influence decisions at the commission are currently inequitable. While the commission and many of you all in this virtual space are doing incredible work to change that, that is our starting point. The burdens of utility cost, pollution, access, safety, and reliability for some communities are truly life threatening and deeply impact folks' quality of life. And I think it's important to root our thinking on this, not just in processes and regulatory approaches, but actually on improving and responding to real life and community impacts.
One can and we often do make the case that some of these disparities are illegal under civil rights legal analysis and counter to the commission's mission and regulatory scope. So that's some of the why. We also have guidance from a b sixteen twenty eight defining environmental justice that requires the meaningful consider the meaningful consideration of recommendations from populations and communities most impacted by pollution into environmental and land use decisions across California. Those are some of the justifications, but also right, there's always the moral case that these disparities are wrong. And I think it's it's okay to enter that enter this conversation around justice from a value standpoint.
So whatever the statutory then you also have kind of the efficiency or the business case, whatever the statutory target or regulatory requirements going on in a particular proceeding at the commission, targeting and achieving environmental and social justice is essential to reaching whatever goals are. We can't decarbonize. We can't achieve before the least. We can't study wildfires. We can't have just and reasonable rates or universal service without centering those most impacted and their leadership.
So thinking about the how, how do we achieve environmental and social justice from an incredibly large active decision maker and and body like the commission making the case for systematizing this approach. So how do we ensure that the three justices, so distributive, procedural, and corrective justice are meaningfully considered, are able to be achieved, are able to be furthered through the commission's activities and actions. So thinking about how do we reform the processes, how do we reform the criteria of which decision makers are are held to in in their decision making, and then evaluate the success following the the leadership of those in environmental and social justice communities. A fun part of being a facilitator is you get to ask those giant questions and then just walk away and rely on the collective wisdom of the room. So I with that, we'll open up the conversation here.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say Before we open up the discussion and the Q and A session, I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes updating folks on what we're doing here internally at the commission since we officially launched the ESJ effort. So, you know, over the last probably over the last six plus months or so, the administrative law judge division, our various commissioner offices, and all of our industry division, we've been working pretty closely on how we as a commission can more proactively approach the ESG issues in all of our proceedings. So, for some of the proceedings that we oversee, the scope of issues of the request naturally lends itself to ESG considerations, and those are the ones that are specifically targeting either low income or vulnerable populations.
So, it's been a little bit easier there. However, there are so many, many more other proceedings that we preside over where it may not be as obvious that there are ESJ impacts to these communities. And it's within these proceedings that we really need to be more proactive and ensure that they are not overlooked. So what we started doing internally is to require at the onset of every new proceeding that we received where the assigned judge, the assigned commissioner in consultation with our industry division leads, have a discussion on the onset and we made a pretty early determination as to whether or not there are any related industry impacts that need to be included in the scope of the proceeding. And at that very preliminary stage, the goal is not to identify all of the impacts because it would be too premature to identify them all, the goal is really to simply identify if there are impacts and if so, then the theme of initiate considerations will be included in the scope so that we know that we're getting, you know, not only the folks internally at the community that's working on these issues, but also all parties on alert that this is something that we're considering within the scope of the proceeding.
So there's been a lot of discussions internally and we've actually developed a guidance document to sort of help guide some of the analysts, our commissioners and our advisors and even the ALJ division on how to go about identifying some of these issues, seeing whether or not we have the right parties present in our proceedings and sort of how to go about ensuring that we are capturing as much as we can and not overlooking any impacts that might be within our proceedings that's hidden. So one of the active roles that we will be doing is to determine if parties to any proceeding directly represent the potentially impacted communities. And if it's determined that it's not, then the commission will work, specifically the news and outreach team will be looking to develop some sort of outreach plan to make sure that we're informing the interested groups about the proceeding and commissioning them on how to become a party to the proceeding or how to provide public comments. I know that Nicole spoke earlier this morning about a public comment portal and how we've been using that. So that's always another great option for us to be participating in.
We just need to educate folks more and be somewhere aware that there are other options. But you know even with sort of a process that we've laid out internally, I would note that there still are challenges and one of those challenges is how do we ensure that we have the sufficient representation in our proceedings. And I don't want to say that we need more parties in our proceedings, although that might be the case for some proceedings. But I think we want to think about how do we make sure that we have the right parties and the right interest, the various interests represented so at the end of the day, the decision makers are receiving a fully balanced perspective. So I just wanted to, you know, provide a really quick and brief update on what we've been doing internally, but I'll turn it back to you, Matt, to start up the discussion and q and a session.
