-: Thank you for your patience.
-: Welcome and thank you all for standing by
and welcome to the California Public Utilities Commission
conference call.
I would now like to turn the call over
to President Batjer.
Thank you, you may begin.
-: Thank you very much.
I wanna welcome everyone this morning,
and I do want to remind everyone
that this is a public meeting
and it is being recorded
and may be posted online for subsequent viewing.
By continuing to attend this meeting
you consent to being recorded.
If you do not consent, please disconnect now.
Thank you.
Again, good morning
and welcome to the California Public Utilities Commission's
19th annual supplier diversity En Banc.
I am Marybel Batjer,
the president of the California Public Utilities Commission.
It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the 19th annual
supplier diversity En Banc on General Order 156.
And our theme today is General Order 156,
"Thriving and Surviving During a Pandemic."
The utility supplier diversity program
was created as a voluntary program
over three decades ago,
to encourage a fair proportion
of the total utility contracts
and subcontracts for products and services,
be awarded to diverse businesses.
Over the years, it has expanded
and today includes businesses owned by women, minorities,
disabled veterans, and the LGBT community.
The program has,
was recently updated with the passage of SB 255
by Senator Bradford to include procurement
and reporting requirements from electric service providers
and community choice aggregators.
The program has continued to make great strides
to support supplier diversity
since it was first adopted in 1988.
In 2020, the reporting utilities procured $11.7 billion
from diverse firms which exceeded.
Which exceed spend goals of 21.5%
while the goals of the program were met,
the actual spend for diverse enterprise declines
during the COVID 19 pandemic.
The Commission is hopeful that today's event
will shed some light on procurement challenges
due to the pandemic and suggest some solutions
on how to increase participation
with diverse suppliers in utility supply chain.
I would like now to welcome my fellow Commissioners
to make any opening remarks they may have
I'll start with Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen,
who is the lead Commissioner
on the Commission's efforts to modify General Order 156
in accordance with assembly bill 1678,
Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen, good morning.
-: Thank you very much, President Batjer.
Welcome everybody. I'd like to echo your comments.
Thank you all for being here
and supporting the Supplier Diversity Program
for over 30 years.
This has been one of our most important
and impactful programs.
As President Batjer mentioned,
there have been significant program challenges
for participants as a result of COVID.
We're interested in hearing updates about how utilities CCAs
and suppliers have addressed these
pandemic related challenges,
as well as recent progress in promoting
diverse supplier procurement.
This year as President Batjer
know I'm the lead Commissioner on a proceeding that we have
to update and improve the program through an act.
The rulemaking is 2103-010.
The issues we've been dealing with include
setting a numerical procurement target for LGBT businesses
and evaluating what our methodology
should be for setting targets, going forward.
Adding businesses owned by disabled individuals
as a category to include in our program,
considering requirements to have reporting of workforce
and board diversity and implementing the requirements
of SB 255,
which extends the program to include CCAs and ESPs.
I wanna thank the many organizations
that have worked with us this year.
Your participation is critical to creating a program
that stays up-to-date.
I wanna also commend the supplier diversity staff
for preparing a very interesting report
about the extent to which utilities
are contracting with diverse
and non-diverse suppliers in environmental
social justice communities,
which you'll hear about in the staff presentation.
This is very highly relevant to helping
to further one of the goals in our environmental
and social justice action plan,
increasing economic opportunities in these communities.
And finally, I wanna in particular thank our staff,
Stephanie Green and Drisha Melton who you'll hear from.
As the lead Commissioner, I've had the pleasure
of working more closely with them this year,
and I've gotten to see how incredibly dedicated
and talented they are at their jobs
With that I look forward to today's program.
-: Thank you very much, Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen.
I'll next turn to Commissioner Houck
for any remarks that she would like to make this morning.
-: Thank you, President Batjer, just very briefly.
I also would like to thank Stephanie Green, Tricia
and their team for all the work
in putting today's En Banc together
and Commissioner Rechtschaffen for his leadership
on this matter and then all of the speakers
and panelists that are here today for this important event,
I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone
on the progress that's being made
and meeting our goals
and how we can continue to improve
on expanding the diversity of our utility supplier pools
and again this is my Banc as a Commissioner,
and I'm very much looking forward
to hearing all of the speakers.
-: Thank you Commissioner Houck,
I wish in that this is your first En Banc.
I wish that we were all together
'cause this is one of the most enjoyable, thoughtful,
interesting meetings that we have during the year.
And I miss being on many levels, I miss being together,
but I particularly missed in this En Banc.
Commissioner Shiroma please.
-: Yes, good morning everyone.
Thank you, President Batjer,
to my colleagues Chair Holding the right keys
to attend the En Banc.
I think it's critical year it's the first En Banc
after a full year of supply chain disruptions
and delays after a full year during a pandemic
and last year has been especially hard on small businesses.
There's been a shift to online purchasing
and every spending category in the United States.
Small businesses don't always have the resources to set up
an online store or service,
especially when it comes to handling order logistics.
It's the same when a business is in the service sector,
relies on people physically performing a job,
people being together,
the pandemic has made it even more difficult to thrive.
These challenges definitely were essentially by the pandemic
and the challenges are also the reason why
it is more important than ever
that our supplies program continues to see expansion
and improvement.
I am aware of the challenges that our small businesses
and making payroll as PCP enables a diverse screen
of energy resources.
I mean, unless it's a system,
we must also see that is hard by first range
of business suppliers.
So I'm looking forward to parts from our panelists today
and participating in a productive
and candid discussion.
I thank you for all
and also thank you to Stephanie Green and Drisha Melton
for making it possible for us to have this En Banc today.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Shiroma.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you, President Batjer.
I think my Commissioners have summed it up well,
and I'm very much looking forward to today's dialogue
and getting to some action, thank you.
-: Thank you so much,
and now it's really my pleasure
to welcome assembly member Holden and Senator Bradford,
who will be joining us shortly.
And the virtual dais with us.
Assembly member Holden serves as chair,
very important chair of the
Assembly Committee on Utilities and Energy.
He's been a major policy thought leader
and partner as we address many of the state's
most important issues in an energy challenges.
So we'll start today with assembly member Holden Mr. Chair.
-: Thank you, madam president.
First of all, it's a pleasure to be here with you.
I will say that it's bittersweet
because this will obviously be the last En Banc
that I'll have an opportunity to participate with you.
And I just want to acknowledge your great partnership
with the committee and we've worked well together.
There've been some really tough times,
even in recent times,
but I just want to take this opportunity
when it per a personal privilege
to thank you for your service.
and we know that you're only a phone call,
will only be a phone call away.
I also wanna acknowledge the Commission as a whole
and individual Commissioners who have steadfastly
held supplier diversity as a priority
for energy, water and communication providers.
As you may know diversity in the gears of our economy
has been a priority for me in the legislature.
We are now requiring diversity
of corporate board membership,
which adds an additional facet of inclusion.
But we have to work down the economic ladder
to build diversity at all levels.
This program has proven to be an important
and successful rung over time.
The research behind my work on diversity
and corporate boards has shown
that those with a more diverse
and equitable board have better governance
and better decision-making,
which leads to more equally equitable.
-: Excuse me Chair Holden,
where I need to, I don't wanna interrupt you,
but we have some interference on the line.
So please everyone be sure you have muted your line.
We can hear someone talking in the background
and it's interrupting chairholder presentation.
So please mute your lines, thank you, chair.
-: Thank you.
This is no doubt equally applicable
to the business institutions, which feed the corporations.
The research also shows that we must take measurable actions
to improve diversity in business sector, over our economy.
We know that the underrepresented faced barriers
to getting higher, face hostile environments
and microaggressions once hired obstacles
to getting promoted
and are not able to climb up the ladder of success.
This is no doubt applies
to the minority owned businesses as well.
I also wanna acknowledge the foresight
of Senator Bradford, who authored legislation
to expand SB 156 program participants
to include CCAs and CSPs.
Based on these first filings,
it looks like half of the CCAs has stepped up
to participate, but have a lot of room to grow.
I am more alarmed by the number of CCAs that did not file
and the volume of companies from the energy sector
like storage and DER's,
which has not heeded senator Bradford's call.
I look forward to working with you
to see what we can do to improve that participation.
The challenges of lack of fairness
and equity for unrepresented communities
that existed before the pandemic
were exacerbated as a result of the pandemic.
The social and racial inequalities were exposed
the demand and even greater intentionality
towards equity and change.
As it appears, we are now on the brink
to survive the pandemic.
It's time to redouble our efforts for upward mobility
in order that we may thrive beyond the pandemic.
In closing, borrowing from Jesse Jackson,
"Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness.
It is a key to growth."
Thank you for allowing me to participate
in the En Banc this morning.
-: Thank you for those very encouraging
and thoughtful words.
We definitely share your concerns
as well as those thoughts about how we have to have
more involvement on the CCAs and others.
I don't believe that that Senator Bradford
has joined us yet.
Steven: I have joined.
-: Oh, that's marvelous.
Thank you so much.
Well, Senator who serves currently
as chair of the Legislative Black Caucus
and formerly served as chair of then
Assemble Utilities and Commerce Committee.
He most recently championed SB 255,
that expanded the scope
and impact of our supplier diversity program.
So welcome Senator Bradford.
I'm so thrilled that you've been able to join us today.
Would you like to make some remarks, please?
Steven: Thank you, President Batjer for this opportunity
and the other PUC Commissioners who have joined us today
and inviting me as well as my colleague here,
and Chris Holding to participate in today's En Banc.
This is probably my 10th En Banc
since being in the legislature.
And I'm always excited about being able
to engage in meaningful conversation
when it comes to real diversity in the space.
I wanna also thank of those investor owned utilities
and other stakeholders who found it important enough
to be a part of this discussion,
a discussion that's long overdue
and badly needed when we are talking about
supplier diversity.
Supplier diversity is more than just a tagline
or policy initiative
or checking the box as many have chose to do over the years.
This is really about a legal framework
that was initiated in the law and regulation
and speaks to the real need
to include women owned, minority owned,
disabled veteran owned businesses in the space
of procurement and contracting.
It has real life implications, as we all know,
and the theme this year is
"Thriving and surviving during a pandemic."
We've seen that the people who have been hurt the most
are people of color.
Minority individuals, both in the health aspects
and the financial aspect and the business aspect.
So really highlighting the importance of
power diversity in this space is critical.
It speaks to who still gets opportunities
in the state in this country.
We still know, even in 2021, race, gender and age
plays a major role in who has a seat at the table.
But I'm happy to report that we approach almost 13 billion
in spend last year
and that's due solely to the work
and the advocacy of the late great Gwen Moore.
We would not be here today,
General Order 156 would not exist today
if it wasn't for her commitment
and her undaunted support
and determination to make sure that all are included.
And when we look around the utility space today,
we see amazing people in this work areas,
such as president Ken McNeely AT&T
and DaVina Fleming with PG&E and Kell Bill Hunter,
an incredible lobbyists representing the utility space,
Pete Hernandez with AT&T and I can go on and on.
Many of them, owe that opportunity to Gwen Moore
because prior to General Order 156,
there were no black officers in utilities companies.
There were no black lobbyists and Gwen Moore said
you cannot meet with me
unless you have people who look like me.
So, we owe a debt of gratitude for Ms. Moore
for her determination
and making sure all are included
and I'm honored to call her a friend
and honored to have expanded upon her work,
both in the assembly and in the Senate.
Ms. Moore used her leadership in this position
as the legislature to empower others,
to make sure that they can compete in this utility space.
Like you stated,
it was in 1986 that she wrote General Order 156
and as I stated, it's why we're here today.
To all the randomly.
What is that?
Hello?
-: Senator, I'm sorry.
That was somebody that I spoke over you that,
I apologize, please go ahead.
Steven: Okay, And I apologize
for the technical difficulties.
I'm experiencing today as well.
The laws, the reason, again,
that diverse spending has gone from less than a half,
a million dollars, 35 years ago to now close to 13 billion.
And we should all be proud of that.
It's opened many doors and allow people,
many opportunities to compete,
but as we stated there's much work to be done,
and I'm honored to have continued to work
and expanding opportunities,
but as Chairman Holden stated,
there's still much work to be done.
We have entities like CCAs and ESPs who wanna masquerade
and be treated as utilities,
but are failing miserably to achieve real diversity
amongst their works, workforce
and in their contracting procurement opportunities.
So I wanna send a warning shot
that we are serious about diversity in the space
and we hope that today's En Banc hearing will highlight
some of those deficiencies that exist
and the space of ESPs and CCAs,
will also light a fire to let them know
that there's much work to be done in improving
and making sure that everyone has a seat at the table
and that we truly level the playing field
and create fair and equitable opportunities for everybody
in this area.
But it's equally important
that everyone who is participating today,
understand why we're having this discussion
'cause I stated, many of us today are present
because of others who have fought the hard fight
to make sure that we have a seat at the table.
And I just wanna continue to challenge us all,
to be the person that brings new players to the table.
It's not just enough to be happy that we have a seat,
but make sure that other folks have a seat.
And in closing, I just wanna recognize the great work
of President Batjer
and thank you for the opportunity
for the work that you've done
and part of diversity space
and many other issues that you have championed
since being part of the PUC
and being the president.
President of Batjer I appreciate all that you have brought
to this job, including implementing many laws
and my legislation as well, and my colleagues.
And again, we just wanna say thank you for all that you do,
and will continue to do,
and thank you for your service to the people of California.
And again, thank you for this opportunity
to participate here today
and I look forward to the discussion.
-: Thank you so much, Senator Bradford.
Thank you, on a personal note from me.
Thank you also for your wonderful words
about the incredible Gwen Moore
and indeed we miss her terribly.
She was on the dais with us just two years ago,
and it was my first En Banc at the time
and it was just thrilling to have her there with us as,
as the mother of all of GO 156
and what it means and what it stands for.
And thank you Senator for your passionate
forward looking clarity of message.
We take it to heart and we all need to work on it daily
and I appreciate it very, very much.
And I'm so thrilled that you and Chair Holden
have been able to join us today.
So we will move on now to our first panel,
each year on September 1st, we are required by the public.
Oh, wait a minute.
I may be taking Stephanie's remarks.
Stephanie was, are you going to be doing the introduction
of this next panel?
Excuse me, if that was an incorrect step on my part.
Stephanie Green.
-: I was on mute.
Yes, I'm gonna go ahead and do my quick report.
-: Okay, good. I'm sorry.
I jumped in to your great reporting.
So go ahead please, Stephanie Green.
-: Thank you, hello, I'm Stephanie Green.
And I oversee the Supplier Diversity Program
here at the Commission.
And today I'm going to give you an overview
of the 2020 program results.
Some of you may or may not be familiar
so I'm gonna give you a quick overview
of our supplier diversity program.
The program is codified in public utilities code 366, 910
and 8283.
And it requires the utilities
and electric service providers to submit annual plans
for how they're going to increase procurement
from when the minority, disabled veteran
and LGBT businesses.
That's a long acronym. WMDVLGBTBE.
So I'm just gonna say diverse firms
just a little bit easier than that acronym.
And then they also have to submit
their annual implementation reports.
It also requires the community choice aggregators
to submit their plans
for how they're going to increase procurement
from small local and diverse businesses,
and also their diverse procurement reports.
And it encourages the cable television,
direct broadcast, satellite providers,
wholesale power generators,
distributed energy resource contractors,
energy storage system companies
to adopt plans for how they're going to increase procurement
from diverse firms.
And it requires the CPUC annually report to the legislature
on the utilities, diverse procurement every year
and we report every year on September 1st.
And of course we have our General Order 156,
which provides the framework for the CPUC
supply diversity program.
And it sets the overall voluntary goals for the program
at 21 and a half percent.
That's 15% for minority, 5% women,
and one and a half percent for disabled vets.
I will note in 2020,
we have an ongoing rulemaking that's 2103-010
that will update GO 156,
Commissioner Rechtschaffen mentioned that,
however that will not be a topic for discussion today,
but just wanted to note that.
Now I, my next slide, it, you might be wondering,
well, what did we report this year to the legislature?
Well, we reported on the utilities progress
and how they procured from diverse businesses
and how they did toward our GO 156 goals.
We included a description of the CCAs performance
for their first year implementing supplier diversity.
And what were their diverse procurement results?
30 utilities submitted their reports this year
and 14 CCAs submitted their reports this year.
Now on the next slide, I'd like to talk about how they did.
What's their performance.
Well, last year in 2020, which was the year that pandemic,
they did $11.7 billion or 30.1%.
Which equated to 1.8% with DVBEs or 684 million,
10.5% with women owned firms or 4.1 billion
and 17.7% or 6.9 billion with minority owned firms
and LGBT it with 11% or $43.1 million.
And I would like to note, I don't know,
some of you may remember the last few years.
We had talked about the fact
that we wanted our small utilities to step up
and increase their performance.
And the smaller utilities are those utilities
that are 150 million or lower.
And I'm excited to say that this year,
for the first time, the small utilities achieved over 30%,
they actually achieved 33%.
So I just wanted to give that shout out
because they really did step up their game
and make improvements to their programs.
Next slide, this slide, we have an up a comparison of 2019
to 2020 procurement.
And what's happening is that.
-: Excuse me. -: Yes. Ma'am.
-: We're not seeing the slides that you're referring to.
-: I was just going to say the same thing
Commissioner Shiroma
and Stephanie, the other issue is your camera is very dark
we can't see your beautiful face either,
you're in the dark.
-: Oh my goodness, thank you for pointing that out.
Let me go back.
-: Thank you Stephanie.
Your camera may not be.
-: Oh, hold on.
Okay, let's, can you see it now?
-: No, we're not.
We're not seeing the slides
and you are still with your lights off
or your cameras off.
There you're much better now.
Now we can see you.
-: I'm not sure why it's not sharing.
I'm clicking on the share.
(indistinct)
Thank you, Robert. -: Welcome.
-: I gather you don't want me to start from the beginning.
-: We were attaching your numbers.
I think you can carry on
'cause I know that chairholder
has a timeframe he's working under.
-: Okay, I will, so on this.
So you can see that this year, if you look at a 2019
to 2020 comparison,
the total diverse spend with from 33.2% down to 30%,
or from 12.7 billion down to 11.7 billion,
which was a 7.5% decrease.
Now, given the pandemic,
that's really actually not that it was a very unusual year.
I was Subcontracting at 8A stayed the same.
Our LGBT went from point 17 down to point 11,
which was from 63.6 million down to 43 million.
That was a 32% decrease.
DVBE went from 1.6 to 1.8,
which was an 11% increase
or from 612 million up to 684 million.
And WBE went from 9.1 up to 10.5%, 17% increase,
and MBE went from 22.3% down to 17.7%.
So it was from 8.5 billion down to 6.9 billion
and that was a 19% decrease.
But given the pandemic
and the fact that it was a unique year,
it's a little unfair to do the 2019/2020 comparison.
So I would like to note that if you looked at the 2016
to 2020, that five-year comparison,
you would see that actually the program grew 25%.
It went from 9.4 to $11.7 billion
and it actually grew at an annual rate of about 5%.
Now this is one of my favorite slides I liked,
I called us my all stars.
I like to highlight the companies
that really stood out this year,
and that is Southwest Gas, PacificCorp, Suburban Water,
Frontier, San Diego Gas and Electric,
SoCalGas, Cal-Am Water, PG&E, San Gabriel, and SCE.
And I'll point out the three water companies,
Suburban, Cal-Am, San Gabriel made the list
only one communication company
and that was Frontiers made the list.
And I'd like to share that Pacific Corp
who is one of our small energy companies
doesn't even have a big California footprint made our list.
So congratulations to these companies
and please keep up the good work.
All right, now on the flip side,
these companies struggled a little bit, this year.
These firms did not make the 21 and a half percent goal,
and that is AT&T Corp, AT&T Mobility.
T-Mobile, Cal Water, Charter, Comcast, CenturyLink,
Wild Goose, TPx and Trans Bay Cable.
And on this slide,
I'd just like to point out that in 2019 T-Mobile
and Sprint were both still submitted separate reports.
This is the first year that the new new T-Mobile post-merger
submitted a report.
Now on this slide I'd like to highlight
the company's achieved all three goals.
Believe it or not,
it's actually pretty challenging to make all three goals.
Many companies will make the minority
and DVBE or the minority and woman,
but not the DVBE.
But to make all three is quite an accomplishment.
I like to highlight them. Cal-Am Water, Frontier, PG&E,
San Diego Gas and Electric, San Gabriel Valley,
San Jose Water. SoCalGas and Southwest Gas.
And in particular,
I'd like to highlight San Jose Water
because San Jose Water went from 12.9 in 2019
up to 30.1% here in 2020.
So they've really had a great year.
Also again, only one communication company Frontier,
achieved all three
and highlight three of the water companies
made all three goals.
Now that we've talked about the utilities,
let's talk about the CCAs.
So the CCA is, this was the first time they've reported
and so they're really building their programs
they are establishing the foundation of their programs
and it's, supplier diversity is a journey.
It's more of a marathon than a sprint.
But with that said this first year,
they did 0.06% spend or $2 million.
But I do have to note through reporting air
the CCAs has included energy in their base
and had they only looked at goods and services
like the utilities,
their percentage would have been more like 2%.
We're gonna collect that air next year.
But I did want to make that note
because, to make a true apples to apples comparison,
they should have taken out the energy
and the percentage would have looked more like 2%.
And I will note if you look back 33 years ago
when the utility started, they were doing about two to 4%.
So they've got a long way to go.
We look forward to working with them
as they continue to grow and build their programs
that this again was their first year of reporting
as they build their programs.
Now I'd like to tip it and talk about our
environmental justice plan.
In 2018, the Commission established their ESJ plan
and it was really developed to ensure that our programs
of policy-making better serve disadvantage
and low income communities.
And as a part of that plan,
we conducted a study to see how the supply diversity program
is impacting environmental justice communities.
To determine if we're really bringing back an economic
benefit to low-income
and disadvantaged communities.
And I'm happy to say that almost 40%,
47% of the diverse suppliers are located in ESJ communities
and 47 and a half percent of our diverse spend
took place in ESJ communities.
Through this study,
we really weren't able to verify
that our program is really making a difference
in these California communities
and communities of color.
On this slide,
it was looking at the diverse then by industry,
you can look at the energy utilities
at 49% in diverse communities.
I mean, an ESJ communities,
communications did about 41.7% in ESJ communities
and water 51.7%.
And again, that overall percentage was 47.5%.
And now I wanna talk about the supplier Clearinghouse.
The clearinghouse plays a pivotal role
in our supply diversity program
because it is that the database of verified,
certified, diverse vendors.
And it's what the utilities use
and all the other participants in our program
to find vendors and it's also
the fact that the utilities
and other participants can only utilize
the burst of vendors in their reporting.
And I wanna know that we have almost,
we have 37,000 women on farm,
almost 4,000 minority firms over 2,000 DVBE,
351 LGBT and 37 8A.
So we have 10,129 firms in the database.
And again, 1000 utilities find senders
and actually make sure that their five firms verify expense.
If you look at the clearinghouse by now,
it's 59% female and 41% male.
And that's obviously because
of our woman owned certification,
ethnicity white is 40% again
because that woman owned certification.
23% Hispanic, 20% are Asian, 13% African-American
and 3% native American.
In terms of, we also have reciprocality
with the major certifying entities.
So, in terms of our reciprocal applications,
24% comes from the NGLCC, the LGBT.
32% comes from WBENC the women own certification
and 41% company NMSDC.
When you look at the business side
and the mix of size in our database,
53% are small firms, a million or less,
only 15% of those large 10 million or more
and then the remainder are right in the middle.
So we have a nice mix and balance affirmed by size.
And this slide was just highlighting the fact that
about all of our firms are in a new multitude of categories.
You got to, have a wide array of firms.
We have a breadth and depth about in 20 categories
most of our firms fall into,
and I will also add that 96% of the firms in our database
are in categories that are utilized by the utilities
and the other participants in the program.
So we have the wide array of firms
and then we have the right firms in the database.
And I'd like to call it like telling you about
some of the action items
the staff had been working on this year.
We've been starting to provide guidance
and advocate for the inclusion of diverse firms
in the procurement activities,
as the CCAs and energy service providers
and the other entities under the preview
of Senate bill 255.
We have worked with the CCAs to develop
the supplier diversity best practices
and mitigate Prop 209 limitations and challenges.
We are working to implement SB 255
and engage the entities that fall under SB 255
to provide guidance
on supplier diversity program development and reporting.
And we support the CPUCs ESJ action plan
by encouraging the utilities, ESJ
and other SB 255 entities to develop intentional strategies
that increase economic opportunities for ESJ communities
in California.
And we want to increase the pool of qualified,
diverse vendors and the supplier clearinghouse database.
And with that,
I will open it up for questions from anybody on the dais.
-: Thank you so much, Stephanie
Before going first to the Commissioners.
I would like to first go to Senator Bradford
and Chair Holden.
Senator Bradford do you have any questions
or comments to make regarding the reporting
for the CPUC code section 82/83?
And also Chair Holden?
I know you have some time commitments
that you have to meet.
-: I, thank you for that.
I will only say that you are locked in,
and I think it's important
that this hearing provides clarity
and just how the Commission is looking to implement
the senator's bill, but also just the larger program
and being able to understand clearly
where additional work needs to happen.
All the props in the world to our good friend, Gwen Moore
and her legacy.
But I think that this is also an opportunity
to see how we can also take it to the next level.
and I'm impressed with the direction that you're moving
and we certainly stand ready to be of additional assistance
where we can.
I will have to sign off, but thank you again,
president Batjeer for the opportunity
to participate in this year, and to share some comments.
-: So glad that you were able to join us Chair Holden.
Thank you.
I'm not seeing any questions from Senator Bradford.
I'm going to turn out to the dais.
The Commissioners have any questions?
Let Stephanie, yes.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you.
And thank you, Stephanie, for the great summary
and I do also appreciate kind of the highlights
of who's doing the best and who's made progress.
So really good to acknowledge those companies
that have come a long way, Pacific Corp, San Jose Water.
It's good to know.
I had a little bit of a follow-up to your comment
about the CCAs denominator
and including energy procurement.
I wanted to just make sure I understood that
because certainly fuel procurement
has been an area for some of the utilities
to really succeed in their spends.
And I was looking just at the report
and even power procurement is also an area
that some of the utilities have increased,
not a lot, but it is an area that I wonder really
is the solution really to take it out of the equation
or just maybe perhaps have some level that makes sense.
-: Let me cross that, it's not taking it out of the question,
it's reported separately.
They have their own separate tables
and it's reported separately.
And so it should have only been reported
in those separate tables.
So it's not that they don't report it.
It's just that it's reported separately from the goods
and services.
-: And is that the case for the IOUs as well, then?
-: It is the case for the utilities.
-: I see. -: So for example.
-: Yeah, go ahead, no, go ahead.
-: Oh, I was gonna say so for example,
if TGNA per se says they did 3 billion
and diverse spend out of the goods and services,
they're not including energy in that base.
So the goodness, the energy is on those separate tables,
but we really have an apples to apples comparison to CCA
should've done this thing.
So, yeah.
-: Okay, thank you for clarifying that
and just want to acknowledge that it's a really a large area
of wealth creation that perhaps we need to think about
strategies and it's a good thing to see
that we've seen some of this,
some diversity now with most recently with
Morongo's transmission lines
and the shared ownership there.
So there is certainly potential
to see more of that procurement in the energy,
direct energy and including transmission and fuel.
So I'm glad to hear that it's not part of the goals,
it's just a separate goal in and of itself.
-: And I think it's very helpful
to have it reported separately.
So you have some distinction there,
so thank you for that question Commissioner.
I was wondering the same.
-: Can you hear me?
-: Yes, I now can.
Thank you. Yes, we can.
Carl: Well, this is Carl Davis Jr.
And I had some technical difficulties
and I'm sorry I'm maybe not able to be seen on the screen,
but I'm in Washington DC.
And I wanted to make a comment real quick
because I'm gonna have to go.
I don't think it's any coincidence
that Tim McLaughlin and the San Jose Water
has moved their numbers up.
They've been able to work very diligently with us
and all the other groups that I represent.
So I'll just share that real quickly
and I I'll definitely would Stephanie
and anybody who wants to connect with me,
please connect with me.
Right now I moved from being
the Silicon Valley Black Chamber of Commerce President
to where I chair the
Northern California Black Chamber Presidents Association.
And that's 10 black chambers all the way from Napa County
down the Kern County.
And I wanna thank Timothy Allen Simon,
I guess he's former Commissioner,
he's now the state chair for the
California African-American Black Chamber.
Now, the reason I mentioned that
is because you guys use some terminology about new players.
You wanna go to the next level.
I wanna challenge everyone that says
the way I believe we could do this
and be able to grow the numbers
that you would like to grow
and to connect with the people who are actually connected
to these small companies and mid-sized companies
that can actually make a difference.
So I know certification is a huge issue.
I'm here in Washington DC
and ByBlack is a national certification program
is being funded by American Express.
I'll be glad to introduce them to anyone back in California
when I come back, but because I gotta run,
I wanted to make sure that I got a comment in.
And the one comment I wanna say is that
when the pandemic happened,
our 10 chambers in Northern and Central California,
we surveyed thousands of black business owners.
And we found out that it is very difficult
for black business owners to actually compete
and actually get these contracts.
So there are a few people that do get them
and that's why you have numbers that you do.
I would challenge the group to say,
let's talk because with Prop 209,
it's very difficult for us to even find
all the black businesses there are.
So if you'd like to work for me,
I think I'm gonna use some technology
that you would like and at the end of the day,
I know you wanna open up opportunities to everyone.
So I look forward to working with you all.
Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you president
and thank everybody on the panel
and I wish I could stay longer.
So please reach out to me.
I'm Carl Davis, Jr.
My email address is P R E S pres@blackchamber.com.
-: Okay, Mr. Davis, thank you.
We were just opening remarks out for the Commissioners
at this point of time, but thank you.
I'm gonna turn it back to the dais
and ask if there are any questions from the dais.
Yes, Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen.
-: Stephanie, I wanna say, excuse me.
I wanna commend you again for preparing the report
about stand in environmental
and social justice action communities.
It's a really interesting report in,
and as I said in my opening comments very much in mind
with one of our key goals
in our environmental justice action plan,
you have a slide noting that one of the action items
for 2021 is to encourage intentional strategies
that increase economic opportunities.
Have you seen any from utilities so far
that you think are models for others to follow?
-: You know what?
I may have to get back to you on that one.
I'm not, I'm blinking.
I'm not thinking of anything off the top of my head.
So I, can I get back to you on that one?
-: Of course
and it more important than you've already identified
it as an action item going forward.
So I know that you guys will all be working on it,
but I was just curious if there's anything
that stands out to date.
Thanks.
President Batjer you're muted.
-: Probably, you liked that, didn't you Cliff? (laughing)
Okay. Thank you so much,
any other comments from any of the other Commissioners
or questions?
I don't see any, oh yes.
Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Just a comment, I do miss, as you,
a little to you President Batjer,
see each other in person in one of our geographical areas,
we were lost in the Silicon Valley
and we received it more granular information, therefore,
more what was happening in the Silicon Valley.
I appreciate the metrics of Stephanie
for the disadvantaged communities in the lowest communities.
I continue to be interested in the,
not only the diversity of the contractors,
but where they are located.
And I continue to be concerned about the
low participation of the communications providers
except what's been shared.
And I mentioned that there are some things
that we will need to take a look at as to how do we approve?
How do we work with these companies
to improve that contracting?
So I know that we are probably running short on time.
I don't expect you answer today,
but these are areas of keen interest. Thank you.
-: Oh, Commissioner Shiroma.
We will have a panel.
I will be hosting a panel that will be talking
to the telecommunications companies
and I intend to ask a few of those questions.
Stephie, I know we are short of time,
but I do want to say what a remarkable job you
and your team has done.
The September one report was excellent.
Your reporting of it was excellent.
It clearly gives us the guideposts
that we need to make sure we're making
and exceeding the goals that we have set for ourselves
and the legislature has set for us
and they are critical, absolutely critical.
So we will move on now to our first panel,
the diverse community panel COVID impact perspective.
And this panel is moderated by Commissioner Shiroma
and Commissioner Houck.
This panel of leaders from local
and Statewide community-based organizations
and ethnic chambers have joined us today
to discuss pressing issues
within their business communities
during the COVID 19 pandemic.
They will also address their efforts to enhance the pool
of diverse suppliers and discuss what programs
they have in place to develop their members,
to meet the needs of utility supply chain.
With that I will now pass it over to Commissioner Shiroma
and Commissioner Houck, Commissioners.
-: Yes, thank you, President Batjer.
Good morning again, everybody.
It is a pleasure to be attending the 19th
Supplier Diversity En Banc.
I would serve as moderator along with Commissioner Houck.
We are looking forward to having a productive dialogue
with all of you on your experiences
during this challenging year.
So, I also wanna thank you President Batjer
and Commissioner Shiroma,
I'm very happy to join Commissioner Shiroma
in moderating this panel,
again, this is my first Supplier Diversity En Bonc
as a Commissioner,
and I'm very much looking forward to the discussion today,
particularly from this panel with,
we're looking to increase procurement
from diverse enterprises by the participating utilities
and these diverse enterprises,
such as those represented by today's panel
is going to help ensure the safety
and reliability of California's energy communications
and water infrastructure industries.
And I'm now gonna turn it back
over to Commissioner Shiroma to introduce the panel.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Houck,
the panel we've assembled for you today are leaders
of our diverse communities who work with the utilities
to encourage economic growth, innovative solutions,
and create opportunities for diverse suppliers
to create the opportunity
and to garner the opportunity for contracts.
We will now ask each of the panelists
to provide a brief opening each will
keep to two to three minutes each.
We'll have questions after we have the introduction.
We'll follow up with specific question,
can Commission Houck and myself.
And so I will start the introductions.
We have Tracy Stanhoff,
who is the president of the
American Indian Chamber of Commerce.
She is a recipient of the small business administration,
of Orange County and Inland Empire District director's award
for 2020.
Tracy actively participates on several boards
and serves as an officer for multiple organizations,
such as the Southern California Indian Center.
The microphone is yours, Tracy, welcome.
-: Thank you, Commissioner.
Great to see you folks.
My name is, as you heard is Tracy Stanhoff.
I'm also a former tribal chairwoman
for the Prairie Band Pottawatomie Nation
out of the great state of Kansas.
We have a very progressive nation.
So yes, I came from Los Angeles
all the way to Southern Kansas and back a little bit ago.
I also own a business called AD PRO.
We've been in business 31 years.
So our board brings a very unique perspective
as other boards do, being that firm we're native Americans,
and we have unique perspectives on reservations
and other tribal lands.
Plus we're all business owners
that serve on our board of directors.
So we're very pragmatic in our approach.
We're a very small minority, as you know,
and we're very appreciative of this program.
It's the California public utilities program
it's probably the best program in the country
for diverse businesses.
So I always thank all of you folks in the Commission
and Stephanie and Drisha for doing what you do
to help us because it's changed Indian country
for the better.
It seems like in the last 2020 report,
we did over $400 million in contracting with the utilities
from our community that really does change Indian country
for the better.
And we're very appreciative of that.
Even though we'd done 400 million,
we always want more over here out for contracts
we're here to get paid on time
and we're qualified and capable people
with a lot of native firms
that can do business in the utility industries.
And again, we're just very thankful to this year
to Commissioner Guzman Aceves for spending her time
on the call with us at our tribal leader summit
earlier this year.
And I know Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
you've been out there with us
and I've run into you Commissioner Shiroma
in the airports at times
and we've had great conversations and the other two ladies,
we're gonna come after and meet you too in person,
and have some time to rub elbows in some way.
We, yeah.
All right, thank you.
We're really looking forward to that.
We need your help and we need your continued help
and support.
This is a great program for California as a whole,
and I'm just thankful to be part of it
and I'll turn it over to the next panelists themselves.
-: Thank you, Tracy.
Our, this panelist is Edwin Lombard III
he is the president and CEO of Black Chamber of Commerce.
He started his own public relations firm
to help small black businesses and communities of color
to have a voice on legislative regulatory
and local government issues.
And then it's also, and now.
-: Commissioner, that was Carl Davis
and Carl Davis was the one who just spoke,
Edwin Lombard is not the representative on the panel today.
My apologies.
-: I was following my notes.
Okay, well, we heard from Carl Davis earlier,
as President Batjer was fielding questions from the panel
and he really emphasized the activities,
the importance of our attention as the challenges faced by,
this is a color
and I do thank him, I don't know if he is still on the line.
He did indicate.
-: I don't think he is Commissioner Shiroma.
He said he had, he was in Washington
and he had to leave that's why he jumped.
I think that's why he jumped in with us.
-: Well, then we will go on now to my friend,
Pat Fong Kusghinda.
Hello Pat, nice to see you follow Sacramenton.
Pat is the president and CEO of
CalAsian Chamber of Commerce,
the California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce,
which represents over 600,000 Asian American
and Pacific Islander owned businesses in California
and is the largest ethnic chamber in the state.
Most recently, she formed the
Sacramento Inclusive Economic Development Collaborative,
which advocates for economic justice
and provides resources for small businesses
in the Sacramento region.
