The state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday levied a $30-million fine -- its largest ever -- against Southern California Edison and ordered the utility to refund more than $81 million to customers, concluding that a seven-year fraud caused substantial harm to consumers and could have diminished worker safety.
Although the fine is a record for the PUC, it is $10 million less than what was ordered in late 2007 by a commission judge. The decision also substantially reduced the judge's refund order, cutting Edison's total price tag from the fraud to $146 million from $200 million.
Consumer advocate Mark Toney applauded the decision anyway, calling it "a real victory for consumers."
"The fact that a commission that is so utility-friendly would impose this kind of a fine on a utility is a real indication of how outrageous their conduct was," said Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco group that had pushed for a higher penalty.
The unanimous vote puts an end to a scandal that came to light in 2004, a year after Edison received its first whistle-blower letter describing how employees were gaming customer-satisfaction surveys to help the company and managers win bonuses and ratepayer-funded incentives.
Edison's internal investigations confirmed those allegations and found that managers submitted falsified first aid and injury data to win bonuses for worker safety. At the Edison-run San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the probe found that managers suppressed injury reporting by asking employees to treat themselves and by pressuring doctors to alter records or use Steri-Strips in lieu of stitches.
"The severity of SCE's violations was considerable. . . . Management knew, or should have known, that these violations were occurring," said Commissioner Rachelle Chong, author of Thursday's decision. "It took two whistle-blower letters to finally get the attention of senior management to successfully investigate these inappropriate practices."
Those and other considerations "justify a significant fine in this case," Chong said.
Edison, a subsidiary of Rosemead-based Edison International, said it "agrees with the California Public Utilities Commission that the reporting inaccuracies the utility discovered, investigated and self-reported to regulators represented a very serious breach of SCE's responsibility."