Speaker 22
Thank you so much, and thank you for for sharing those updates. Wonderful. Well, getting into our first question for you all. So how can we better scope environmental and social justice considerations into the proceedings? We just heard a little bit about the approach now.
What should we be looking at when we open proceedings to help understand if impacts may be there? So to to judge Tran's point, there's internal analysis going on to see whether or not environmental and social justice themes are present in any given proceeding. And then there's the the decision of how to apply that in scoping the proceeding. Do folks have thoughts that they wanna share at on those questions? And it looks like we we have some comments too in the chat as well.
But we'll open up our our first questions on scoping considerations and how to approach that.
Speaker 8
I'm gonna ask that IT open the line for Leslie Martinez. I think she has her hands her hand raised.
Speaker 19
Leslie Martinez with Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. Think the first you know, we're we're an advocacy organization, also, you know, we're organizers at heart. And I think when I hear the word scoping, my first comment would be, it's not very difficult to know where some of these proceedings are going to be what locations they're going to affect. And I also think that with that being said, there needs to be a greater emphasis on hearing directly from the people that are going to be affected by the decisions that this body is making. I think that as someone who has recently started to engage with the CPUC and has had to work with the CPUC alongside community residents, it is one of the hardest organizations for the commissioners to hear directly from residents in the San Joaquin and East Coachella Valley.
I give a lot of kudos to Commissioner Arceva Guzman, who was such so accessible to community residents that they were allowed to feel heard. I And think that that went a long way in the San Joaquin Valley proceeding. But it's unfortunate that is an exception and not just good practice. I think that in order for us to, and this goes far beyond just proceedings in general, but as we're thinking about projects and programs that are being implemented, frankly, all of us on the phone here or most of us probably do not benefit from any of the programs. We work with people who benefit from the programs.
And I think that it is our role to connect agencies directly to those who are going to be using these programs. What is the reality? What do they look like on the ground? How are they affecting lives of people? I don't think that these programs can genuinely be better or grow better or be adjusted at all if we don't hear from those at the front, meaning black, indigenous and people of color, specifically mobile home parks.
I'm thinking the East Coachella Valley that I feel like often is not being highlighted, even though they have some of the most extreme climate issues and they are frontline community. So long story short, I really think that there needs to be a practice that there is a difference between notification and that is the list, that's emails, that's calls, and there's a difference between outreach. And outreach takes a long time. It takes door knocking, it takes directly engaging with people. And I don't want the two to be confused.
Because I think that if we continue to confuse the two, we're not going to be able to achieve what we genuinely want to achieve, which is real, meaningful input from community.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Thank you, Leslie, for that really thoughtful comment. And, you know, we I think it's probably lessons learned specifically from what Commissioner Gooseman and Service has done and with the proceedings and how we do want to hear more from the communities that are directly affected. And that's why we have begun thinking about how we plan the outreach to these communities. So as we begin to sort of flush out some of the details of how our news and outreach team will go about coordinating these efforts and which groups we coordinate with, You'll probably hear a little bit more from us as we reach out to some of these community groups on how to make sure that these efforts are more effective.
Speaker 22
Those reflections, Leslie. And I think some of the the pieces that stood out to me in that reflection are the community engagement in terms of sequencing needs to occur throughout the entire process. Right? Ideally, in the policy development once we're at the PC, we're getting towards that that implementation phase, that geographic analysis can influence that stakeholder engagement and community outreach, but it has to be a substantive and long standing commitment that starts before that scoping that should inform the scoping, not just how the commission responds to whatever the issues are in the scope. And I think certainly as a practitioner or folks that are practicing at the PUC, we've all seen the gap from where we feel like we're trying to force environmental and social justice issues in once the commission has already committed to a narrower or or distinct scope.
So thank you so much for for that reflection. Do folks other folks on the line have reflections on the scoping portion too, and what should we be looking to in addition to impacted community expertise and just noting the difficulties of navigating and participating in the existing system for environmental and social justice communities despite some of the public outreach efforts that the commission has engaged in over the last few years, especially other reflections or answers to this question.
Speaker 1
Feel free to call out the name of the person, if IT actually could unmute Daniel, that would be great.