I long ago, and far away I shared with this panel
that I was a board member on the
Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce.
And that chamber at that time hired Pat as it's CEO
and she transformed the chamber into quite a force
in the Sacramento area.
And now is CEO of the Statewide chamber.
So welcome Pat.
-: Thank you. Can you all hear me okay
because I was having technical difficulties.
Am I good?
-: Yes you're good, we can hear you fine.
Thank you.
-: President Batjer
and fellow Commissioners
and Commissioner Shiroma it's nice to see you again.
It's true, I am literally
the oldest living chamber executive ever.
I said, so I work for a very, very long time.
Commissioner Shiroma was actually
one of the founding members of our local chamber
very early on in the '90s.
So, as Commissioner Shiroma indicated,
we are one of the largest ethnic chambers
here in California.
We do represent the interest of over 600,000
AAPI owned businesses.
I wanna talk very briefly.
California's population as you know,
is increasingly diverse
and we are now a majority-minority state.
In 1970, 76% of the population identified as white,
today 36% do.
In 1970 3% identified as AAPI today 15% do.
And by 2055 Asian Americans are projected
to be the nation's largest immigrant groups
surpassing Hispanics.
Now, according to Green Line 2020
suppliers diverse report cards,
the Asia's spent has had an even result.
The company spending on Asian-American suppliers
remained steady,
but inconsistent in 2019 with 50% of the companies
reporting a decrease in their spending.
And as you reported the 7.6% ban.
Phone and cable reported 3.7% and wireless reported 11.9,
water reported 2.96.
We are a technical assistance minority serving chamber,
running three federal centers, any state program,
all focused on providing businesses assistance
to minority firms.
And just recently the three Statewide ethnic chambers
co-sponsored AB-915 authored
by assembly member Chiu and Holden,
which would have codified the state 25%
small business procurement goal.
Because of the pandemic,
the challenges that face minority owned small businesses
have never been more acute.
And according to the New York Fed
active business ownership is down only 20%
for AAPI businesses.
And 90% of Asian owners surveyed reported
a decline in revenue in 2020
with 77% characterizing their financial condition as poor.
30% of those surveys say they do not believe conditions
will return to normal until 2022 or later.
This illustrates the profound disruption
of the pandemic cause to AAPI businesses.
And since the onset of COVID-19,
the CalAsian Chambers to have more than 6,000 businesses
through our centers.
It has been especially distressing
To see the system systematic barriers,
which inhibit small businesses laid bare
on a daily basis over the last year and a half.
That's why the proactive and thoughtful leadership
of the CPUC is critical at this time
to address these barriers
and continue to inhibit fair
and equitable access to public utility procurement programs.
Thank you so much
and I look forward to the conversation.
-: Thank you, Pat.
And next we have Frank Montes.
Frank is the former chairman of the board of the
Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
and was also the vice chairman of the board of the
California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
As the chair of the
Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Frank led the creation of the joint organizations
for business success initiative.
Where over 40 chambers of commerce signed a memo
of understanding to support one another
through collaboration and sharing of resources, Frank.
-: Yes, thank you, Commissioners
and everyone out there at Zoom land.
Again my name is Frank Montes
and I'm a small business owner here in the Inland Empire,
in the beautiful city of Fontana.
I'm gonna give you a perspective, fun, the.
-: Frank, excuse me, Frank,
we're having a little bit of trouble hearing you.
If you could speak a little more directly into your mic,
that would be super.
-: Sure, is this better?
-: It's a little better, but we could still,
you have it a bit stronger
We can't hear you at all now, Frank.
Robert: This is Robert Stanford.
Mr. Montes got disconnected.
He's dialing back in.
-: Okay, why don't we move to the
next panelist Commissioners
and then we'll come back to Frank.
-: Okay, we'll come back to Frank.
The next panelist is Marquita Thomas
and Marquita is the executive director
and previous president of the
Los Angeles Gay and lesbian Chamber of Commerce,
where she has advocated for increased LGBT inclusion
and corporate government and municipal supply chains.
Prior to that,
Marquita was the co-chair of the lesbian
and gay advisory board of the city of West Hollywood
and founded a successful marketing and branding business.
-: Thank you, Commissioner.
I just wanna make sure everyone can hear me.
-: Yes we can.
-: Great, again my name is Marquita Thomas
and I am the executive director,
but just as a point of clarity
is the Los Angeles LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce.
My pronouns are she, her and hers.
I know that we're running quite a bit behind,
so I'll just make this super brief.
I've been with the organization for over 12 years.
We're an affiliate chamber of the NGLCC,
which is the national third party, LGBTBE certifying body
and we are very happy to be here
and to be a voice in how the utilities can continue
to provide increase equity in
historically underutilized communities.
I'll leave it there and I'm looking forward
to today's discussion.
-: Thank you, and then we'll go back,
Frank, are you connected?
Can we?
We can't hear you.
We'll give you just another minute to get reconnected
and we'll go to Cole and come back to you,
Frank in just a second.
The next panelist is Cole Woodman.
Cole currently served as
the California Veterans Affairs Disabled Veteran
business enterprises advisory council.
He's also the chairman co-founder of the nonprofit
organization, Veterans in Business Network.
In 2019 the Veterans in Business Network
won the best in class.
Trailblazer Award from San Diego Gas and Electric Company
for its innovative approach
and connecting veteran businesses to opportunities
and education.
-: Great, thank you.
Good morning, Commissioners panelists
and En Banc attendees.
It's my honor to speak on behalf of veteran owned businesses
this morning.
As a veteran, I can't help but draw a parallel
between the way we approach
and mobilized for war time
and the way we must approach and mobilize for the pandemic.
For example,
we recently concluded the war in Afghanistan
and when it began, nobody expected
that we would be there for 20 years, but we were.
And so while everyone is currently in a rush
to get back to normal post COVID,
I believe the economic impact of this pandemic
will go on much longer than we anticipate
and so we must be prepared to weather
the long-term effects together
I think GO 156, the En Banc the Commission
and the regulated utilities all must come together
to weather the storm for our small and diverse communities.
In uncertain times like this,
the government and large businesses
such as the regulated utilities that are here today
become much larger actors in the economy.
And so I would encourage all utilities
to embrace this responsibility as major spenders
and buyers and do everything you can
to push those opportunities
down to the communities you serve.
Stephanie mentioned, one of the strategies
for 2021 is the intentional strategies
to help the communities and the diverse businesses
I'd like to highlight one example I've seen
over the past year.
For years at this very meeting,
I have been talking about the importance of cashflow
and prompt payment to small businesses.
I'd like to acknowledge T-Mobile they've heard my cries
and they have implemented a 30 day pay program,
which allows expedited payments to over 400
of their small and diverse suppliers.
So programs like that during normal good economic times
are important
but during times like this where labor and supplies
are getting more expensive,
those types of programs are vital
to keeping small businesses alive.
So for any of the utilities out there
that are listening right now,
if you have Net 60 or Net 90 payment terms,
now is the time to adjust that.
I think during this pandemic,
those types of changes could, can be made.
I know our time is short in closing.
I'd just like to touch on the theme
of the En Banc this year,
"Thriving and surviving during a pandemic,"
I would argue that the war is still raging on
and the winners and losers are yet to be determined.
So I don't wanna sound negative
or that the sky is falling,
but between my time in the Navy
and my time as a small business owner,
I've never before felt such a sense of urgency
and uncertainty about the road ahead,
especially for the health
and strength of our economy
and the small businesses that keep it afloat.
So I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning
and I look forward to answering your questions
about how we move forward successfully, thank you.
-: Thank you. And now I believe Mr. Montes
is connected with the audio.
So I wanna go back and provide your opening statement.
-: Can everyone hear me now?
-: Yes, we can hear you.
-: You usually don't have a problem hearing me.
So anyway, my name is Frank Montes.
I am a past chairman of the
California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Past chairman of the
Greater Riverside Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
But more importantly,
I'm a small business here in the city of Fontana.
I'm gonna give you a perspective
from a small business perspective of pre COVID
on businesses always have had a challenge thriving.
Now during COVID or charges are surviving.
Just to name a few,
the distribution chain has been impacted
where restaurants even my industry,
I own a collision center are having problems
getting supplies and materials.
Our restaurants are having problems,
stocking all the ingredients
and foods that they need to serve their customers.
So there's an issue there
that's has been in effect from COVID.
During the pandemic our businesses
have had challenges keeping open.
They closed down,
they open again, they close, they open,
they can dine outside.
They can't dine outside
now our businesses are our enforcement
almost enforcement agency,
where they have to check who's vaccinated,
who's not.
So all these things impact running a small businesses.
Small businesses have challenges enough paying the bills,
paying their employees
that now we're asked to be police agencies also
to make sure that everybody's vaccinated.
We all waiting to get back to normal.
What is the new normal?
That's the billion dollar question.
We are waiting for the dust to settle everyone,
to see exactly what our local chambers
can do to assist our small businesses
and what programs we put in place.
No one knows what those programs are gonna look like.
We can't go to business, can't be business as usual.
No amount of certification programs,
no amount of procurement programs.
No amount of financial literacy
can help those struggles that our small businesses
are facing now.
Even with all this that I said,
keep in mind that our small business owners,
our families, our employees are our families, we,
the small businesses hire from our community.
And when our community is impacted,
or communities suffer.
So do our small businesses.
We've had tremendous loss these past years, human loss,
our employees come to me every so often
and say, Frank, another family member has passed away.
My aunt, my grandmother, my brother, my sister
they're in the hospital.
We can't sit there and hold their hand.
They're passing away alone.
That pain that our small businesses,
our community are gonna carry for years to come.
I need the Commission and the utilities keep that in mind.
I know that I'm preaching to the choir here
because all of us are feeling the same impact.
As a small business owner,
I implore the utilities to keep that in mind,
when they move their certifications
or the procurement programs forward.
It's not gonna be the same folks,
it's not gonna be the same.
I'm a small business,
third generation small businesses
my two sons are taken over for now.
And the challenges that they face
there's no handbook, there's no guidebook
to assist us in those challenges.
So again, the dust has not settled yet folks
and we have yet to see where we're gonna stand.
With the challenges we're gonna have.
I think the challenges are gonna continue
for five to 10 years.
We have not seen the end of this pandemic
and the fall off that this is gonna have.
But one thing I did want to touch on is the prompt payment.
I've heard my colleague, Tracy,
constantly speaking about prompt payment.
Let's be done with that.
Let's get it handled
and let's get our small businesses paid on time,
especially now folks, especially now.
And I do wanna say one thing,
I do wanna thank Southern California Edison
for the mitigation program on the wildfires
for the burn survivor, thank you.
Thank you for doing that.
I think that is so important
that we continue pushing that forward.
And I believe my time is up
for me to give you all the perspectives on small business,
I think we need a full day.
-: Thank you Frank for that.
Spoken to in real experience from the heart,
this whole aspect of making a payroll of not only us,
but of course, the utilities,
the folks who are managing these programs,
walking in your shoes, in terms of the challenges
and day to day that each of you face
in garnering contracts, keeping people employed,
making payroll, paying the bills.
So with that, we'll turn now to some questions,
I'll ask the first one and then Commissioner Houck,
will ask the next one.
So in the vein of that each of you have been speaking to,
and that 2022 will be presenting challenges,
maybe even more challenges share with us further
anything else you want to make sure we know
about those challenges,
but also have you seen opportunities?
Have you seen new best practices towards surviving
and navigating these times?
And we'll go back to the order.
We'll go back to Tracy.
Any thoughts?
-: Okay, yes, of course.
You know me, come on, we have,
the American Indian Chamber where we're really a state,
it's not national organization.
Now we immediately started with in the first week
of the shutdown with webinars online,
just even just check ins with our members,
how are you doing?
Are you, as Frank was saying,
are you, are you healthy?
What's going on?
And he mentioned prompt payment, which,
I'm probably gonna get a lot of arrows shots sent my way
from some of the utilities I'm sorry,
but it should be 30 days for anybody getting paid.
You guys get paid every month with our utility bills.
It should be a quick pay, not a quick pay,
a normal process could pay them 30 days.
The other thing,
and I've spoken a little bit about this
is tier two contracting.
We've really had problems with tier two contracting,
especially during this pandemic, talk about slow pay.
You think our small businesses are affected by this issue
of getting paid on time.
And for the most part,
I will say that utilities have been doing
a really great job of fixing it for us.
If we go to them and say,
hey, we're having problems getting paid,
but then you have to take your part
and say, hey, I can't afford to hang out here for 60,
75, 90 days.
And then you have to call your liaison
and get it fixed.
But the tier two has been even a huger issue
because a lot of utilities will say,
well, you're gonna go to tier two
because you're too small to do the job yourself
or your sub because you're a painter or an electrician
or whatever.
And in construction which we have a lot of
and the tier-ones I guess they're not healthy
or, and they can't pay people on time as well as they could,
or because of the fact that the utility sometimes,
and guys, I love you we don't wanna be advisor
to all utilities,
but you say, I can't control my prime.
And it's like, that's baloney.
I ran a multi-hundred million dollar tribe
and if one of my primes was jerking around excuse me,
my term with any of our businesses,
they'd chew me down there,
chief Tracy yelling at them going, get your act together.
We paid you pay the people in line.
So that's been quite a challenge during the pandemic
that and the fact that, we're really, really pushing
to have connection with the folks.
And I'm again, I'm not blaming the utilities,
but you gotta get out there in person again.
And you've got to really be able to rub elbows with us.
It's very difficult for our people right now,
and we're coaching them.
And we're doing all types of things training
when we have three trainings a week sometimes
to have their capability same on your presentation deck,
et cetera, et cetera.
And, but if you're not getting to the end users,
because of everybody being so spread out
and not having connection there
to build those relationships,
then it's almost off or not that,
although we'll have a really cool presentation deck
and capability statement as a silver lining.
But again, I wanna get back to the, all the folks.
If we ask a utility to help us they've been doing it,
and I want to really make sure they know
that they've come to the plate and they're doing it,
and this is the best program in the world.
But as we grow, we have growing pains
and a lot of it is running around financials
in our communities access to capital
and access to capital be a lot easier
if we got our bills paid within 30 days.
So thank you for all.
-: Hey, thank you.
Thank you Tracy. Pat.
-: Oh, well, there's actually three areas
and then I'm offering up a solution.
The first one is around access.
It's not easy for us to kind of find where the procurement
and supplier opportunities reside.
Where's that front door that we can walk through
to easily access the type of opportunities.
The second area is knowledge and expertise.
Once they enter the front door,
what type of knowledge and expertise is readily available.
For our businesses to help them through that process
and then the third one is around qualification
and eligibility.
Spend change, depending on business plans
and priorities.
What was the priority spend one year
may not be a priority spend the next year.
How do we create a pipeline of qualified MBEs
to be ready for the next big spend opportunity?
A lot of the people on the panel today
are also members of the state task force
under secretary Yolanda Richardson
and one of the things that the state is doing
the administration is doing,
is trying to figure out better coordination between agencies
and the administration.
So the, we as small businesses,
we don't necessarily understand the silos.
So many of the state departments including
the public utility Commission
how are you better coordinating
your efforts among departments?
Among agency?
Because that's part of the challenge
and part of the opportunity we think.
To better coordinate a lot of these opportunities,
because we don't understand the silos.
If we can get a contract
with the public utility Commissioner,
we can certainly get a contract with DGS.
We can get a contract with department of energy
a lot of different areas of opportunity,
but better coordination between agencies.
And I'm not gonna tell you about this practices
may look at Commissioner Shiloma
because not as best in class,
when it comes to creating a pipeline for future success,
they have what you call a seed program.
And that seed program and Commissioner Shiroma
is very familiar with this program.
It allows the MBEs, the opportunity
to contract with utility,
to get their feet wet with smaller contracts,
and actually offers incentives to prime contractors
to actually utilize those MBEs
in that competitive bid process.
So you can look to your own Commissioner
for best practice around how to create a pipeline
and a future program to start to grow these MBEs
into second tier contractors,
And then the final thing I'll say that is this,
as an Asian Chamber, we run multiple federal centers.
We have an SBDC,
we have a minority business development aid agency center.
We're a tape provider.
What we did do,
because we recognize that it's a difficult thing
as a small business to try and navigate
through all of those opportunities
and so we created a matchmaking program called
Diverse Procure that will launch in November 1st
this allows companies to connect
and be matched currently with federal
and state government contracts
and that's through a technology platform.
And we were recently awarded a major contract
to actually create a small business utilization center
to utilize that platform for local jurisdictions.
So I would encourage the utilities
to consider, I think the gentlemen
from the Black Chamber talked about a technology solution
certification is one thing,
and I know Tracy and I've had debate about this
because there are qualified MBEs,
but because you're certified doesn't mean you're qualified.
And there's, when Stephanie showed
that huge list of folks that currently residing
in the certification Clearinghouse,
my question would be is how many of those folks
are actually getting contracts?
How many of those successfully getting contracts?
So it's incumbent upon us
not only to do certification piece,
but it's also incumbent upon us to actually
do the qualification and matchmaking piece.
And so that's what our chamber doing
to help further this process along
and so I look forward to the continued conversation.
-: Thank you, Pat.
I talked about being the program,
a small business they're subject to Prop 209,
but essentially when folks come in and bid as (indistinct)
if they partner with a small business
or they are a small business,
they get quite great in terms of the total cost
of what they are proposing towards being competitive
with folks who are not a small businesses
or minority businesses,
veteran owned and LGBTQ owned.
Our let's see, we'll go to Marquita.
-: Yes, thank you, Commissioner.
I'm going to actually echo a lot of the sentiments
of my prior colleagues with the challenges for LGBTBEs.
One of the issues is lack of transparency on forecasting,
as well as a lack of supply knowledge of,
and access to smaller contracts,
contracts under $100,000
that could be appropriate for many of our LGBTBEs
that are smaller companies,
some firms that you smell to times
many utility opportunities,
but they face challenges breaking into existing teams.
And the lack of transparency on forecasting
makes it difficult to preposition with time.
This is an issue for architects and engineers,
as well as many of the firms in professional services.
Insurance requirements are quite high,
but many of our LGBTBEs they are working through them.
Another issue is that the supplier Clearinghouse
asked for certifications, business licenses, insurance,
and other documents,
but some utilities require these same documents
uploaded onto their own platforms as well.
And we've had suppliers reporting no issues
getting the information on the Clearinghouse,
but multiple issues getting the information
on individual utility platforms
with no one to contact about the issues
and not having a fully populated profile
could get a diverse supplier overlooked.
The lack of a contract person to ask preliminary
as well as follow up questions
is something, most of our suppliers find very frustrating.
I think everyone in the dais has mentioned,
a lack of communication, also utilities continue to claim
that there are not enough contract where the LGBTBE,
but I have suppliers with almost 20 years,
over 20 years of experience who have submitted proposals
for everything from wildfire mitigation
in various infrastructure projects,
who have gotten very far into the process with utility
and even slash their prices to levels
that almost made the project in feasible for them
only for the opportunity to go away with no explanation.
And finally, despite all of the forward movement
we've made with diversity equity inclusion,
encouraging skill suppliers
and infrastructure to identify as LGBTBE
is an uphill battle.
They still see the industry as quite unwelcoming
to LGBTBE people,
and they are not confident that the utilities
will be any different.
And just speaking as an organization,
we are still not having conversations with enough utilities.
We have hundreds of LGBTBEs
that the utilities can contract with hundreds,
but yet we only have a relationship
with about nine utilities.
So when utilities say they can't find the LGBTBEs,
the question becomes, where are they looking?
Also not having a goal has a huge impact on the efforts
and utilities are willing to spend in contracting
with LGBTBE in our workshops last year
to discuss the LGBTBE goal
there were over 20 utilities who have not spent a dime
with LGBTBEs.
This lack of engagement skews the empirical data
needed to set a fair goal.
So while the LAGLCC would love to see a
1.5% LGBTBE spend goal,
we know that the data is not there to support 1.5%
due to this lack of engagement.
So we're hoping that the Commission will consider
the CPUC staff recommendation to extend the scoping period
of LGBTBE for four years,
but do it in concert with the JU recommendation
of a short-term 0.5% spend goal
to increase the engagement of underperforming utilities
and after those four years,
I'm confident that the Commission will feel comfortable
with a equitable goal of 1.5% for LGBTBE.
We, the LAGLCC is, I know that one of the questions
is that the Commission had had was about
how we're contributing to the development
and expansion of diverse owned businesses.
I mentioned earlier that the chamber
is an affiliate chamber of the NGLCC,
which is the national third party certifying body.
So we assist LGBTBE suppliers
who are on their certification journey.
We promote the benefits of certification,
provides status qualifiers
for the certification applications,
and we conduct heightened visits.
And then once the supplier, once the firm is certified,
we help LGBTBEs become contract ready.
We have a quarterly procurement series
to ensure that suppliers understand
the procurement process in both the public
and private sector and we connect LGBTBEs
who are members of the organization
with opportunities with our corporate partners.
And we also host a number of networking
and matchmaking opportunities so our suppliers
can identify both prime and subcontracting opportunities.
-: Thank you, Marquita.
There's a whole notion of taking the mystery of how
and the transparency that's needed to know well,
why did you, or did you not get the contract?
And these speeches are very important.
And I think we are all keenly sensitive to
and aware of the many, many, many decades,
centuries old fear of identifying as LGBTQ
and the fear of prejudice.
And, there's been many stories,
many recent stories of that prejudice,
and that feeds into the fear.
Thank you very much for that.
All right, Cole you've got the mic.
-: Great, thank you.
I'm gonna sound like a broken record here.
So I'll just kinda reiterate what
my fellow panelists have said.
Prompt payment,
we have to get the cash down to the small businesses.
They pay their suppliers.
They pay their tier two subcontractors,
all of the regulated utilities like to think
that they're the largest company in the world.
Unfortunately, none of them are larger
than the federal government.
My particular business,
I do construction for the federal government.
They pay me progress payments in 14 days
and final payments in 30.
If the federal government
with all of its issues can do that,
I would place the challenge to the utilities 14 and 30
is now the gold standard.
If you can make progress payments in 14 days
and final payments in 30, you are hitting the mark.
If you're less than that, do better.
Also in terms of forecasting,
that's been mentioned by previous panelists,
but I'd like to reiterate that the strength
of small business is our ability to pivot quickly.
I don't have a 20-person board of directors.
I don't have to report to a million shareholders.
If today I wake up and my business wants to sell this widget
or build this project, I can do that.
The pandemic reduced small businesses ability
to pivot that quickly.
Any cash we had in reserves got spent up
during the shutdown.
All of our employees are now wanting to be paid a lot more.
Labor is becoming harder and harder to locate.
So I cannot pivot as quickly as I used to be able to.
So it would help me if the utilities could give us
some sort of forecast on where they plan
on spending their money.
If I know that there's an IT contract
coming up a year from now, I can prepare my small businesses
to bid absolutely competitively on that project
a year from now.
If the supplier diversity person comes to us today and says,
hey, we're putting an IT project out tomorrow.
It's too late.
My small businesses cannot react to that quickly.
So pay your bill, give us some sort of forecasting.
I know that the utilities have budgets,
they have plans, they have strategic development.
And I know they don't wanna share that information
'cause they operate in a competitive marketplace.
We talk about the communication companies, right?
All of those companies
are basically at this point technology companies.
And so they do not wanna share those trade secrets,
but in order to maximize their supplier diversity,
and to strengthen the survivability of their supply chains,
we have to find some happy medium for forecasting,
what those needs are gonna be
so that we can build up the small businesses
that are gonna service those types of contracts.
So with that, thank you.
-: Thank you, Cole (indistinct),
and we now turn to Frank to wrap up this question,
and then we'll go to Commissioner Houck.
-: Well, that's the problem in going last that said,
most of my colleagues stole my thunder at all.
I echo their concerns,
but I would like to touch on one thing, and that's our subs.
It's very difficult for a lot of us to get contracts
from our tier ones or the subsidy utilities use.
I made a comment to the Commissioners of the week,
last week, where we had that dry run,
that it's easier for me to get into the white house
than it is to get to the doors
from some of these sub-procurement directors.
So I'd like to see the utilities can assist us in that.
I know that it's the same thing that they've said
about campaign that they don't control their subs
of the tier ones.
And I would echo what Tracy says that yes, you do.
I think you do.
If we hired a staff ourselves,
which we do many minority subs here in our business,
we wanna make sure that they are giving opportunities
to other minorities and other small businesses.
Dobson asked that we told them from the gate, look,
if we're gonna help you, you need to help them.
Because that's the way it is.
The only thing that trickles down
to our small businesses is pain, is pain.
We've seen the lack of a workforce.
There's a lack of workforce
because a lot of our small businesses have to shut down
during COVID, but yet though,
multi-billion trillion dollar corporations
were able to stay open.
And what happened there,
the employees that what the restaurants are a small business
is laid off or let go or hired by these big corporations.
They raised the pay, which is great.
But when our small businesses open up again,
we can't compete with that.
It's very difficult to compete.
So these are even more challenges that have come in play.
And remember, I'm giving you this perspective
from a small business owner.
And I hear this all the time from my neighbors
across the street, down the street,
every business has a help wanted sign, lack of workforce,
lack of, if opportunities came to some of these businesses,
they don't have a workforce.
And as my colleagues were saying that the cost of labor
has gone tremendously high,
we've given three raises to our employees
within the last year,
just to make sure that other businesses don't take them
'cause you have other businesses looking
to take your employees to make sure
that they can fulfill their obligations.
So we've had to raise,
which is great for employees of small businesses.
Nobody has to tell us to pay them well,
we do that on our own.
We don't need someone to set a goals of minimum wage
because most small businesses are paying their employees
more than a minimum wage that is set.
This is who we are, folks.
This is who we are.
We are your neighbors.
We are your family,
your children go to school with our children.
We see each other on the supermarkets.
We see each other outside the hospital waiting to hear
how our relatives are doing.
That's who we are.
We're in this together.
And they say it takes a village to raise a child.
Well, guess what, folks,
it takes a village to help our small businesses.
And that village consists of the utilities, the legislature,
and fellow small businesses out there.
So again, I think that my main issue
after hearing my colleagues and thank you everyone
for stealing my thunder, okay.
But I think you've said it very eloquently,
but subcontractors, please open up your doors.
Please allow our small business,
at least half an opportunity to tell us well,
tell you what we can do for you.
We're amazing.
Our small businesses are amazing.
Just give us an opportunity
to give us a level playing field, open those doors.
Myself as past chairman
of the California Chamber of Commerce
and passport board member
of California Small Business Association,
just in the name of you has trouble reaching someone
on the line.
I've reached out to my friend, Tracy
and asked her to assist us with some of the subs
that I've been trying to get,
and at least have a conversation with them.
So when to our utilities, please assist us with that.
All we need is an opportunity.
All we need is the chance to get there, open those doors,
open those doors because sooner or later,
we're just gonna have to kick them down, folks.
How much can we knock on those doors and patiently wait,
and wait in that waiting room, open those doors,
allow us to come in, share the wealth, share the wealth.
Thank you.
-: Thank you for that.
I wanna really thank everyone on this panel
for all of the information and insight that you've provided,
and I know we as Commissioners are listening,
and I am very sure that utilities
are also on here listening as well.
I know that we're running late on time a little bit.
And I know that a lot of the next question
I think was addressed by folks in their responses.
And I wanted to give the other Commissioners a chance
that they had any questions or comments
quickly before we wrap up the panel.
Then again, just thank all of you for the work you're doing
and for this important information
and participating in today's event.
So are there any questions from the other Commissioners
or comments, Martha?
-: Thank you, thank you everyone for the great feedback.
I wanted to get clarification on a couple of points
think I heard from many of you.
One is that they're an established point of contact for you
at the utility since that's still an issue.
Second, I heard that once you do have a contact
that there's a limited feeling of their jurisdiction
on the subs, because those are kind of two themes
that I heard.
So maybe you can just quickly say yes or no,
is that something we need to really hone in on
to establishing these points of contacts?
I thought that was very much established by the people
who have those positions.
And then secondly, are there maybe the top one or two things
that you think they should be focusing on
to help you with the sub.
-: Again, Commissioner Ms. Tracy, real quick.
We do have people in each utility that do and I use,
or that help us are considered our liaison,
with COVID has been very difficult at times
to get ahold of them, and it's just an issue of the times.
That's why I think we need to get back to work in person
and very safely.
The second thing is, yes, we've heard time and time again,
that they don't control the primes.
And it's unfortunate 'cause I small businesses,
Frank, he keeps saying,
we're financing everybody at times and that's a challenge.
So as Pat said earlier, training is good.
And I agree with Pat and on that.
And each utility has a different way of doing business
and we know that we're not uneducated to that.
And the liaisons really help us learn the corporate culture
or the culture of that organized company.
So we can do better business with them.
And for us, when I always say we do business,
and we're qualified and capable to do business,
we manage really try to manage the expectations
of our membership to say, if you go get CPUC certification,
make sure you can do business in that sector.
So Pat, that's fine. (indistinct)
We have qualified people in that sector.
And so to answer your question shortly, yes.
We're really working hard to maintain that.
And if they don't do business in the sector,
don't get CPUC certified.
That's kind of where we go
and go get certified somewhere else
that your business will fit.
-: And just on a time check,
I know that we are almost out of time.
I think we've got like a we're a little bit over,
I don't know if one more person wants to really briefly
respond to Martha to see if they're having that.
And then I'll turn it back to President Batjer.
Marquita.
-: Yes, so I will say that each utility is different.
There are some representatives who take great pride
in the fact that they will not give you
their contact information.
And then there are some utilities that want to make sure
everyone has their contact information.
So that, and the ones who are more open
with their contact information,
we're on the sides where they have the higher spend,
because people can ask questions.
They can ask follow up questions.
Why didn't I get this contract?
And maybe that will help them get the next contract.
On the question on sub-contracting,
we have hosted more meet the prime events
and we have been invited to,
or that we have received information about,
we have hosted quite a few new surprise
with our corporate partners.
We've done them virtually.
We've had over 100 firms and attendance in real time.
We do not rebroadcast them or anything like that.
And that gives our affirms an opportunity to connect
with not just the, basically, our events were,
if you're eligible to be a prime,
there was that opportunity,
and then there was another element of the event
that was for subcontracting,
but we have hosted more than we have been invited to.
So we would love for these (indistinct) to host more,
meet the prime events.
-: Thank you, and then I'll turn it back over
to either Commissioner Shiroma or President Batjer,
'cause I know we are running out of time.
I didn't know if Commissioner Shiroma wanted to say anything
to wrap up the panel.
-: Simply just say, thank you everyone.
Your undergrad experience is invaluable to us,
and I thank you for everything you're doing
for the economy of California.
I'll pass them back now over to President Batjer.
-: Thank you so much Commissioners,
and this was a rich panel.
Thank you very much.
As I think Cole said we could, we're maybe it was Frank,
we could spend the whole day talking
about some of these very important issues
to the small business people in our communities.
So thank you again very much.
I'm sorry, we are so short of time
and we had to rush a little bit there towards the end.
We are scheduled to take a break instead of 15 minutes.
I'm gonna ask that we only take a 10-minute break,
so let's all be back.
'Cause I do see that some panelists are joining us already
for the second panel.
So just a little, take a 10-minute break.
Let's call it five minutes, Ted,
about five minutes after 11.
How's that?
Okay, read that properly please.
And the same to the new panel to panelists.
Thank you all.
See you in 10 minutes.
Announcer: Thank you for your patience.
The feed for this streaming-
-: Officer of Frontier, George Richter,
senior vice president supply management
from Cox communications, Jalayna,
Jalayna, excuse me, F. Bolden,
AVP Global Supply Chain and Strategic Initiatives, AT&T,
Stephanie Owen, vice president, Technology
and Enterprise Procurement, T-Mobile,
and Rudy Reyes, vice president
of State Government Affairs
and Regulatory Affairs from Verizon.
I wanna welcome you all today.
Sorry for the brief intros,
just your title and your name,
but we want to really hear from you today.
So thank you very much for joining us.
And I'm gonna just jump in,
keeping our seam of thriving and surviving
during a pandemic, moving,
and jump in with the first question.
It's sort of a question of some length
with lots of questions.
So the pandemic underscores the necessity of tele-work,
tele-learning and receiving tele-health services.
How has this crisis impacted your organization,
your ability to get Californians connected,
and your ability to leverage diverse suppliers?
Please discuss your organization's
community outreach efforts during COVID-19.
I'm going to go in the order that just introduced you all.
So let's please hear from Nick Jeffrey from Frontier, first.
-: Well, thank you very much.
And may I say what an honor it is to be on this panel
and to have the opportunity to talk with you.
It's a great question, of course.
And as you can tell from my accent,
and hopefully a little
bit of background knowledge on Frontier,
I'm relatively new to both this country and to Frontier.
They come out of Chapter 11 and now we're surgent
and growing again.
But to address your questions directly,
at least from the limited lens
through which I've been able to observe
from over the last few months,
I mean, the first thing to say is that the pandemic,
of course has underscored like never before
the importance of our country digital infrastructure
and how important that is
for tele-working, tele-medicine, tele-health,
and indeed for the prospects of rapid economic recovery,
as things begin to return to a more normal situation.
I mean, for all that,
in a way it has opened a door on many things,
not least of which as the company has emerged
out of Chapter 11 and regained a very clear purpose
around what we would call building gigabit America,
underscored by deep belief
in the importance of digital society,
our ability to connect otherwise disconnected communities.
So community inclusion
has become particularly important to us,
and then realizing the impact that our technologies,
and high-speed fiber networks have
on reducing our collective input impact on the environment.
And we think about how little we've traveled
since the thought of the pandemic
that's been enabled in part
by having access to high-speed fiber, both by networks.
And of course, internally underlining the fact
that companies in our industry consume a lot of electricity
and other scarce resources.
And we have an opportunity to improve
our environmental footprint as well as help others
do the same.
In terms of supply diversity.
And if I can talk a little bit through bap to two lenses,
I mean the first of which is I hope you're already aware,
Frontier had a long standing commitment
to building diversity into our supply base.
I think we've taken very externally,
and I think we're making great progress
towards our objective in California of having 50%
of all our suppliers from a recognized diverse background.
And that's something that I show you
remain extremely important externally for the company.
Internally, I think diversity was not taken as seriously
as it should have been in Frontier.
And that's something
I'm very personally committed to changing.
If you look at the makeup of our new board,
which we put in place since March this year,
that is now 50% female and diverse
in pretty much every access you would hope it to be.
We also incidentally have what I think is the industry only
all female audit committee.
And we're very proud of that.
And then as I've rebuilt the executive committee
of Frontier communications over the last few months,
again, we've gone from having a practically no diversity
to a team that is now 50% of female minorities
represented in appropriate proportion.
And that's something we're taking very seriously
inside the company,
as well as thinking about it from our supplier base.
And the question I sometimes get asked
is why does it matter?
And I think it matters for two or three reasons.
The first of which is that it is just very obviously
the right thing to do,
and there's nothing wrong with just pursuing it
for that goal alone.
The second thing is that for us to represent
and be successful in the market,
we have to represent that market accurately ourselves.
And therefore we should appropriately represent the markets
in which we operate in both as an employee base,
but also across our supplier base.
And lastly, the loss of economic evidence
that diverse supply bases and diverse teams
perform better in the market than non-diverse one.
So even at a purely economic level,
it's an extremely sensible goal for us to pursue,
I think in terms of a community outreach
to address the third part of your question,
this scenario where Frontier has not been as aggressive
as it should have been in the past,
but I'm very pleased that we have just started
a new outreach program led by our new director
of external affairs, Erin Kurtz,
who's just joined the company covering of course,
LBGTQ networks, Hispanic networks, Black networks,
Asian networks, female networks, and so on.
I'm not the program that we're just spinning off this week.
And I'm very proud to say that I'm personally
sponsoring the outreach to veteran.
and that we have a big celebration
across the company this week of Hispanic pride as well,
but really gaining traction inside the company.
And I'm very confident.
We'll see that continue to grow as we build those programs
out across the markets in which we work.
And most importantly, of course in California,
which remains one of our most important markets.
-: I am very glad to hear that and welcome as a new CEO,
and welcome to our wonderful country as well.
Turning now to George Richter from Cox.
George, George, we can't hear you.
You're on mute.
You're still on mute. (laughs)
You're still on mute, George.
Maybe you're double muted.
You might be double muted.
I did hear you earlier.
If Robert is on, can you help George?
George, I'm gonna come back to you
when we get your audio fixed, okay.
So next we'll turn to Jalayna,
and please, I think I'm mispronouncing your first name
from AT&T.
-: Yes, it's Jalayna, Jalayna Bolden.
-: Jalayna, okay, thank you, Jalayna,
and nice to meet you.
-: Nice to meet you.
So I believe the question is you were looking to determine
what COVID crisis had on our effects
it had on our organization and the diverse suppliers,
and our outreach efforts during COVID.
I wanna make sure.
-: [President Batjer] Yeah, that's essentially the question.
It was a little bit long-winded, sorry.
-: Okay, okay.
So thank you for asking.
So I'm pleased to say that our employees,
the health and safety was a top priority for AT&T.
We began working virtually,
and some of our other frontline workers
provided critical customer service support.
So they were customer facing.
