SAN FRANCISCO — At the U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco Friday, attorneys for PG&E asked a federal bankruptcy judge to approve a plan that would give bonuses to 12 top executives based on how well the company follows its wildfire safety plan.
PG&E says its executives are making well under the market rate for people in their positions, and these bonuses would simply be bringing them up to standard pay for the jobs. These bonuses are a mix of stocks and cash paid by shareholders, not by ratepayers.
They are meant to incentivize the executives to strictly and completely follow the wildfire safety plan, PG&E argues. Plus, if the metrics of the wildfire safety plan aren't totally met, the executives won't get their full bonuses.
“The safety of our customers and the communities we serve is PG&E’s highest responsibility,” PG&E spokesperson Paul Doherty told ABC10 after Friday’s hearing. “PG&E’s executive compensation is heavily weighted for performance against achieving company goals, especially public and employee safety. PG&E’s incentive plans have always included a safety component.”
Attorneys arguing against the bonus plan point out that some of the executives who stand to benefit from the plan are the very leaders who were in charge and making decisions when PG&E caused the deadly wildfires of 2017 and 2018.
“To date, not one victim of a 2017-18 fire has got a dollar…To me, that’s just wrong,” Sacramento attorney Steve Campora told ABC10 after the hearing.
He said he is representing more than 1,000 victims of wildfires believed to be caused by PG&E’s equipment in 2017 and 2018.
“We should be focused on taking care of these victims, and PG&E should be taking, in my opinion, responsibility for what they’ve done and worry about compensating the victims instead of, at this time, compensating the executives who were in charge of the company,” Campora said. "When there's a catastrophe like this, PG&E always says, 'Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims,' but what they say and what they do are often different things.”
He said he’d like to see PG&E set up a system “to justly compensate the victims for what they've been through and to do so in a timely manner."
He pointed out that victims of the past two years’ wildfires are struggling.
“You've got people that are trying to pay mortgages and pay rent at the same time, whose insurance benefits are coming to an end,” he said. “If you're a NorCal fire victim in Napa and Sonoma, your insurance benefits on your additional living expense will be ending in October of this year…If you're a Camp Fire victim and you haven't had full compensation, if you're under-insured, you can't rebuild your home [and] you're living in a rental someplace or in a trailer, like many of them are."
The judge did not decide on the matter at Friday's hearing. He listened to both sides, asked his questions and will be issuing a decision in coming days on whether to approve PG&E's plan for executive bonuses tied to how well the company executes its wildfire safety plan.
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