Speaker 18
So just a little further to the comment I made earlier on this point, one way to go about this in terms of scope is to look at where environmental justice policy is and social justice policy plays out in California policy like in AP 6.7 or in
Speaker 18
trade and transformative climate communities. In all of those spaces, you're dealing with EJ policies and grant making and community engagement. It would be interesting to try to understand where did you see policy dovetails with those and maybe through some of the community steering committees, for example, in the AP six seventeen process, I'm sure you're going to be able to find people that are engaged on public utilities relevant dynamics and actions that are happening. You know, it's going to require a little bit of outreach and thinking about where to find those spaces, but they are out there. It's important that you are sort of bridging to those other spheres of action and policy.
Speaker 22
Thank you, Daniel. So thinking about how other agencies are approaching it, community experts that are active with other agencies, what are the major environmental justice policy spaces, and and how can the CPUC both learn and and integrate with them? Thank you. Okay. It looks like we have Abigail as well.
Speaker 7
Yes. Thanks, Matt. This is Abigail Solis with Self Help Enterprises. So I I do I think that this is the right time for me to make this comment. When you think about how the CPUC can work better with communities and what they can do to encourage participation.
One thing really in addition to the things that Leslie mentioned and others about obviously the difference between just a service list and actually engaging with communities, like true community engagement and true community outreach. You know, when you think about the small group of people that influence these proceedings and the small group of people that are actually involved in the decisions that are made, it's actually quite scary when there's such a huge community out there and other residents that are not part of the process. But one of the things that has, in my experience, kept community based organizations from participating is the long wait time to receive intervener compensation. Now maybe it's just my organization's personal experience. We began to engage in a proceeding about three or four years ago and submitted for intervener compensation for that proceeding about over two I think two years ago have yet to receive any of that compensation.
You know, not that we do, you know, obviously CBOs participate even if, you know, we do a lot of things for free. But you know, sometimes we spend a lot of time and energy on certain proceedings and it would really help if this process was expedited or maybe made easier. I think that would really encourage participation moving forward.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Abigail, for that comment. I don't have too much to say about the process because I know that there is a process for how intervener compensation is allocated. But I will say that we are very well aware of the issue and we understand that it is a major barrier into getting both parties involved in our proceedings. I just wanted to note that we definitely acknowledge that.
Speaker 22
Absolutely. Huge barrier. I think even filing that ICON request is a very detailed and and challenging endeavor, especially for community organizations that are focused on many other things in addition to CPUC engagement. And we also have agreement from Lara from NRDC on iComp improvements and reaching out offering contact information to follow-up on on some solutions there. And I think we have raised hand also from James and then maybe we'll move on to our next question.
Speaker 22
Alright. Well, maybe we can catch you in a few. But in the interest of time, we'll move. And I think both yes.
Speaker 2
I yes. It's Mary Mary Mary Bell Badger. I just want to respond, about the, slowness in the intervener comp compensation, and the commenters are absolutely correct. I just called for the statistics the other day. They're not good.
We have three people and a supervisor in that unit, and that's, too limited of resources. And I think it's been that way for a while. And I plan to, put forward a request from the Department of Finance to improve that. It's been a concern of mine and ours, the commissioners. We have comments occasionally in the public comment period of our commission meetings that raises the same issue.
That's why I call for the statistics and watch over them and see where we are in terms of tardiness and lightness in meeting the the schedule, and we're very behind. And that's inexcusable, and we're going to work hard to, change. I know many of the interveners, nonprofits, small budgets, dependent on, contributions, and they run on a very slim slim margin. I'm very aware of it. I've worked in the nonprofit world, and it's difficult.
So I wanna thank you for your your comments, I want to assure you that I'm I understand.
Speaker 22
Wonderful. Thank you. And relatedly to to the last few offerings, so what can the commission do or what can we do as a a professional community to get more parties and stakeholders involved? So in addition to kind of ICOM reform and financial support, Leslie also mentioned some of the procedural barriers that exist to participation, geographic timelines, all sorts of barriers. So how can we get more parties and stakeholders involved?
Or I guess, broadening the question too, is is that a solution? Is that the correct pathway to ensure achievement of environmental social justice, or do folks have other suggestions? But thinking about quality and and meaningful stakeholder engagement and knowing too that those processes are time and resource intensive. So how to balance some of those tensions there. Folks have comments or reflections?
Speaker 19
Hi. This is Leslie Martinez with leadership council. I think about this question a lot as someone who came into a proceeding and kind of in the middle and trying to understand what was happening during time of the time. I think that one of the first things that's important to recognize is how attorneys are, attorneys who have CPC experience and understand how to go through the system are those are often in nonprofit CBOs often rely on those folks. And if those folks are at capacity, then there's no way for smaller organizations to be a part of the CPVC experience, really.