Our supply team, we worked,
we were determined to get the medical,
well non-medical grade pandemics related supplies
for our frontline employees and for our employees overseas.
And so on diverse suppliers really stepped up.
They were able to pivot business operations,
to manufacture and deliver those supplies
to our work across the globe.
They had to quickly mid pivot
to help us mitigate this impact.
There was a California based MBE that stepped up and pivoted
to deliver PPE critical supplies
to our international employees.
And this was not that supplier's core capability,
but the supplier was able to pivot due to their agility,
which is one of the benefits of being an MBE.
In terms of our supplier diversity program,
we were able to successfully transition
to a full virtual environment with our supplier engagement.
We didn't miss a beat.
We participated in actually more industry
and organizational activities.
We conducted virtual supplier interviews.
We had supplier presentations with our sourcing teams.
We held virtual matchmaking events in round tables
just to maintain our outreach efforts.
I think we touched more people
because we weren't on the road traveling,
and you know how you have the travel days.
And I know that dependence began to place
a tremendous strain on a minority and women on businesses,
but we knew it was important to provide support.
So we thought about it and we realized that
during the pandemic, many of the events were canceled.
So we ended up with more money in our sponsorship budget.
And so what we did is we decided
that we knew these businesses will critical building blocks
of their communities,
and many were a part of our supply chains.
So what we did is we made 2,500 to $5,000 grants,
totaling $100,000 to the regional minority supplier
development councils
and various women business enterprise councils,
and the regional partners around the country.
There were four California based organizations
that received assistance.
And that money was for is the brands were targeted
to help businesses with less than a million dollars,
which is not typically less than a million dollars
annual revenue, which is not typically AT&T's target market
for the opportunities.
But we were able to defray the cost of certification
and recertification costs.
We had each local Chapter administered the distribution
of the funds to optimize the benefit to their members,
but that was our way of wanting to give back,
wanting to help and acknowledging that it was hard
for some of our suppliers
and even some of the small certification fees
that went along way.
And so in total, as I stated,
we donated over $100,000 to communities in agencies
around the United States.
-: Thank you.
It might be interesting later to get the exact breakdown
of the $100,000 in what was actually spent in California,
but I'll move on right now to, welcome back to,
George you back on with us.
-: I am, and I do apologize.
I dialed into the muted version of the line.
The one where I guess all the guests can dial in.
So I do apologize.
This would be my opening start to what the impact
of the pandemic has been.
Half of us spend half of our lives incorrectly muted
or not able to communicate.
So I demonstrated.
-: [President Batjer] I know that'd be,
we've had some technical issues this morning, too,
so we all hear so right.
How ironic, huh?
We're all very much.
And I said earlier in my opening remarks,
this is one of my very favorite things that we do,
and very important things that we do at the Commission.
And so I got to just say it's one of the days
that I miss that we're not together.
It's very hard to do the kind of contact and outreach
I think we need to do
when it comes to supplier diversity, virtually.
But having said that, George, please go ahead.
-: Okay, I'll try to make this quick
and in the interest of giving everybody a time to chime in,
but I couldn't agree with you more.
This is one of the meetings that I do look forward to
and enjoy going to.
Just as a reference, Cox Communications,
our head office is actually based out of Atlanta, Georgia.
So I'm in Atlanta and your CPUC event
gives me a very good opportunity and reason
to go and visit our kids in California.
I have a couple of warehouses in San Diego.
I get to visit my folks.
So I do miss the fact that we are virtual this year.
I'll try to see if I can't remember
your multi-part question.
It was quite a few elements, but first,
how did it affect our people?
So I'll see to it from a supply chain perspective.
First, we had massive supply chain disruptions.
As you read about in the newspaper,
it was a very strange dynamic
because as COVID first hit, there were so many industries,
including the semiconductor industry that were anticipating
a decline in demand as a result of the pandemic.
And so there were immediate reductions in capital spending,
for all kinds of elements of the supply chain.
And at the very same time,
the exact offices activity was starting to happen.
Everybody pivoted to work from home,
all of a sudden broadband networks became important.
People needed new equipment at home.
People needed to entertain themselves.
So they started buying anything and everything
that had electronics in it,
it's well-documented that the auto industry
cut back on their forecast dramatically
and they did have a short decline,
but then it's a dramatic pickup in demand.
So there've been huge supply chain disruptions.
And that was one of the first things that affected my team.
Just to give you an example.
In 2020, we connected
an incremental 300,000 residential customers
during that year.
And many of those connections were not forecasted,
which means we didn't necessarily already have the equipment
in-house to be able to do those connections
or had the pipelines in place with our suppliers.
So we had to work very aggressively
to make sure that we were forecasting and placing orders
and making sure that the demand wasn't gonna be,
or the availability of equipment
wasn't going to be a problem.
We obviously had to all pivot
to a work from home environment, but at the same time,
I have employees who have to go to work.
Our folks that are in the warehouses
are folks that service the stakeholders that we support,
which is field services technicians, residential locations,
and that sort of thing.
So I had part of my population that had to work all the way
through the pandemic.
And then finally, probably one of the biggest changes
was we pivoted from less than about 50%
of our customer connections were happening
in a self-install fashion
where we could shift the equipment directly to the customer
and they would connect to themselves.
We used to have it pre-pandemic,
and a little bit less than 50% of our total connects.
We moved to almost 100% self-install.
And what that meant for supply chain
was we had to have the capacity to do all of the kits
and the shipping and be able to deliver all of that.
And I'm proud to say that we were not seamless,
but we rose to the challenge, if you will.
Now, in terms of the network itself,
it turns out that the investments that Cox
has been making in its network of high-speed broadband
over the last several years,
and we've been investing literally billions
and billions of dollars and upgrading our network,
the network performed incredibly well, as you can imagine,
we pivoted during COVID.
We suddenly had demand on our network growth
in terms of capacity going across that network.
We experienced growth
that typically would be over a year or two.
And it grew that much from a capacity perspective
in a couple of months.
But luckily we have invested enough over time
that the network was really resilient,
and was up to the task of having all of this increased,
broadband demand and video conferencing is a great example
that consumes a tremendous amount of broadband.
From a supplier diversity perspective,
there's sort of two elements to it.
The first is we have a number of diverse suppliers,
two very large ones, in fact,
that are involved in the support of ordering
and helping us manage all of the equipment
that will bring the into our network,
whether it's network equipment,
or whether it's what we call CPE,
consumer premise equipment.
So as the supply chain disruptions took place,
some of the equipment that we ordered
through these diverse suppliers
was being delayed and wasn't getting shipped.
So, unfortunately in some cases,
that was a somewhat of a decline in revenue
for those suppliers.
And that was a challenge.
But on the other hand,
we were able to find a number of diverse suppliers
that were able to step up and help us with requirements
that we didn't even know we were going to need.
And probably the best example that I can use.
And I know there's a number of companies out there
that have had the same experience,
but we suddenly needed to buy all of this PPE,
personal protective equipment.
We had to be able to equip the employees
that we had across our nation,
but still had to go in and work,
and have contact with customers and whatnot.
And we'd suddenly needed all of this fear
that we had never bought before.
And we were very successful
and found a couple of diverse suppliers
that were able to fill our requirements, manage,
tracking down those materials for us.
We were very pleased that we didn't suffer a single loss
in the sense that there were a lot of companies
that had to prepay for this material,
because it was in such high demand things like K95 masks.
And there were a number of situations where companies
prepaid for the material and never got the shipments,
and we didn't suffer a single loss.
And we really attribute that to a couple of very effective,
diverse suppliers that we were able to find in this space.
And then finally,
a comment similar to AT&T, we also found that one thing
we were able to do was pivot to a virtual environment
with our suppliers,
and that did actually expand the ability to sort of access
and contact suppliers.
So for example, we make sure that we host a number
of the supplier diversity events every year.
And of course, when those events were live,
they were always limited to location and Geography.
But as we pivoted to virtual events,
we could open up to the entire country.
So we are actually able to open up some of these events
to a lot more suppliers.
The last example I'll give you is we host something
that we call the small business leadership academy.
So we award scholarships
to select diverse suppliers every year.
And they participate
in these small business leadership academies.
And the idea is that we wanna help them grow their capacity
to grow their business.
And in the past, those have been physical programs.
So they were in very specific markets.
And we actually have a program in California
that we do with a university in San Diego,
but because of the pandemic,
we suddenly, they had to go virtual,
and suddenly we were able to actually award scholarships.
And it really didn't matter where you sat as a supplier.
We could award them because all of the classes were virtual.
So there were some benefits
to moving into this virtual world.
And I will stop there.
-: Okay, and I'll come back in my next question
to some of the points that you just made, George.
Now, I'll turn to Stephanie Owen from T-Mobile, Stephanie.
Stephanie, unfortunately, you're muted. (laughs)
-: Well, there we go.
I started just like the other gentlemen, right?
With a classic era mistakes,
staying on mute when you actually need to speak.
So thanks for having us here today.
I think we're very excited to be here
and share some of our accomplishments this year
during this challenging time.
And also to learn from the other panelists
who are sharing the same.
I think the power of learning is certainly one of the tools
that we feel is most important
to driving influence and change on these issues
that we're talking about today.
So I'll try to distill down a few things,
and give you some facts around how COVID impacted us
inside of T-Mobile,
how it impacted our abilities or lack thereof
to drive positive change with our pirate diversity team
and also the ENI.
So COVID right with very short notice,
all of us had to change our ways of working overnight.
And in T-Mobile is certainly no different.
Maybe what was different for us.
So was that it was about that same time, just in fact,
two weeks later that me we're given the positive news
that we were able to move forward
with our sprint integration.
So not only were we sort of reeling from COVID impacts,
but we were working fast and furious to embrace
a new company that was nearly the size of our own.
They certainly brought a lot of strengths
and I'll share some examples of that,
but that was a very challenging time for us.
So I want to give me some examples of COVID
and specifically what we did immediately.
We have a care organization
that has more than 15,000 employees.
In that organization, we had to immediately pivot them,
send them all home,
give them appropriate gear to do that,
and provide no disruption to service.
In fact, we even had to expand our services
because of the increase in customer requests.
We use largely diverse suppliers to purchase that gear
and provide that gear to those employees
who we're super proud of that.
Additionally, we had the same,
for all of our employees there.
One of the thing I do wanna call out,
I think similar to one of the other panelists mentioned
the purchase of PPE gear.
We spent more than a million dollars with a diverse supplier
to provide gear immediately at the onset of the pandemic,
to our employees, and also to our customers.
Anyone who went into one of our retail stores
was afforded the opportunity to take some PPE gear,
use that gear and take it with them when they left.
And we further provided that
to some of our third party suppliers,
diverse suppliers included in that list during that time.
So that was cool, and we're proud of that.
I think the other thing we started to realize, right,
none of us could travel.
So our team has particular supplier diversity team.
We spent a lot of time on the road there,
shocking how much then is act,
but doing outreach to organizations that benefit communities
to our suppliers and evangelizing at every opportunity,
the things that we can do.
So immediately we found ourselves or (indistinct) how.
If we can't use that vehicle to reach out,
and what are we going to do?
So we switched gears and we created some fact sheets
that we distributed to our supply base.
We noticed that there was an overwhelming
and a bit disjointed body of information
coming from government,
local government, (indistinct) national government.
And it was a bit confusing for our supply suppliers,
particular diverse suppliers
to get access to that information.
So we tried to create a funnel
to proactively channel that information to those teams.
The last thing I'll mention really specific to COVID
is we felt how people need money.
They need money in their pocket, right?
It's bear companies, all of us experience in our communities
and everywhere, it was easy to see small businesses
completely closing down some still haven't opened.
And this impacted, we believe our diverse,
small business community, more than any other.
So we had at the time, a 30-day payment program
that allows favorable terms to diverse suppliers.
We just completely opened that program much wider
and opened it to all of our small and medium businesses.
We opened it to all of our diverse supply bay,
excluding the very large suppliers
who really don't need that benefit
so that they could get cash in their pocket quicker.
So we're proud of that.
And you think it drove a favorable impact.
And today more than 600 of our diverse suppliers
participate in that program.
So at the risk of going too long,
there's so many positive things I do want to share with you.
I want to touch on two other areas,
and that is the issue of diversity and inclusion
as we relate to our employees and our diverse suppliers,
and also our supplier diversity program.
So during this period of time during COVID,
I'm really proud to say,
I don't think our DNI efforts inside of T-Mobile
or specifically as we extend that to our supply base
were negatively impacted in any way.
In fact, we had a lot of energy and a lot of programs
that were developed during that time.
There is an internal diversity and inclusion council
that's chaired by our vice president
of diversity inclusion called Martinez.
During the COVID time,
we did a couple of really important things.
One of them is we developed a company value
around inclusion, and it's one team together.
Why is this important?
Because it's the value that measures
the performance of individuals
against inclusive and collaborative behaviors
all across the company.
And part of that program is a learning program
called One Team Together Learning Journey
sponsored by the BMI council.
Is five-year program
and it requires of this type of training for every employee.
So very proud of that.
Lastly, I feel like I'm certainly taking some time,
but these important issues, and I'll talk
about our supplier diversity programs there specifically.
So we have many programs that we extended to our SPEs
or diverse suppliers,
and also did during community outreach.
But a few things that would like to highlight.
One is I see the most comprehensive,
positive impact it had on our diverse supply base this year
was within T-Mobile like all of our companions companies
represented here today,
we have significant external spend.
Within the last year and a half,
we have creative requirements for every category of spends,
have a strategy that includes
how are they going to specifically spend
with diverse suppliers?
So this is not a nice to have.
It's not something that we discussed, it's required,
it's documented and it's measured.
So that is very important.
There's a number of elements of that,
but I think about a positive impact on our supply base.
Additionally, we have, I can point to quantifiably increased
our diverse supplier spend in aggregate across the nation
by using that program.
There's many other things I could go in
and highlight a number of programs
similar to the other gentlemen we have SPE programs
that our mentoring program wants specifically in partnership
with a University of Washington Foster School of Business
here locally, we intend to speak with a representative
from California about replicating that programming
course from next year.
So I'll stop there and allow some time
for (indistinct) some of colleagues.
-: Okay, thank you.
Before I turn to Rudy, I do want to comment,
one thing that you said, Stephanie,
about your 30-day pay program.
From our first panel this morning,
the small business people,
particularly they say it every year,
particularly during pandemic, what they needed was payment.
They needed quick payment, they needed cash.
They've lost employees.
They've had to up their game
in terms of what they pay employees
to stay competitive with those in their businesses.
And so I just every year,
but I just can't encourage you all more.
These small businesses have to be paid.
They need to be paid within 30 days,
as they said very well to all of us, the utilities.
And I'd say the Teleco's, we all pay our bill monthly.
So you guys gotta pay your bills monthly.
Okay, Neff grand standing, Rudy. (laughs)
Rudy from Verizon, Rudy Reyes.
-: Thank you, President Batjer and Commissioners.
It is truly a great honor to speak before you today
on the subject of diversity, supplier diversity.
I wanted to say that for Verizon and for me personally,
diversity and inclusion is not just a talking point.
It's very personal to me, my own personal story
as a scholarship kid,
first in my family to go to a four-year college,
a life-changing experience for me, for the company,
especially with our relatively new CEO,
And especially after the murder of George Floyd,
a very intensive look at diversity and inclusion,
unconscious bias, critical race theory training,
even to the detriment of some of the media
who criticized us,
a very strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.
And when I talk about diversity,
I'm speaking more broadly
than just the very important subject of supplier diversity.
I'm talking about employee diversity over 60%,
just under 60% of our employees are women
and people of color,
board of directors diversity six out of 10
of our board members are women or people of color,
our customers and our communities.
We serve all of our customers and communities
and strive to have very strong digital equity and inclusion.
We've announced a $3 billion special investment
over a five-year period to connect unserved communities
that are blinking red for demand
to access to affordable high-speed broadband.
I mentioned the employee training.
On the specific topic of supplier diversity,
our company is very proud of our record
on supplier diversity.
We were one of the founding members
of the billion dollar round table.
And as the name suggests,
those are companies that pledge and follow through
and spending at least a billion dollars
on supplier diversity, and we exceed that by almost 600%.
Each one of our executive leaders and line of businesses
have their own targets
that are part of their performance agreements,
and are factored into their bonuses and compensation.
And last year we spent $5.7 billion on supplier diversity
and over a 10-year period, that's 50 billion,
as in B dollars on supplier diversity.
So we're very, very proud of that.
And we have of course meet
and exceed the Commission's standards in GO 156.
I believe your question originally,
President Batjer was about telehealth
and the impact of COVID on our diverse communities.
And as one speaker said before,
and I'll put it much more starkly.
COVID had a dramatic impact on the traffic we saw
on our network.
Usually every day, President Batjer, Mother's Day
is the highest volume you see.
And it was Mother's Day every day during COVID
with everyone's schooling and working
and entertaining from home.
Myself at my home, my son was schooling.
My husband was, is a digital artist,
downloading massive files and doing digital artwork.
And then of course, the Verizon policy guy, me
on video all day,
tremendous volumes of data that we saw during COVID,
and the network held up to that.
We always try to build a network
to make sure that we are so to speak skating
to where the hockey puck is going and making sure
that we're have sufficient capacity in our networks.
The biggest impacts we saw were with our students,
and our small businesses.
So for our students, I mean, everyone saw two years ago,
the kids from Salinas who had to sit outside taco bell
to do their homework, that really impacted our company.
The culture of it, me personally,
and one of the things that I'm very proud of our company
for doing, and it was born right here in California,
was with the Los Angeles Unified School District, LAUSD.
We partnered with the superintendent to make sure
that we provided every kid in the school district
who needed it with free internet
wireless internet connectivity,
through a very low cost reduced contract with LAUSD.
And then we were able working with the first partner
and Governor Newsome
to open that up to all school districts in California.
And then that leadership actually translated
across the country.
Not sure all 50 states,
it could just be the lower 48.
Now, it's universal, every school district
that wants to get access to this discounted plan
to allow all of their students who need it
with free connectivity can do that.
That's a source of enormous pride for the company.
And then I'll end with the small business impact you asked
about small businesses, took a humongous hit during COVID.
I don't need to tell you,
but we're seeing it from our customers
who are telling us this.
We were greatly impacted
when over a hundred thousand small businesses,
we understand closed nationwide during the pandemic.
And broadband is a lifeline for our small businesses
go into any one of these small coffee shops
or small businesses across San Francisco, California.
They're all using a broadband connection for payment
for paperless payment or non-contact payment.
So one of the important things we did
was to partner with LISC to offer $10,000 grants
to the small business community,
targeting the diverse small businesses,
and that totaled up to 2.5 million.
So we're very proud of our record on diversity broadly,
broad the definition of diversity.
