“where PG&E has profoundly offended its customers…those are natural candidates for somebody with a better idea” –Former Energy Commissioner John Geesman, Marin Independent Journal, 6/9/10

Just as the press declared its own obituary premature by providing statewide, top-to-bottom, vigorous & determining coverage of the truth behind Prop 16 in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, so you can see emerging coverage of what 16’s flame-out may predict for public power and community choice going forward.

Mark Toney, director of The Utility Reform Network, is quoted by Marin IJ journalist Rick Halstead as saying, “Far more people will have heard of community choice and public power than ever heard of it before and some of those people are going to want it.”

Halstead also quotes John Geesman, Former Energy Commissioner and author of the always incisive and gratifying (though impossibly URL’d) Prop 16 blog: “Geesman said enterprising advocates for community choice aggregation and municipal utility models will be able to ‘go through these election results with a fine-tooth comb and cherry pick.

“Because there are some communities where PG&E has profoundly offended its customers, and those are natural candidates for somebody with a better idea,’ Geesman said.”

I can attest that Halstead sat taking close notes through a grinding number of board and council meetings in Marin through its lengthy ascension. He wrote careful, often critical but accurate accounts as Marin Clean Energy lurched its way through one PG&E firing zone after another toward its May 7th launch date this year. The guy shows up–he knows this story. For the full June 9th article, click here. (June 9, 2010; Richard Halstead, Marin Independent Journal)

Previously unimaginable levels of CCA (Community Choice Aggregation) education were achieved through the nearly 70 papers who came out against Prop 16, the Voter’s Guide de facto guide to CCA vs. IOU that went to California’s 16 million voters, and the outreach of the hundreds and hundreds of organizations, agencies, municipalities & leaders opposed to 16.

What’s next? Here’s next, from the Sonoma County’s Press Democrat, where Ann Hancock and Dick Dowd lay out clear next steps for communities around the state (beginning with San Francisco, then Sonoma, then the rumored 9 other communities closely examining Marin Clean Energy’s model) looking at their own local clean energy options in the aftermath of Prop 16: [...]

Enjoy the latest and clearest from resoundingly reelected super-Supervisor Susan Adams, Interim MCE Director Dawn “Standing Ovation” Weisz, Beth Rasmussen and a triumphing-over-hayfever MCE Vice-Chair Shawn Marshall of Mill Valley’s City Council. All hosted Monday night by Sunrise Center’s Lori Grace, who provided angel funding at crunch time for MCE and fought Prop 16 like a terrier. I mean that in a good way: