PG&E program that helps customers with overdue bills runs out of money for the year
STOCKTON — Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announced a program that helps a lot of people pay their overdue bills has run out of money for the rest of the year.
This comes just five days after PG&E introduced another rate hike that could add on average about $6 a month to customers' power bills.
The REACH program is supposed to help people break even with PG&E but now a lot of customers are left shrugging their shoulders not knowing what's next.
Jennifer Godby was set to apply for the program but she was too late.
"I was in the process of doing the paperwork, then I came across that there was no money," Godby said.
On August 30, PG&E announced the financial assistance program had run out of money for the rest of the year.
Godby lives in Stockton and is on PG&E's medical baseline program for her and her son's asthma but still is seeing bills that are hundreds of dollars every single month.
"One month, I got an $800 PG&E bill, and last month was $500," she said. "These bills are just killing us. They're really killing us."
PG&E spokesperson Jeff Smith says shareholders saw the program run out of money in June, so they put $55 million back into the program—but that quickly ran out, too.
"The cost of summer and the extent we've had of heat, over 100-105 degrees this summer, record number of days this summer," Smith said.
PG&E blames the heat and higher energy costs, but Godby like many others blames the company's rate hikes. There have been three of them this year so far.
"They're a big monopoly and they don't care about what they're doing to the little people," Godby said.
In January of this year, rates went up nearly 13%. Then there was another energy increase in April before PG&E said they lowered rates in the first week of July because of the high temperatures.
"Does pg&e at all consider the customer when there are these rate hikes?" I asked Smith.
"Absolutely, we do," he responded. "A lot of people do not know exactly how much of their energy bill goes towards paying their energy costs."
According to the graph below from PG&E, only a third of your bill applies to the energy you use.
For Godby, something has to change.
"You either buy your groceries or pay your PG&E bill," she said.
We asked California Gov. Gavin Newsom Friday morning what he has to say about PG&E and their rate hikes. He said there are packages in the works and to "be respectful of the process."