I think that's something that is really that I would I think is needed is a how to, technical assistance for organizations who are filing their ICOM, technical assistance for smaller CBOs that want to be involved, but perhaps do not have the funding to have an attorney. I think of smaller organizations who work with folks who like work with Hmong community members, Cambodian, that I think the CPUC needs those voices and they are not being heard because of the various barriers. The other thing that I think is also really important to recognize is that if the CPUC wants to engage with community residents more, I think that one thing that has to be recognized is that the time that residents give to CPUC, often folks who are living under the poverty line, folks who are, you know, farm workers who have to come straight from work to a meeting, like they we like, CPUC doesn't doesn't fund outreach. They don't fund, like, you know, space. Like, if a CBO would like to provide dinner for residents who they know that are coming straight from a day in the field.
That's something that the organization has to cover, and that's not possible for all the small ones. And finally, I really think that in order for public, for the PUC to hear more often from community members, there needs to be more access. I of how the San Joaquin Regional Air District, it's a huge air basin. And they have three separate offices where they are able to folks are able to connect through the three regions. And I think that's really impressive.
And I think that we need to figure out more ways
Speaker 19
our distance, what we've learned through this COVID experience in a way that we can create more access to folks while also recognizing that there are still folks who don't have access to broadband. Thank you.
Speaker 22
Awesome. Thank you so much, Leslie. Fantastic suggestions and reflections, solutions oriented, and, yeah, excited to continue talking more about some of those specifics. Do folks have other suggestions on stakeholder engagement and supporting engagement?
Speaker 1
Hey. This is Monica. Sorry to chime in. I think you have three folks, queued up.
Speaker 14
Hi. This is Martha Armas, Kelly, and excuse my nickname being on my phone, but I had to drop someone off. I just wanna say that, you know, for for us as as CBOs, it's important for our residents and community groups to understand what your role is. You know, I I I know for my own understanding, but I mean, for for most folks, we they don't know how to make that connection. And if I think more folks were aware that you did more of a campaign on letting people understand the importance of your role and how you affect the decision making for their communication, that would be the start, you know?
And and again, I'm in total agreement with the previous speaker. We have we're always mindful of our agendas and and that the things and our deliverables that we wanna meet, but we don't really take time to engage with the community by rewarding them or even acknowledging them for their participation. And right now with COVID, like for myself and my own work, I sometimes had to say, hey, it's not about my deliverables, it's
Speaker 14
the needs so they could even attend or be part of these tables? You know? If I want them to engage and they're hungry, I better show them resources. I better give them opportunities so that they can engage and and their bellies be full or their bills get paid or something where there's some type of an exchange. And and information is crucial, not just what we want to give, but what all the other information that's available through your department.
You have a bevy of knowledge of with other departments of things and resources that they could receive if in a meeting you would provide something as a support to those residents, understanding that they're in their climate has changed, you know, their environment has changed, their needs have changed, and and you're cognizant of that, then that makes that that level of integration just that more rich for for our community residents and those that may be participating. So that's really important. Thank you.
Speaker 22
the super thoughtful reflection and getting to, yeah, the the why of the stakeholder engagement, not just to engage, but really making sure that that engagement is rooted in in those tangible benefits that we're encouraging to participate. So thank you so much for sharing that. Stan? And then Deborah?
Speaker 11
I This may be slightly beyond the purview of your of the PC, but I've been doing this for a couple of years and I've seen funding sources, for example, like the USDA in a meeting a couple of years ago giving their report of the amount of money that we've given for the broadband infrastructure programs for underserved communities. And I looked around the room when the representative said that they had not given any grants to the Central Valley and only like one saying California. I can't remember, but this is about the 19 funding cycle, I think. So then in 2020, I thought, well, let's work on a grant for a small community, a farm worker community of about 7,000, but we're already up against the clock. And then there's a 15% matching.
It's up to $3,000,000 that you can get for projects to bring broadband to an underserved or unserved community or section of that population. We had to overcome first, well, the definition of need and once again we're up against the ISP saying, oh, we provide internet to that area and then I look at their internet and I say, no, you don't. And it doesn't meet the minimum definition. But so, okay, so we got through that. But then there's just a question of you have to almost go back to the same ISP to ask them to collaborate on a funding application.