And I'll just end by saying again,
this is very personal for me as a scholarship kid.
I suffered from imposter syndrome for a long time
being the first in my family to go to college.
And as I grew my team out here in the west
from about five employees to now, 20 doing,
not just state legal and regulatory,
but also local engagement,
as we build out 5G across California and our nation,
it was super important.
My motto was diversity and excellence,
and I'm so proud that that the overwhelming number of people
that I hired onto my team fit both of those characteristics.
-: That's terrific, Rudy, in your personal story
is one to very much be proud of as well.
Thank you, before we move on to the second question,
and given the richness and thoroughness of your answers,
this may be the last question 'cause I really want to turn,
I know my fellow Commissioners have questions
that they'd like to pose to you
and we are running behind today.
So I just one point I wanna make,
and I don't mean to call people out negatively,
but this on bonk this day is about learning,
learning from each other,
learning from other utilities within California,
but Stephanie Green,
our diverse supplier manager earlier always calls out
the utilities who have met all three GO 156 goals in 2020.
And they're 10 companies that she has on that list.
And the only one of all of you that made the list,
meaning that you reached or succeeded the goals
of minority spend, and that was Frontier.
So as a new CEO, you can take that one to the bank,
but I know all the rest of you are gonna catch up.
I know you are, I'm sure you are.
And that kind of goes to the next question.
For the annual supplier diversity reports to the Commission,
which are very important,
we have to have your data.
The Commission's guidelines specified that the utilities
only include those expenditures that were incurred
in support of their California operations.
I think George was mentioning that I'd get to this
when you were speaking.
So I'm sure your numbers across the country are great.
However, we wanna know California.
We wanna know what you're doing in California.
So what methodology do you have in place
to separate your company's expenditure
for California operations?
I, again, I'm sorry to point fingers,
but Cox and Verizon do not separate things out,
their spend out for California, AT&T and T-Mobile do.
So what learnings, how does AT&T do it,
and how does T-Mobile do it?
So let me first turn, and I'm gonna go out of order here,
let me go to Jalayna first to learn how you all
separate out your California spend from your other spend
across the country, because I think it can be done.
I've been told, sorry,
I've been told by the other companies, it can't be done,
but I think it can be.
-: Sure, so we have a very extensive tracking
and payment system within AT&T.
We've been doing this program for 53 years now since 1968,
with over $200 billion in spend, I know that's a total spin,
but in terms of California,
we can slice and dice on numbers, different ways.
And ours is just really derived based on the allocation,
except for the money directly contributed
to the clearing house or to advocacy groups.
An allocation is based on supplier standby AT&T subsidiary
and that state specific revenues.
So that's how we're able to segregate
what is the California spend.
-: Okay, and Stephanie, if I may now turn to you,
how do you at T-Mobile do it?
-: Absolutely, well, as I mentioned-
-: Your merger as well.
So just wanna make sure we include that as well.
-: Yes, as as mentioned, right?
2020 was a year that was not an apples to apples
kind of a year for us.
So we were challenged a bit.
This year in term of our results,
we decided to take a very conservative approach.
And overall, I think our number
is slightly below the target,
but I think what's more important
is let me answer your specific question.
How do we do that?
I think we do something similar
to what my colleague at AT&T said.
We strive based on the data that we have
to look at two factors first,
pretty clear we can see what amount of our spend is
with California Certified Suppliers
and following the guidelines that the CPUC gives us.
The second thing that we do is we are able
based on I'll call it analytics and algorithms
to get very precise on what amount of our total sense
can we attribute to our customers in California.
And two, I'll say infrastructure,
capital investments in California
for cell phone company, right?
So we are making CapEx investments throughout the state
to support the traffic and our customer
kind of activity there.
So this gives us the ability
to pretty precisely look at what is that amount of spend
in California and of that
what's specifically qualified (indistinct)
So I hope that answers your question.
-: [President Batjer] Okay,
and in that I thank you, Stephanie.
And then I called out Cox and Verizon,
it's only fair that I give you an opportunity
to speak to this.
And perhaps something that was said either by Jalayna
or by Stephanie.
So George want to take a swing at it.
-: Sure, I mean, basically our simple answer
and we do get on a call every year
and go into quite a bit of detail
with Stephanie and her team.
And we're always appreciative of her willingness
to have that conversation with us.
And we're certainly always looking for those opportunities
where we can do better,
where we can see that it enhances our program,
but fundamentally we just,
we don't have that methodology that was described
by either AT&T and T-Mobile.
And there's a couple of reasons.
First the telephone company,
the technical telephone company
that we have registered in California doesn't buy anything.
And so as a result,
we don't have that direct connection.
And from a company perspective,
our focus is to be successful with diverse suppliers
across the nation.
California is of course, part of our footprint
is certainly an important part of our footprint
that we do serve a lot of markets across the entire country.
And we've got consolidation hubs
and things that cause that dynamic
to make it very difficult for us to figure out
specifically what is attributable to California.
And I'm not sure that if I understood what AT&T and T-Mobile
were describing attributing total spend
to California is not exactly the same as are you spending it
with the California supplier.
But at the end of the day,
our goal is to have a successful supplier diversity program,
across the nation.
And we in fact are moving probably in the other direction
in the sense that one is we just set a target
sort of part of an overall idea,
any program that the company put in place
that was picked off after the George Floyd murders,
that encompasses a whole bunch of diversity items,
not just supplier diversity,
but in their supplier diversity,
we have set ourselves a target
of getting to a billion dollars in spend,
but we're actually gonna be now doing it and measuring it
across the entire enterprise.
So Cox Communications is a division of Cox Enterprises
and we have a bunch of other businesses,
and we just recently consolidated
our supplier diversity program,
and all of our supply chain organizations
into my organization.
So it technically resides in Cox Communications,
but we're now supporting our whole enterprise.
And our view is actually going in the other direction,
which is we're not even necessarily uniquely trying to focus
on diverse supplier diversity for communications.
We want supplier diversity across all businesses
that Cox happens to be involved in.
But again, I'd say.
-: [President Batjer] I didn't get to a place
where we can see what you spend in California
on our small business folks.
So appreciate it.
But I hope you can get your methodology.
-: Just a comment though.
And I'd love to understand whether it's now
or maybe in a follow-up again,
from what I just heard it briefly with AT&T and T-Mobile,
if that allocation methodology is attributing,
how much you buy in total and then how much you have
residing in California,
that didn't sound necessarily to me,
like it was exactly a one for one with those,
our suppliers residing in California,
it sounded like it was almost like a tier two allocation
of the total spend.
I'd love to understand that a little better.
-: So George, we'd be happy to talk offline
at another time about it.
So why don't you reach out to me
and we'll be able to walk you through the methodology.
-: All right, we'll do that.
All right, I will.
-: I'm gonna ask our manager, Stephanie Green to do the same.
We're gonna go to a little bit deeper in this
'cause that's extremely important, Rudy.
-: Yeah, so again, thank you, President Batjer.
The staff guidance is to try to segregate only expenditures
that are for California-specific operations.
And we don't have a methodology
for segregating only California specific operations.
However, we do provide the Commission an estimate
that is based on California information.
So I wanted to make sure that you were aware of that,
and all the Commissioners are aware of that.
It's not like we provide a national number.
What we do provide is we provide the amount
of our diverse spend that is connected to California
by including all of the payables remitted
to California addresses by suppliers
that are both in and outside of California,
who are certified by the California supplier clearing house.
So that's our best method of coming up with a number
that is related to California.
Is it the perfect number?
I'm sure it's not.
I doubt that the other competitors you mentioned
have the perfect number either.
And also you wanna be able to count those suppliers
who might be doing work out of state,
but they are California companies, right.
Or vice versa.
So we try our very best to come up with with an assumption.
And we're very transparent about it.
-: Well, thank you, Rudy.
We're gonna get to some granularity,
hopefully on your side, all of you,
as well as on our side is,
as I think we can probably hone down both the question
and the responses.
So we're 10 minutes over time, we got started a little late.
I'm going to shorten the lunch hour.
So I'm gonna turn to my fellow Commissioners now,
and open it up for any of their questions
and just raise your hands.
I can see you all.
Yes, Commissioner Rechtschaffen, please go ahead.
-: I'm going to be quick.
I just asked for a show of hands on a couple of things.
So I heard Nick,
I think I heard you say your internal goal
is 50% diverse procurement, is that correct?
-: Yeah, that's correct.
But we're actually 41.7, 8%, today.
-: Right, you were highlighted earlier.
So show of hands, anyone else who wants,
it's thinking of matching you as an internal goal
to match Frontier.
Okay, anyone of the other companies that has a goal
to exceed the voluntary targets that we've said
in general order 156.
Okay, three other, beautiful.
And then secondly, Stephanie talked about T-Mobile
extending the fast payments to all suppliers during COVID.
How many of the other companies here have done that
or something similar.
-: At the risk of burning up any time,
we had put a program in place years ago,
that was any small diverse vendors that required it,
or we saw the opportunities and offer it.
We have had standard net 15-day payment terms,
and that goes on well before COVID,
and I've always attributed that aha moment, if you will,
to one of the CPUC boards that I was participating in,
and very clear feedback, even before COVID
from small vendors that capitalist the number one problem
for diverse suppliers, small diverse suppliers.
And it seemed obvious that that was the one thing
that we could do very easily.
So we've had a program in place for many years
that is offering them net 15-day payment terms.
-: Okay, thank you.
I don't know how many of you were on her prior panel,
but our panel of diverse chambers
and other business organizations identified that
as the single biggest challenge they face
even more so during COVID.
Thank you, President Batjer.
-: Thank you, Cliff.
Yes, I mentioned exactly that to all of our panelists,
that it was absolutely critical.
We hear it every year,
but COVID made it absolutely that much more.
Any other Commissioners, please?
Any questions of our panel?
Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Thank you, a comment and a question.
First of all,
all of your companies are very sophisticated,
and then you have taught here billing systems,
systems for contracting and the various business units
within your entire organizations.
And so I'm wondering if,
where we need to be more specific in asking you
the metrics for California.
I mean, we're California,
so we're asking you about what are you doing to invest
in small businesses, on area and business,
and so forth in California?
So I plucked step
and how you can't clean out that information.
Whether one of our businesses in California
may be doing something in another state.
What have you, but meanwhile, they're here in California,
so you don't have to answer today,
but I am wondering if that is part of the thing here,
as far as the standardizing, what it is,
we are requiring you to tell us
because otherwise it's very, very perplexing.
Now, my question is, again for California,
is there a specific action plan, a specific work plan to,
on the Frontier has exceeded a lot of expectations on this.
Do you all have an actual core value plan
for increasing your numbers (indistinct) giving the skill,
but still looking at the investment
in California small businesses?
-: Yeah, I would like to take a stab at that one.
We do very specifically, as I mentioned,
we have this category of send approach.
I lead procurement,
which is where we have our supplier
the ENI and supplier diversity issues
because it's true, the decisions that my team facilitates
that we can most directly impact this issue
and through our process of setting ENI targets
for every spend category
and also by extension California, by the end of this year,
we'll have that for 100% of our spend categories,
which I think will contribute positively to that.
I would just like to offer also as a point of education,
not to grant, but our team last year,
or it might've been at the start of COVID
started at California subcommittee focus on DE&I,
and we found that to be a very useful vehicle,
to get information directly, relative to California,
the ENI issues, what's happening, what are priorities,
and to give us coaching on our efforts there.
So I would offer that up as something we've learned
a great deal from this year.
-: Thank you, Stephanie.
I'm going to turn to Nick.
He had his (indistinct)
-: Thank you, it's a great question.
Just don't answer directly.
Yes, absolutely, we do have specific programs,
metrics, KPIs, and all the rest of it
around what we're doing in California.
California is one of our most important markets.
And I'll just remind that the patients
that we've recently announced,
one of the country's largest fiber bills
and California features very highly on that,
both for rural and urban as well,
where we're extending networks to communities
that will benefit from that right across our footprint.
So they answer said yes to the question.
The second thing I just need to say, unfortunately,
is I need to drop off the call
because I've got another meeting started
at the top of the hour.
And thank you once again for recognizing the work
that we've done on the diversity 156 goals.
We're very proud of that.
Diversity is and will continue to be at the core
of everything we do.
I personally believe in it and personally will drive it.
And so I'm very much looking forward to working with you
over the coming months and hopefully years
to continue to drive this is important set of initiatives
for up in California,
and look forward to collaborating with you
on all aspects of that.
-: Thank you very much, Nick, for your participation.
And because of time,
I'm gonna ask that the other companies answer
Commissioner Shiroma's question in a written form
to Stephanie Green or manager of supplier diversity.
I don't want to cut everybody short,
but we're way over time.
So thank you all for your participation today.
Appreciate it, and it's your 30-day plan down.
These small businesses are just needing cash so badly.
So thank you all.
And we will take a 30-minute lunch break.
I have 12:03.
Let's be back everyone at 12:35.
Thank you all very much.
-: Thank you.
Announcer: (indistinct) Moderator.com
will begin momentarily.
Thank you for your patience.
-: I'm back.
Today, now for the, I'm back on general order 156,
thriving and surviving during a pandemic.
We've just finished a very first lunch.
And our next panel is our third panel of the day,
and we'll be on the energy and water panel,
and it is moderated by Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
The panelists will discuss the effects COVID has had
on their supply chain.
They will also address questions regarding the rising cost
of insurance premiums,
expanding subcontracting market trends, master contracts,
and best practices.
Oh, and you're all gonna do this in like no time at all.
(laughs)
That is a lot of territory to cover,
and I'm sure you'll do it all beautifully.
I will now turn it over to Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you, President Batjer.
And let me just state who's on the panel here
and they'll jump into the first question,
but I want to thank Adam Wright,
executive vice president operations
and chief operating officer for Pacific Gas and Electric,
Caroline Winn, she's the chief executive officer
at San Diego Gas and Electric,
Kevin Payne, she's executive officer and president
of Southern California Edison,
Stuart Timson, the director of procurement,
for Liberty Park Water Utility.
And I know that Scott Drury will soon be joining us,
chief executive officer for Southern California Gas Company.
So thank you first and foremost for being here,
I'm gonna adjust our questions a little bit
just based on the great dialogue you've had this morning,
and really no, the couple of questions.
One of the things that we heard from some of the suppliers
this morning was really the relationship
that they need to enhance with the prime contractors
and the role that you can provide
in really ensuring that they're doing more.
Doing more on timely payments,
doing more on greater outreach for expanding procurement
to diverse firms.
So you could address what is your organization doing
to address this issue?
So why don't you start in the order of introduction?
So I'm gonna go ahead and go to Adam.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Guzman.
Really appreciate you have enough here.
-: Adam, your voice is a little low.
I'm sorry, if you could maybe.
-: Thank you for telling me.
How am I now? -: Better.
-: So thank you for having us appreciate it.
The opportunity to talk about these important topics,
could not agree more with Commissioner Batjer.
This is an area of focus for us.
We do realize the importance of better awareness
with our prime contractors
on the opportunities and the potential
around hiring more subcontractors that are diverse.
One of our stands, we have five of them.
I would say actually two of them.
The first one is enjoyable to work with and for PG&E,
and the other stand we have
is that our workshop create prosperity for all customers.
And when I look at that and think through that,
that really drives our behavior in this space to make sure
that subcontractors and prime contractors
buy the enjoyable to work for us.
That means fewer disputes.
That means better payment terms,
that means working together to make sure
that they have a pipeline from a supply chain standpoint,
that they can get their work supply and perform it pursuant
to the contract.
So we are focused on this area.
I think there's a big opportunity.
I would say that our subcontractor spend
with diverse suppliers is 623 million as of last year.
That significant amount our spend overall
with diverse suppliers is $3.9 billion.
And that is up 50% since 2017.
And so we are enrolling our prime contractors,
and subcontractors to do work for us.
And it's an area we have to keep up with it on.
-: Thank you, Adam, for sharing these numbers.
And maybe if you've been the next speakers as we progressed.
And I see Mr. Drury Scott, thanks for joining us,
(indistinct) this last discount.
If you could please be more specific about your practices
that you're doing, as an example,
one of the comments made this morning
was that some companies lacked a basic point of contact.
So if you can really address
how you're keeping clients accountable,
whether it is having someone that the subs can contact
and things like that.
Okay, so Caroline, I'm gonna move to you, thank you.
-: Okay, thank you, Commissioner.
For us at FTG, our subcontracting plan really includes
collaboration with our prime suppliers,
with our business units and diverse suppliers.
And it's just building on the strong foundation and culture
that we built at SDG&E.
So we're building on the strong foundation
that is built on the shoulders of many others
that have come before me.
But we've been able to demonstrate
a really strong performance in sub contracting
with our diverse suppliers.
And in 2022 specifically,
I think we achieved almost 300 million or over 14%
in supplier diversity's sub contracting span.
And that's an increase of more than $100 million
or nearly 60% in subcontracting you've spent
compared to 2019.
I would say that doesn't mean we're not stopping
to find new and creative ways
to bring in even more diverse sub contracting.
And when we contract with a prime,
that's not a DBE,
we're encouraging and negotiate in during the process
for them to commit to a certain percentage
of diverse span with the subcontracting.
And I think those relationships
and having that within the contract
and the kind of approval to move forward
is how we start our basis.
I think additionally,
our ambassadors are playing a major role
in the success of this program
and our ambassadors are internal employees.
So back, I don't know, in 2013,
we had something like 12 ambassadors.
Now we have around 300 ambassadors,
and these are employees that have lots of friends,
not neighbors, they know people.
And so they have really been a great part of our building,
more diverse suppliers and more diverse subcontractors.
And it's about bringing the company into our company goals
about making sure that we have diverse suppliers
that represent the communities that we serve
and the employees that we have working at SDG&E.
So I would tell you,
in terms of the question around payment,
we do have a supplier quick pay program,
and that's paid net 15 days,
no discounts for small diverse vendors
that qualify in this area.
And that's so important given the comments
that we've heard earlier around being able to pay the bills,
to hire more people.
And that's been a success for us and our customers
and our suppliers.
We have 88 or so suppliers that participate in that program.
And we're trying to grow that program
and make sure that we'll get out.
I would say maybe one last thing that we're doing
is we're working with our community-based organizations.
And we built quite strong relationships
with our community-based organizations,
not just for supplier diversity,
but also for things like PSPS
and helping us get the word out to all of our constituents
through channels that they get information on.
But specifically for diverse spend,
we've been able to do webinars with them on,
how to thrive through the pandemic,
and how to do business with SDG&E, how to respond to RFPs.
And then when we have RFPs,
we're sending that information
to our community-based organizations
that they can get the word out to their constituents.
So we're doing a number of things to try and make sure
that our community is involved.
