SB1: I am angry. Very angry.
Union bosses stopping energy progress…
[John Campbell] 8/29/05

You see, I have spent much of the last year working on SB 1, a bill known as the "Million Solar Roofs Initiative." This is a joint effort of Governor Schwarzenegger, a Democratic Senator from Culver City named Kevin Murray, and myself. The Governor is the sponsor of the measure and Senator Murray and I are the joint authors.

This bill will provide numerous monetary and non-monetary incentives to homeowners and businesses to install solar panels on their roofs. By so doing, we will diversify our energy sources with the locally sourced sun, reduce peak energy load and reduce blackout risk, further clean our air and jump start this promising technology. The incentives would decline over a 10-year period with the goal of having about 7% of our peak energy load coming from solar.

The bill passed the Senate 30-5 and is now in its final committee in the Assembly. Getting it this far has not been easy because of the myriad of interest groups who have all wanted their individual concerns addressed. However, thus far, we had managed to remove nearly all opposition while maintaining the integrity of the program.

Until today.

Thursday, the union bosses plan to take over this bill. Through Assembly Speaker Nunez, the unions are proposing to put in a clause that requires that people installing these solar panels pay a "prevailing wage." What that means is that you are required to pay an above-market union pay scale to install your solar panels in order to reduce or eliminate nonunion competition. This will increase the cost of solar energy by about 30%.

The whole point of this bill was to create incentives for a technology that is currently too expensive so that over time it will become cost-competitive. Now, the unions will be artificially increasing the cost of the already too expensive technology in order to line their own pockets.

The bill would have had the affect of reducing overall electricity rates. Now it will increase them. It would have produced about 7% of our power from solar. Now it will be about half that. It would have reduced the cost of this promising technology. Now it will increase it. It would have been a model for the country. Now it will be a model of waste and inefficiency.

If the union amendments are included, I have asked that my name be removed as author of this bill, and I will vote against the project upon which I have worked so hard this year. Democrats now will likely be unanimous in their support of this union subsidy. This bill means a lot to the Governor, but I hope he will veto it.

I have been telling you for years that most of the problems in this state are directly caused by union greed and corruption. And I have told you that most reasonable solutions are blocked by the same union bosses.

This is just more evidence of those fundamental truths.

The union bosses must be stopped. And we can do that on November 8th. CRO

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