I guess my point is this. I think communities and community groups, CBOs and a lot of people out there, there's a lot of money right now because of COVID. It brought to light all the disparities and the injustice in the, what I call the digital desert. And so now that we need to address it, we see large amounts of funding available through the FCC, through the, I think the Employment Development Administration, the PUC itself, through CSF or CASF funds or whatever the case is, and the USDA, I mean, huge amounts of money, but we don't have the expertise to say just even put together an application. You're almost forced to go out and hire a consultant paying $50,000 to put together an application.
It's complex. You don't necessarily get the buy in from the Internet service providers, so you gotta deal with that. There's a lot of things there, but now is it within the PUCs, for example, agenda or something to maybe provide training and help to facilitate through any types of either funding or just their expertise? Really, this is the funds that are available in California to Central Valley. These are the programs, the categories.
This is how you apply some workshops on how to do that because otherwise it's going to be a repeat of that same cycle and it's really unfortunate right now in the time of need. So if I could you may not be able to answer that, but I mean, if we could just keep that on Thank the you.
Speaker 23
Hello. First, I wanna I wanna thank everyone for this panel and this discussion today. My name is Deborah Baylis. I represent the California Environmental Justice Alliance in a number of commission proceedings. And just wanna echo some of the points
Speaker 8
Will Kroppar, I'm gonna remind all attendees, if you can if you're not speaking, if you could please mute your
Speaker 17
Looks like we're all sorted out. Thank you. Apologies for the interruption.
Speaker 23
I I don't know where I stopped, but I'm Deborah Baylis. I represent the California Environmental Justice Alliance in a number of proceedings and I want to echo some of the statements that Leslie made. It takes an incredible amount of resources to fully participate in a commission proceeding. And every year there's way more proceedings that we are interested in participating in than we have resources for. Many organizations don't have full time staff, that they can devote to commission proceeding.
And so if there is a way to make proceedings more accessible, that community based organizations and community members can give meaningful comments that will be used to influence decisions, that would be a positive change. I know that there were changes, the public comments are now considered and included in the docket. But it's still very hard, for example, for community member to navigate the docket. It's very hard for a community member to figure out it's even hard for me to figure out which advice letters impact which proceedings and which areas of the state. And so I encourage the commission to think of ways to make all of this more accessible, more accessible to the to the community.
If there's visualization tools, if there's outreach, there are a number of different methods that other agencies have used, to make their information more accessible. And by making it more accessible, that'll empower communities to be able to have a voice. But if we don't know where to find the information and what decisions are being made, then we don't have the tools that we need, to be able to influence those decisions. And thank you again for having all of these discussions.
Speaker 8
the line for just a moment? This is Nicole. Would you be able to provide examples of organizations that have those kinds of resources? I think that would be helpful for us moving forward.
Speaker 23
Yes, so like I mentioned, I've been representing California Environmental Justice Alliance. California Environmental Justice Alliance has 10 members including leadership councils. And so we're able to draw on each of those community based organizations to help provide resources to participate within the commission proceeding. But whereas we are able to participate in some commission proceedings, we by no means have enough resources to participate in every commission proceeding that potentially impacts the community members that we work with. And that's that's because of resources, you know, and and it's it's because we know that in order to be able to participate, we need to fully participate for the most of proceedings.
We can't drop in and provide a comment, which would be a way, you know, a better way for us to have a voice in more decisions, but it doesn't appear that those substantively change the decision making process.
Speaker 8
That's I was asking, are there other state agencies who are doing a good job about this? I think, know, we're a state agency. I think, you know, it's hard to navigate. Are examples of other state agencies who do it really well. We'd love to take those examples and see how to implement that here.
Speaker 23
Yeah. That's a that's a really, really good question. I will I will talk to the members about and see if we can put in some comments on that.
Speaker 1
I'm just going to reach out to Judge Tran and Mad. We need to wrap up and move on to Commissioner Kisbenefit.
Speaker 3
on the agenda to do a quick summary and takeaways and maybe listen to potential action items. Do you have anything to report or shall we
Speaker 8
I'll be really fast. Can really so I won't reiterate everything that we spoke about today, but it definitely sounds like finding a way to provide resources for folks to participate in our proceedings, making it easier, doing fact sheets, doing more meaningful engagement outreach are probably some tangible things that we can do. I do look forward to getting examples of other state agencies that do a good job of this, because I do think that would help us figure out how we can do better. I think, generally speaking, those are all kind of the actions. And then also the ICOMP program, that was another item that folks said they need to revisit.