We have a by-local campaign,
we spent $100 million just with local vendors
within the region of San Diego Gas Electric, SDGE
And we're continuing that,
but certainly more work to be done,
but that proud of the progress.
And we're gonna keep increasing that number.
-: Thank you so much, Caroline.
And just as a quick, follow-up, do your prime pledge
to the quick pay program as well?
-: Now, the quick pay program
is only for certain qualified suppliers.
So it's generally our smaller suppliers,
Commissioner large with 25 FTEs or less,
or maybe they do less than $5 million in business.
So we specifically targeted that because we knew
that was so important,
especially for our smaller diverse suppliers.
-: Yes, I appreciate that direct contracting
is very important and is there any requirements
such as that with your primes on what their subs look like,
what kind of payment timeline or they are paying
to their sub?
(indistinct)
-: Yeah, for our primes,
I think our general contracting terms is net 45.
I don't have the answer in terms of the exact relationship
in terms of how that translates to the subcontractors.
But I do know the subcontractors that we're dealing with
particularly can apply to the quick pay program
if their company qualifies for that.
-: Okay, thank you.
And certainly would appreciate any follow-up
in the future on that.
Okay, let's turn to Mr. Payne Kevin.
Kevin, I think you're muted.
-: Yeah, it's my comp, I'm not muted.
-: There you go.
-: You can hear me now?
-: Yeah. -: All right (indistinct)
So appreciate this question.
This is actually been an ongoing issue
for a number of years, I think as all of you know,
and we do quite a bit in this area of influence
our prime contractors.
So we fundamentally, we share our commitment
and expectations or this
with our prime suppliers and (indistinct)
and we make them accountable to it for results.
So specifically our prime suppliers
all submit a DVD subcontracting pledge,
and we monitor their progress every month.
And any primes that are underperforming
against their pledges have to provide
a corrective action plan to us.
We also, when we award contracts,
we award points to prime contractors
for the tier two pledges that they make.
So they get an advantage if they make a specific
and significant tier two pledges.
And so also, as we have done for many years,
we take steps to connect our subcontractors with primes
to increase opportunities.
So we try to get them to have interface
with all of our primes so that they can see opportunity.
We meet the primes of that, and other things like that.
I think this approach,
which really is about goal setting and accountability
has been pretty effective.
And last year,
our diverse subcontracting was, was at 25%,
which was over $600 million.
So we're pleased with the kind of results
that it's producing.
On the topic that you mentioned quickly
about having a point of contact.
Every one of our contractors,
whether they're a prime or sub has the point of contact
with our supplier diversity team.
So they can always get to whoever they need to get to
in the company.
And one thing that's a bit of a philosophy of ours
around subcontracting is that,
we fully expect that today's subcontractors
may be prime contractors in the future.
And so we treat our whole set of contractors
in a way where we can help them grow and advance
and do business with us in different ways.
-: Thank you, and it sounds like the pledge process
has worked really for increasing the pool of the diverse.
So maybe as we move along in the conversation,
we can continue to examine how to keep the timeliness
of payments that you ever able to do
to your smaller diverse firms and build that
into the prime pledge.
Okay, I'm gonna move over to Mr. Timson.
Sure, thank you.
-: Thank you for firstly for the opportunity
to participate today.
So obviously I'm representing Liberty Utilities.
We're one of the smaller utilities within the program.
have been voted for electric utility services
in the California side of Lake Tahoe and water utilities
for Apple Valley and parts of Los Angeles.
So over the last three years, since I arrived,
we've been really working
on our professional procurement approach
in our Tahoe operations.
And that's led to some drastic increases
in the way that we actually have attracted diverse vendors.
And we've attracted a number of new primes.
The sub-contract and is an area that's still in progress,
but we now have standard templates
when we issue our bits out.
That includes subcontracting plans from our primes.
I will be honest that we haven't got in an efficient
tracking methodology and we are working on that right now,
but it's a program that really has been in its infancy
and is growing, growing rapidly.
But we've also,
we've attracted a number of new problems that are diverse.
And as such, we starting to educate them on the requirements
for sub-contracts and as well as our existing problems
or other non diverse price.
In our downing Apple Valley operations,
we've been a bit more effective than that
because the program has been established a bit longer.
And we work with our colleagues in the CWA
on a number of meet the prime type events
and working with our plans to promote diverse subcontracting
that's grown over the last couple of years.
We still have a long way to go.
It's not the numbers that the major utilities have,
but we are working actively with our primes
and move our internal stakeholders to drive that approach
and encourage more partnership, especially in this time.
-: Okay, thank you, Stuart.
It sounds like maybe Caroline and Kevin have a good pledge,
a format that you could borrow from to give to your prime,
and maybe Adams as well.
Okay, so Mr. Drury, Scott, thank you for being here
just to catch you up.
I don't know if you caught the question at the outset,
but a big part of the discussion this morning
has been around accountability of primes
and really in two areas,
one is the growth of diversity in their subs,
as well as the, what seems to be a perennial issue
of timely payments,
that from the primes to the subs,
and how you are really working with the primes
to get that performance.
-: Thank you very much, Commissioner,
and I apologize for being a moment or two late.
I was having trouble with my email,
which was ironic because I was on earlier
for some of the earlier panels and I had no problem.
And then a little bit of a technical problem on my end,
but thank you for understanding.
This is an issue that's not new.
It's been something that we've all continued to work on
over a long period of time.
I think most of you know, this is a space
that I have some direct experience in earlier in my career,
and it's an area
that I'm really particularly passionate about.
And I'm very pleased with the overall progress
that we've made at SoCalGas over a long period of time.
Last year was the 28th consecutive year
in which we exceeded the goals of GO 156.
I know there were discussions earlier about aspirations
of going beyond the requirements.
And we were at almost double the requirements of GO 156.
And that's the result of a long history of leadership
in this area that transcends me and many others.
And I think through that leadership,
we've had some success in this subcontract area.
And I think it sort of gets down to Kevin Newsome
might've said that this sort of, what do you expect
and what do you hold people accountable for?
So we wanna lead in this space.
We don't want to just lead California.
SoCalGas wanna lead the country in this space
and we wanna be doing work with like-minded people
that share our values.
So in order for us to achieve what we want to achieve,
we need business partners that are gonna help us.
And so we're very clear about the expectations that we have
for our prime contractors.
We have plenty of processes to incense,
their performance around sub-contracting.
We have a process where our procurement executive,
not just our supplier diversity executives
meets with those primes,
including with the operating leaders of the company
that use them to make sure
that there's like complete alignment in the organization
around what we required.
It's not the supplier diversity team over here.
Although we have a great team with Joe and others,
it's our collective responsibility
to make sure that these large companies understand
what we need from them.
And we've had some success,
there are certainly areas that we can do better.
And folks that have not met our expectations
and we've taken action, whether it's a meeting
with the operating officer,
I've had a couple of meetings myself with folks
to make sure that they understand
what we're trying to get done.
We've tried to support their success
by connecting them to high quality subcontractors.
We've done a lot of matchmaking events.
So we've got probably one third of all of our DVBE suppliers
are working in a (indistinct) contracting capacity.
So we had 800 or some odd firms,
a good number of those are sub.
And someone made this point earlier about growing the subs
into prime contractors.
And there's real opportunity here.
1515 of our 25 largest contractors are diverse firms,
and not all of them,
but many of them have started as subs, right?
So we just have to continue to leave a space.
And then on the quick pay issue,
I think your point about the opportunity
to look at what we can do a level or two down
in the supply chain.
For SoCalGas we have the same quick pay program
that Caroline talked about.
It is limited to a subset of small diverse suppliers.
I think we can look at how we extend the concept of that.
Even if it looks a little bit different
into our a subcontract departments.
-: Yes, thank you.
And we, especially as we are continuing
in the recovery stage and COVID-19,
I think the expansion of that to the subs
is particularly important.
I wanna acknowledge that many of you
through your user programs
and the leadership of Commissioner Shiroma
even went beyond that and not just a quick pay,
but a forward pay.
So maybe that's something you can consider
as you look at really the success
that you've all talked about,
about building the capacity of these subs to become prime.
Okay, I'm gonna move on to another question here.
And this is gonna be a two-part
that I'm gonna start with the general one,
and that is our climate and our aging infrastructure.
We are often dealing with many of the challenges of course,
with whether it's the old pipelines
or old distribution or transmission,
what's the impact of drought and floods and so forth.
And one of the question
that we want to really highlight here
is amidst all of these challenges,
what are the opportunities that you see
for some of these diverse contractors to really fill in?
What are the various that you're seeing as maybe a gap
or an area of service that you anticipate
is going to greatly expand?
Why don't I go a little different order here
and start with the Waterside,
particularly given the immense amount of infrastructure
that we know is in need of desperate repair.
-: Yeah, so on the Waterside with Liberty, at least,
there are opportunities we have existing diverse vendors.
And obviously what we're looking at is potentially increased
capital expenditure, new technologies.
One of the things that we have been investigating
is obviously advanced meter infrastructure.
We're not there yet in terms of having that case approved,
but across the rest of the company
where it has been in included,
I actually worked with our prime and we have subcontractors
already in place that are diverse
and qualified in California
that are actually performing that work,
which would be about 30% of that overall program expenditure
across the company.
But as I say, I mean, increase in expenditure,
it means there's increasing opportunity.
Not just on the Waterside, we've seen them
also for Calpico with wildfire mitigation,
replacing infrastructure.
We brought on I think in the last year,
we're a lot smaller.
We don't have the billion dollar spend,
but our spend was gone from like 26 million to 42 million
in two years.
But our diversity support went from 19% up to 36 1/2%
by bringing in diverse vendors for materials,
for engineering and construction.
And in fact, in the last couple of weeks,
we issued our first EPC style contract,
but (indistinct) winning bidder was actually ATB.
So there are opportunities.
It's one of the things we are constantly working on
is how can we get that better forward forecast
of many of the community business organizations talk about.
So where we have established human structure now in Tahoe,
we're working with them on getting a better forward forecast
for next year's construction and the following year.
So we can start engaging and letting those organizations
and their supply base underneath them establish that capital
that will enable them to better bid.
We have some issues up in target
because of its Geographical location.
So a lot of the times we have mobilization costs
are a lot higher. So if we can get that forward forecast,
that actually creates a lot more opportunities as well.
And that's kind of the approach that we've taken for Tahoe
but also, as we centralize our procurement approach
across the industry, across the company,
across the US and Canada,
that's kind of one of the philosophies
we are building into the procurement approaches
to get that in there and give diversifies
not just in California,
but across the organization more auction is. (indistinct)
-: Great, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Let me go on now to Scott.
And just as a reminder,
it is great to hear about before and forecasting for sure,
but let's think about those opportunities
and very interesting, the AMI one,
what are the ones in your world Scott,
that you're seeing as the opportunities
for these diverse vendors?
-: Yeah, I think there's plenty of opportunity
in our infrastructure integrity management programs,
our PCEP programs and the whole portfolio of those programs.
And we take an approach they're much like we do
for the total spend,
where we try to look at what do we think the supply market
opportunity is gonna be over a period of time,
over a couple of year period, right?
In a segment.
And then segment of the business, not a segment of pipe,
and then identify through our CBO partners
and some of the chambers who are the folks
that could participate in those
and how do we bring them together?
So in April of last year, we did a broad CBO event
where we brought the operating leaders
from different parts of the company
to talk about what the opportunities
in their space would be.
And so I think there continues to be big opportunity
in sort of traditional utility infrastructure projects,
whether that's the logistics support
to the actual construction work.
I think that's an opportunity.
I think, as we continue to work
on like clean energy innovations,
and we think about things around the energy system
of the future, we have to,
someone said earlier about kind of looking ahead,
don't come to me and tell me you have something today.
If I knew a year from now, that's where it was going.
I could have been better positioned to prepare.
So my takeaway from that is a lot of the RD&D work,
the demonstration projects,
we're doing some of the applications that we have.
We should be bringing people in at that point in time,
not at the point in time
in which you all sort of render a decision.
And then I think we can always do better
in the areas of professional services
that have been like a historical challenge.
And so we're gonna continue to push on that as well
as try to line people up where we think
there's lots of opportunity.
-: [President Batjer] Thank you, Kevin.
-: Yes, climate and aging infrastructure
is what you mentioned.
And I'll add maybe one or two things to that in addition.
But I think the obvious thing here is that growth
in the amount of work that we do always brings opportunities
for new entrance.
We've seen that significantly over the last several years
with a wildfire, mitigation work,
veggie management and some of the aging replacements
that we've been doing for quite a number of years now.
And they all present significant needs for new capacity
among our contractors.
I would just add to that kind of looking a bit forward
electrification opportunities
as we build towards the clean energy future
both in terms of building electrification
and charging infrastructure.
Those I think are growing fast and will be needed much more
in the future,
and they also represent significant new opportunities
with some of the new work that we've added there.
Transformation of the electric system,
as I think we all recognize needs to happen
to meet California's goals.
It's gonna require new approaches,
new capacity, and new suppliers.
And so I just see the growth
of the overall amount of work going on,
and the different types of work
as being a significant opportunity
for new suppliers to step in.
And so we're working with our existing and future suppliers
to figure out how we match those things up
and who we can introduce into this growing body of work.
-: [President Batjer] Thank you, very interesting, Caroline.
-: Well, I'd have to agree with what Scott and Kevin
has talked about for us at SDG&E certainly
when we think about climate resiliency
and the clean energy transition,
we're doing a lot of work in wildfire mitigation,
electric vehicle, infrastructure, charging,
hydrogen decarbonized natural gas,
as well as energy storage.
I would say that there are tremendous opportunities
as our business continues to expand into different areas
or diverse businesses.
As I think just about the climate resiliency work
that utilities have been working on,
especially around wildfire mitigation.
In the last couple of years, last few years,
we spent 43% of our spending wildfire mitigation
with diverse suppliers,
and we're using the same approach
for all of the other newer cleaner technologies.
And we look at our projects really holistically
in terms of breaking apart scope
so that diverse businesses can bid into
and have opportunities in their job.
For example, some of the civil work
and the trenching and traffic control work,
and even the project management and logistic work
are great opportunities for diverse businesses
to ensure contractors of various sizes,
of various backgrounds and capabilities
really have the opportunity to participate
in some of our largest bodies of spend
and they can meet all the requirements.
And I think that's certainly something
we're taking into our clean energy transition work
because that model is working.
And we've had lots of success with diverse contractors
in the civil construction area, in project management,
in supplies and logistics, and the lay down yards
and the land surveying.
I think another area is really working
with diverse suppliers in technology and innovation, right?
We have in our drone program for wildfire mitigation,
we have an LGBT business.
That's a big partner and a Black-owned business.
So we're planning in this expanded world
of trying to use more artificial intelligence,
trying to break into the clean energy transition,
that there's great success
with some of the diverse suppliers
and really trying to make that opportunity
by kind of looking at some
of these big projects holistically.
-: Thank you, Caroline,
for that great example in the threshold of 43%,
I think it'd be great to see that in the electrification
and clean energy space.
Okay, Adam.
-: And I will circle back to the first question very quickly.
We have similar programs where we connect
with community-based organizations.
We have a point of contact for all of our diverse suppliers.
We have director level task force
that's focused on matchmaking and all those things
we wanted to clean that up for you just to leave no doubt
that we are equally engaged as my colleagues on the panel.
And then I would agree with Scott.
I think professional services is a space
that we can do much better in,
I don't think we've had the type of focus we need to there.
I agree that with our general infrastructure projects
that we have and the amount of capital
that we need to deploy to make the grid more resilient
as we electrify grow our (indistinct) infrastructure.
But I think for us more than anything,
and it's sort of in the wildfire space,
but it's undergrounding.
We have a tremendous program in front of us
to underground 10,000 miles
in our high fire threat district.
That's been provides a great entry point
for a lot of diverse businesses and suppliers and vendors
to break up the work like Caroline mentioned as well,
where they can do more civil work
and focus on those aspects.
But I do think there's gonna be a great opportunity
on more of the high scale technical level work
that we're gonna need,
'cause it's gonna be a very large long-term program
that's gonna take as many people as we can get
to help us accomplish that.
And there's gonna be great opportunities and open doors
for us to grow our diverse supplier base.
-: What a great example.
And I certainly hope you can meet that rule.
I think we've heard from different utilities today,
even on our last panel, the 50% goal.
And that would be a fantastic set of projects
to be able to gain that.
I wanted to follow up on one section that we talked about
actually in our last two on box,
and that has to do with wildfire mitigation work.
And as you know, this is largely on the energy side,
although it has also been some drone work in the water
and telco side as well.
But unfortunately what we heard again last year
from the previous year,
is just grown limitation for some of the,
even some of the primes that we heard it
from a different association.
I heard a most recently when I went
to the top tribal conference
and they spoke about the insurance premiums.
And if you could help us understand
what you're doing to mitigate those barriers
to such high premiums,
or maybe if there are solutions
that are required beyond your control
to feel free to share those,
but really want to hear about how you're really
trying to solve for just so that we can continue
with such a high target as Caroline, you mentioned,
and maybe I'll let you start since you have been successful
on (indistinct) issue such high premium.
-: Yeah, I mean it certainly, again,
taking that holistic approach,
I think has helped us be more inclusive
of our diverse suppliers,
given the requirements of insurance as you mentioned
in the high fire threat areas.
So we tend to let the prime contractors
work in our HSDD that had the insurance
are able to meet their insurance requirements.
And there we're kind of splitting up the jobs
so that diverse businesses that could do
some of the civil workers some of the traffic control
or other types of work.
So that's how we've been able to achieve
the 43% within the wildfire mitigation plan.
We're also working with our prime contractors,
as many as said to really create opportunities
for them to connect and learn the capabilities
of diverse firms and who can become their subcontractors.
And we even have some diverse prime contractors
who are working in our welfare mitigation plan
who have developed diverse business
subcontracting commitment, so a diverse business,
creating more diverse businesses that he subcontract
and kind of bring into this whole process,
I think really full circle.
And I think I just thought thing maybe that I mentioned
is that I think companies who do business with us,
they know that we prioritize the importance
of doing business with companies
that really reflect the diverse communities that we serve.
And I just remain encouraged that we're gonna continue
to attract qualify businesses that can help us
with our aggressive supplier diversity goals.
And again, they know that that's part of doing business
with SDG&E, and that's only gonna continue to get stronger.
-: Okay, thank you, Caroline.
Maybe Kevin I'll turn to you.
It sounds like Caroline, your strategy
has been to really break up the work there.
And I recall very, very generally in our last year
that you spoke about a more direct role
that Addison was having to try to alleviate
some of the insurance premium costs.
If you could, have you progress in that effort or evolve.
-: Yeah, I'd be happy to provide a summary of that.
