California Governor Guts Energy Commission

During his 2003 campaign, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won on promises to "blow up the boxes" of bureaucracies of California state government. He failed.

Now, stunningly, eight years later, a new governor of California quietly announced that his state's Energy Commission will be gutted.

There are two little catches with the above tongue-in-cheek headline and paragraphs. The new governor referred to above is Republican Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. And the "California" referenced is the City of California, a borough of 5,274 located in the Marcellus Shale Natural Oil and Gas field in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Due to the technological revolution in what is called "fracking" - hydraulic fracturing of rock formations to extract oil and gas - the governor of Pennsylvania is pulling the plug on his state's 50 percent green-power mandate, while the state of California has ramped up the percentage of mandated green power from 20 percent to 33 percent under new Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Corbett administration has effectively shut down its energy office - called the Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Energy Management within the Department of General Services. And he's done the same to the Governor's Green Government Council by removing its administrator and reducing the number of employees to one. State executive agencies have also been banned from signing any new green-energy contracts.

By contrast, the California State Energy Commission employed 596 persons as of 2009, the most recent year for which staffing level information could be found. That is not counting all the staffing levels in myriad other state agencies dealing with energy.

PennFuture - a statewide environmental organization - claims that more than 100,000 "green jobs" will be lost. But the environmentalists' claims of large numbers of green jobs is often inflated by counting jobs such as garbage-truck drivers and street sweepers as "green." There are no estimates as to how many new jobs would be created by the switch to oil and gas fracking.

Pennsylvania was once an oil "boom" state. During the "oil rush" of the late 19th century, the City of Titusville grew from 250 to 10,000 people almost overnight. Eight refineries were built over a six-year time span and oil-related industries "exploded."

Clearly, Pennsylvania's governor does not want its previous emphasis on "green energy" to impede an economy recovery.

By comparison, the California Legislative Analyst's Office recommended the following changes to Gov. Jerry Brown's 2011-12 budget regarding energy administration:

1. Deny governor's proposal for an increase of 30 permanent positions and $4,686,000, for additional oil and gas regulators in the Department of Conservation.

2. Reduce Cap and Trade expenditures by $8 million and only complete the alternatives analysis required by the court for the implementation of California's green power law - AB 32.

3. Reverse proposed AB 32 expenditures in 2011-12 state budget due to failure of the administration to submit a statutorily required zero-based budget justifying AB 32 workloads.

4. Deny governor's proposal for 2 positions and $229,000 to develop policies regarding advanced energy storage.

5. Deny governor's proposal to provide $9 million to the California Alterantive Energy and Advanced

While Pennsylvania's governor has literally "blown up" the bureaucratic box of its environmental-energy department, California's governor continues to expand this state's boxes with additional staffing requests for oil and gas regulators and violations of zero-based budgeting required by statute.

Gov. Corbett has embraced "fracking," while Gov. Brown has been canceling expanded the development of oil and gas fields in California. While it remains to be seen which will end up the best policy, the promise of green jobs has already proven to be a con job.

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