So I think those two are the largest takeaways from this panel.
Speaker 3
Okay. Thank you, Nicole. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating to MAS for helping facilitate this section. This was really valuable feedback that we received. Hear you loud and clear.
And I just wanted to note that the comments and feedback, all of your comments and feedback will be considered in how we move forward to updating our EHA action plan. We will be releasing a draft, I know they mentioned, either late spring or early summer, so look out for that. And in the meantime, if there are any additional comments that we're not able to get to but you would like to submit through email as well, it's esjactionplantpuc. Ca dot gov. And with that, I thank you all, and I turn this back to Monica.
Speaker 1
Thank you so much, and thank you, everyone. I know there's still a few hands up, and we are trying to figure out some other logistics in the chat box. So apologies if weren't able to get to you, please. You can put it in the chat now. All that chat will be captured or emailed just like Judge Tran said.
So we have only about ten minutes left. We are lucky to have Commissioner Guzman Aseves on the line, and we will turn it over to her to give us some closing remarks. And then I'll talk a little bit about what to expect for tomorrow. Take it away.
Speaker 6
Thank you, Monica. Well, first, let me thank our staff for putting all of this together and for really taking the lead on updating the work plan. We have, as President Batcher mentioned, the ESG liaisons from each of the divisions and the facilitators and really the core team that you have met today, Sarah, Yulia, Kathleen and Amy. And I did want to recognize a couple of folks who are now PUC alumni, Niki Adeyye, my former Chief of Staff and Alice Glasner, the former Energy Division staff person who really did a lot to get this to where it's at today. And of course, thanks to you, Monica, and all of the substantive and non substantive needs to get to today.
I just want to reflect a little bit about where we are today as opposed to two years ago. And obviously, the events of our world over the last year, both COVID, Black Lives Matter, all the unrest in our democracy has really, provided us an even greater clarity and purpose for this plan and all the work that all of us do to make greater social and environmental justice. So it's very it's actually a very exciting time with so much pain in the world. It's very clear that more direct action needs to happen. So I want to thank you for the discussion this morning that we had on really how we define communities, particularly heartfelt when, somebody discussed the importance of naming the communities, which is something that I absolutely agree with.
As we look at these macro level statistics and really going back down to what is the actual community impact. We heard in my breakout session that I participated in a lot of recommendations on the telecommunications sector and really the continued gaps in service. So lots of work to do. I really encourage you to come tomorrow and continue to engage All of your thoughts, both verbal, written, and hopefully an email will be updated. And I can't tell you how much we appreciate really hearing from you directly on some of the small and big pieces that we can work on.
So thank you very much for all of your time today, and I hope to see you all tomorrow.
Speaker 1
Thank you so much. Commissioner Rexhapa, not to call you out, but you are here. Just want to make sure if you want to say anything, feel free to chime in before we go.
Speaker 5
No, I appreciate everything Commissioner Gutman Otero said, and I don't want to say anything because I want people to come back tomorrow because they'll hear from me at the end of the day tomorrow, and I don't want to spoil that.
Speaker 1
Excellent. I appreciate the cliffhanger for that. Okay. So, you everyone again. So, tomorrow it will be a similar format as today where we will be in the WebEx event for a morning session.
We will have one p. M. Breakout, and then we will be back in the session here at two p. M. Yeah, and so the links are all in the agenda.
Please keep us posted on logistics. We're going to be continuing to try to triage those as much as we can. The morning session tomorrow is on data collection, so how we take in so much data here at the CDC and then across, all across our divisions, and so how can we, you know, do better by incorporating environmental and social justice kinds of analyses, and what do we
Speaker 1
be the first session led by Kathleen Yip, who facilitated one of the sessions this morning. That session will be a little bit more of a panel, so there definitely still will be question and answer and discussion, but there'll be a little bit more framing and perspective from the panelists. And then we'll have our breakouts on energy, water, and safety and enforcement. Those are the free breakouts at one p. M.
Tomorrow, and we're going to close talking about marketing education and outreach plans. So if folks have been involved at PUC, you know that a lot of our programs and incentives and whatnot have these ME and O, marketing education outreach plans, but there's not always a lot of coordination across them or evaluation of their impact. So we want to think about how we can maximize those since resources are going through those. So that's for tomorrow. And so with that, with a few minutes to spare, thank you all so much, and we will see you back here at ten a.
M. Tomorrow. Take care.
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