So I think it starts with,
our objective has been to nevertheless insurance
requirements preclude the company,
or prevent the company from hiring a qualified suppliers.
So one evidence of that is over the last five years,
our insurance requirements for suppliers
of wildfire mitigation services has decreased by over 50%.
We look at individual insurance options
for different suppliers
based on the type of services they're providing
and the volume of the services that they're providing.
So that for example,
the insurance requirement doesn't overwhelm
the size of the contract and make it just in feasible
for them to get that kind of insurance.
One example might be one of our management contractors.
We worked with them to lower their insurance requirement
recently by $10 million.
And so we look at each one individually,
we try to work with them and we try to not let insurance
get in the way
of an otherwise qualified supplier relationship.
Now, we of course have also had significant increases
in our premiums and deductibles over the last five years.
So I just would note
that lowering the insurance requirements for suppliers,
it does translate directly into greater uninsured,
wild service for SCE.
So that's an impact,
but I think the importance of the other piece
that I talked about and not letting it get in the way
of otherwise qualified supplier relationships
is more important at this stage.
The only other thing I would note
is that we're actually evaluating the feasibility
of establishing a program where SDE and our groups
of our suppliers could jointly obtain wildfire
liability insurance in a more cost effective way.
And I would say this is kind of early in the discussion,
but I think these are the kinds of situations
where we all have to get creative about how we do this.
And we don't wanna overburden suppliers.
We don't wanna overburden the company with risks,
and we need to find ways to do it more cost-effectively.
So that's been our approach to try to work through it
and to try to not let it get in the way,
and to look for more cost-effective ways to get everybody
in the insurance they need.
-: Thank you, and I'm just gonna have Adam be the last one.
to answer this question because I'm taking a look
at the clock here and I wanna make sure
we get to my fellow Commissioner.
So Adam, did you wanna add to these strategies?
-: Yes, I agree with everything that's been said.
We do have a technical assistance program
that we can provide some education awareness
on how to acquire the right level of assurance.
But I do think to Kevin's point,
just the creativity taking more time,
and we're looking at the type of work
that we're gonna have a diverse supplier
or vendor to provide for us,
and really to try to match that up.
I think a lot of times, unfortunately,
because of the volume of work, again,
our risk averse nature,
we tend to have a blanket standard for everything
and everybody, and it doesn't always fit.
So having tailored requirements when we see the need arise,
but we have done work where we've cut down the filling
that we have in place,
we've cut it down by more than half
when we used to have for backpack requirements,
exits of a hundred billion new vessels down
at 50 to $25 million in some cases,
but we have more work to do
in that space education awareness.
I do think if we spend a little more time understanding
and matching up again,
the risk profile with the type of work
with insurance requirements,
we can do a much better job
with really just the sharper pencil to be honest.
-: Well, I think we're gonna look forward
to being more engaged with you on that topic
and maybe building on both of the strategies
that you've talked about today on both Caroline,
the kind of breaking up approach and Kevin and Adam,
really (indistinct) step, company by company
approach of bringing down the premiums.
Okay, I'm going to now turn to my fellow Commissioners
for any questions.
Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Thank you, this morning, we heard from Marquita Thomas,
of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce
talking about the multiple barriers that gay and lesbian
and other diverse suppliers are having an impact,
particularly she said that that hurt members
are finding that utilities
are not welcoming to LGBT businesses.
And there was a lack of engagement with their contacts
and that there, she disputed that the assertion
that there aren't qualified vendors,
she said, there's a lot of them that proceed significantly
through the process, but are rejected.
So I'm wondering if any of you care to comment
on how you're addressing the concerns that Marquita raised.
-: I'll take that.
Yeah, I'll think that, Commissioner,
I appreciate the question.
I think this is, first of all,
I want Marquita and everyone else to know our door is open
and we are accessible and we're gonna do everything we can
to help her constituents
and the other diverse businesses succeed.
We have a very thoughtful,
very well-resourced team to work in.
And I wanna make sure that we're connecting that team
and our business people to her constituents.
We are trying to connect our business leaders
as well as our supplier diversity leaders
together and have them pair
to connect with Marquita and others, right?
So it's not just a connection to the supplier diversity team
that supplier diversity team should open up access
to more contacts in the company.
That's largely what it's about.
And I think we've all got more work to do
all focus specifically on SoCalGas,
but I think we've got more work to do
in directly engaging in that community and mining it
for more high, potential high viability businesses.
I'm sure they're there,
and I think it's like many of the other dimensions
of supplier diversity that we've all been on this journey
is when we focus on it and commit to it,
we'll make progress on it.
And it's I would say it's in,
it's sort of the early phases of that journey.
You all are looking at some things from a policy standpoint,
as well as part of that.
And I just want her and others to know that we're committed
to making sure that that dimension
of our supplier diversity program is as successful
as the other dimensions, the part program.
And you can hold me accountable to do that.
-: I'll just add onto my colleague, Scott
comments around that.
Last year we spent a half a percent with LGBTQ suppliers
and we're committed to growing up.
And so I know there's an open proceeding on this,
where there's more being discussed.
And we look forward to learning more about more suppliers
in this area.
And it's got said, I think our company sets tough goals
and we figured out ways to get to meet those goals.
So our doors are always open to talking
to more diverse suppliers.
And especially in this area that is a focus for us.
-: I would excel up first and look into it here at PG&E,
but I know we've been very, very strong in this space,
going back to 2012,
we've been recognized by that community several times
and different magazines.
Our spend has doubled since 2018.
If you go back and look number $17 million last year,
we've encouraged several LGBT BE business owners
to register with the CPUC.
And we've seen four new ones to their last couple of years.
So we're very active and engaged,
and I will look into it just to make sure
that rumors not true for us.
-: Yep, if I could just make a quick comment,
I won't repeat what others have said.
And Greta Scott gave us a pretty good accounting of this.
I agree with I'd be, I wasn't able to be on,
unfortunately to hear her comments earlier,
Commissioner Rechtschaffen, but I would be very surprised
to find out that they were specifically related
to Edison's program.
And I would sure love to know if they are,
we have a designated person on our supplier diversity team
that deals with the LGBTQ community.
We absolutely embraced doing business with that community.
There are some areas where we probably are struggling
to find enough suppliers in the clearing house.
So we've acknowledged that,
but we do support in the GO 156 proceeding.
We've said that we support a goal of a half a percent,
and we look forward to working to meet that.
So anything that she can provide to us directly
that will help us make this more effective,
we would love to hear.
And then lastly, very briefly,
we've had a bit of a change in personnel and Liberty,
but any of the diverse CBOs can reach out directly to me,
I'm responsible for procurement
for California, Arizona, and Texas.
And I will make sure that put in touch
with the relevant teams.
I also know working with my fellow colleagues of the CWA
and also the Jordan utilities
where all of the supplier diversity program
leads get together.
There's a big focus on this and working together.
And I believe that the joint utilities put forward
a very thoughtful and for our suggestion and recommendations
to the utility in terms of approach to this.
-: Okay, I see President Batjer is wrapping us up here.
-: No, no, I really wasn't.
I wanted to just add a comment
to Commissioner Rechtschaffen's comment,
and that is all of you are very open to input increasing
your business with the LGBTQ community.
And one of the real downsides for us not being able
to be in the room together
is you're not able to literally talk with each other,
and talk to some of the people that we have
on our panel this morning.
So that's a downside to this,
but hopefully instead of you saying,
and I welcome that you said that you have an open door,
I would reach out to her.
And she made some very strong statements this morning
on the panel as Commissioner Rechtschaffen says.
So pick up the phone and call her.
I think that would be very, very positive.
Martha I've given up our breaks.
So you might, some of the other Commissioners
may have at least one more question.
-: Okay, let's see if we will take one more.
Commissioner Shiroma, Commissioner Houck,
Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Well, I think folks are aware
that I have the energy efficiency
proceeding and the chair for each a proceeding.
The contractors who work in both of those speak to that.
We are at a point of some big hurt on changes,
some ramping up of focus on what have you.
I mean my question is to the point of outreach education.
Somebody had mentioned the webinars,
really walking contractors through how to do business
with your utilities.
And as you talk through the day,
it tends to kind of vary poor.
The energy and water utilities
should be more experienced at this.
You've got longer term relationships
established your headquarters
for the most part in California,
but anything to share during this pandemic
that you're doing beyond what usually two to allay the fears
of small contractors,
women owned this disabled veterans and so forth
on navigating this pandemic environment
to compete for contracts.
And to see ahead that forecast it,
some of you had mentioned as well.
-: Commissioner Shiroma, maybe I would just add
to my comments about doing webinars,
our team specifically in response to COVID-19 last year,
they had seven series webinars
in terms of how to survive and thrive during the pandemic.
And some of the topics they talked about
is access to working capital,
or non-profits helping small businesses during COVID-19
or technology and the power of social media
to responding to kind of RFP.
So it really was kind of trying to make sure
that our small businesses could thrive through this pandemic
and many have, and I'm proud of the work
that the team has done with the community,
but we're also reaching out to our economic development EDCs
and our chambers,
our state and Regional Chamber of Commerce,
the Central Black Chamber of Commerce
to do these types of meet and greets and webinars
and helping them understand how to respond to a utility bid
or a corporation bid.
So I think many of these techniques have been helpful
in expanding our reach and amplifying our voice
and showing them that it's not as big and scary
to start out.
And as the, I think Kevin mentioned earlier,
many of these small companies do continue to just thrive
and get bigger, and then they there than the prime now.
So it really is gratifying to see that
over the course of time.
-: I could offer a comment on COVID-19 specifically
when we looked back at the last year and a half, plus.
It actually through a series of measures
we've put into place,
not unlike what we did with two thirds of our employees,
when we sent them home and have them working virtually,
we've adopted similar virtual processes with our suppliers.
And actually we had our highest DBE spins in history
of our company at $2.4 billion in 2020.
And actually our highest overall spend as well.
So it hasn't gotten in the way,
but I will say that there were a lot
of just as it was running our company from the inside
lots of measures that had to be taken in order to do that.
And again, we spent a lot of time with our suppliers,
and if there are things that get in the way
or things that are confusing,
we wanna make sure we get that handled
as quickly as possible.
In the end, we only had a few minor materials
and services delays,
and Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
you asked me to weave in and I'll do this very quickly,
the payment question from the very first round of questions,
We did make changes to payment terms to help cash flow
for some of the smaller DVDs.
We do that with smaller DVDs that are our primes,
and we work with each one of them.
We even did quite a number of same day payments,
where that was necessary to keep cash flow moving.
And although we can't necessarily intervene and require that
with subcontractors in the prime,
we reach out to the primes whenever there's an issue
and influence them to adopt similar policies.
So basically the set of virtual meetings and accommodations
that we've done to take our business more virtual,
we're successful with our contractors as well.
-: And that would be very similar for SoCalGas,
the blend of what Caroline and Kevin talked about.
And I think we actually delivered more services
to diverse suppliers in 2020 than we had in any other year,
in terms of the number of people participating
in the different technical assistance workshops
and all the innovation that was deployed there.
And one of the measures that I look at
was we added 135 new diverse suppliers in 2020.
And so it's not just about the number of events
that you hold or that you go to, or who shows up,
it's what happens from those things over time?
And I think it's definitely made it more challenging,
and we're all very eager to get back in person.
But I don't think that I think the innovation
that's been deployed across the industry
across the companies has helped us sustain
a pretty high level of performance across the board.
-: I say the same for (indistinct) as well,
up 10% year over year, and not spend in that area,
lots of outreach that they can play
probably don't work with 690 total diverse suppliers
in our network, all performing extremely well.
I think our engagement in our increase in spending
and demonstrates a continued through this pandemic
to make sure that they have opportunities with them.
-: Well, thank you all very much.
It's really interesting to see the distinction
and the overall trend, unfortunately,
that went down while some of you were the best ever.
And I think it goes through your foundational commitment
as institutions to this.
So let's, I think we're gonna have to wrap it up,
but I want to thank you all for your time,
and for your innovation over the last couple of years.
And I look forward to all of us
working through some of these still challenging issues
and some of the innovation that you put in place.
President Batjer, (indistinct) back to you.
-: Thank you so much, Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
excellent panel, excellent questions, and great responses.
Thank you all.
Have a very good afternoon
and hope you can continue to listen in.
-: Okey-doke.
-: We are now moving on to our fourth panel of the afternoon,
and this will be on the Community Choice Aggregators,
the CCAs, and it will be moderated
by Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
The panelists will provide an update
on how community choice aggregators
are incorporating supplier diversity
into their organization business model.
Representatives will provide updates on outreach efforts,
challenges, and best practices
to encourage participation in GO 156.
Rechtschaffen, over to you.
-: Thank you, and I see that we have our panelists.
I'd like to welcome everybody.
Our panelists today are Stephanie Chan,
senior policy counsel from Marin Clean Energy,
Carole Hakstian, senior risk officer
for Sonoma Clean Power Authority,
Vanessa Gerber, operations, East Bay Community Energy.
I put your title,
I guess your director of operations, apologies.
And Matt Langer, who is the chief operating officer
with Clean Power Alliance.
Welcome your organizations are all new formal participants
to the supplier diversity program and is by SD 255,
as we've heard earlier, we do appreciate
that some of you have been involved
in prior on box and supplier diversity efforts
as Stephanie Green noted.
This was the first year of reporting for CPAs.
And the collective reporting was about 0.01%.
Although as Stephanie pointed out
that includes energy expenditures.
And when we look at spending on just goods and services,
the numbers are higher, closer to 2%, and I understand
that's gonna be reported differently going forward.
All four of you filed reports,
which I commend to people listening very, very informative.
They note, all note that CPAs is public entities
are in a very different position than private utilities.
You are precluded from prop by prop 209 from setting targets
based on race or gender or ethnicity.
You do not request nor do you know the status of suppliers
and whether the diverse businesses have certified
with the clearing until after contracts are executed.
Given this, you as CCH states,
a different set of challenges than other utilities,
along with some of the ones we've identified today,
we're very interested in hearing how the first year
of your program participation went, lessons you've learned,
and how you can make progress going forward.
There's a series of questions I'm gonna ask,
and ask all the panelists to respond.
They know these questions.
I'm gonna ask you to limit your response to each,
to about a minute and a half
so that we can get through all five or six
or all four panelists.
We don't have a lot of time,
but I think we can do that and if we do that well,
I think we'll hit on all the themes you want to hit on.
But before we do that,
I thought it would be helpful to start
with a little bit of level-setting.
In addition to compliance with Prop 209
PCAs are differently situated than other utilities
with respect to General Order 156 in other ways.
And Stephanie Chan,
if you could just describe some for the group,
some of these key differences, why they're significant.
-: Absolutely, thanks so much Commissioner
and I welcome my colleagues here on the panel
to chime in as well.
The one that you noted of course is the elephant in the room
around Prop 209
so we won't spend too much additional time here.
But one of the things that I noticed some earlier today
is they mentioned that GO 156 has been around for 35 years,
which is excellent
and that time has afforded many of the reporting companies,
a lot of time to build relationships
and practices and teams and programs
that really support the numbers that you see
in their reports.
By contrast MCE is sort of the elder statesmen
of the CCA community
and we've been around for 11 years.
There are probably folks in the audience here
who were born after GO 156 was implemented.
So just by virtue of of time,
we've got a little bit of catching up to do here
and we're committed to doing so.
Another big difference here is that DCAs,
we have created to buy and sell power,
the actual electricity,
the juice that flows through the lines,
and more than 90% of our annual operating budgets
are spent buying power.
And as has been noted,
this is a sector that has not historically
been terribly diverse, either for CCAs or for IOU.
Much of for example the spend that was discussed
in the last panel around wildfire mitigation,
all of that happens on the distribution
and transmission side of the electric sector,
the poles and wires and substations
that get the juice from point A to point B
and all of that procurement still resides with the IOU.
So that's a significant difference,
as well as a significant opportunity for CCAs
to really lean into the generation side of things.
And then the last thing I'll note is that,
most if not all of the companies
that you're hearing from today are a lot larger than CCAs.
Some of us are multi county CCAs like MCE,
but many of us just serve a single county
or a single city.
And that may mean that we have fewer procurement opportunity
than smaller dollar procurement opportunities,
but that also creates some opportunities, for example,
to really partner with our local small businesses,
which is one of the main areas of focus for all of us.
So we may be small, but we are very mighty
and we are looking forward to demonstrating to you all
and to the diverse supplier to community,
what we can really do in this space.
-: Thank you very much, Stephanie,
that's a very helpful overview level setting.
So let's turn to this past year.
I'm gonna ask each of you to again,
if you can limit yourself to about a minute and a half,
just describe at a high level,
your outreach education and technical assistance efforts.
We know it's an unusual year 'cause of COVID
in any particular success as strikes you.
Matt let me start with you.
-: Thank you, Commissioner.
I'd say that just maybe touching a little bit
on the first question does lead into that.
So I think one of the big things for CPAs,
we're about three years old.
So this is all a new effort for us
and really everything we do is a new effort for us
and it's been a really great learning experience.
And I'd say as we've gone through the process
in the last year,
it's one of the big, big things we've uncovered
as we've dug deeper is that we have some existing suppliers
who are GO 156 eligible.
It just needs to be helped through the process
of getting certified.
And I think everybody out there
has had a similar experience in that space.
So that's a pleasant surprise when we found that out
and it's something that I think
changes our thinking a little bit
about the importance of our outreach
and the importance really of providing
that technical support for folks to get registered
if they're not otherwise registered.
The other thing that's come to our attention through this,
along those same lines is that
there's certain vendors who have participated
in other supplier certification once for example,
we work closely with the county of Los Angeles
who has a separate certification that they use.
And so I think identifying folks
and businesses that are participating
in this other certifications
and trying to get them onto the GO 156 certification
is a real opportunity that has come to our attention
as we've looked at this more deeply
and so we gonna pursue it further.
-: Carole, Sonoma Clean Powers in probably around longer,
second longest after Marin Clean Energy.
Can you describe your outreach
educational technical assistance this year?
-: Yes, sure thank you Commissioner.
So, I would say our biggest
outreach success story this year
is the opening of the Advanced Energy Center
in Downtown Santa Rosa.
The center was for those who may not be familiar
with the center where we welcome everyone
to come down and check it out.
It was partially funded by the CEC Electric Research Program
and the way we can, I can describe it best
is that it's a hub for education, for outreach, for events,
for contractor networking,
and really a place where to learn about products
that promote electrification.
So not just for the customers, but also for developers
and for contractors.
So at the center we offer technical training to contractors,
suppliers in Spanish and in English.
And then through the center,
we also partner with local and diverse suppliers that,
and contractors who we promote their work
and try to get customers to contact them
and work closely with them.
So that's our, probably our largest outreach
opportunity this year.
Another success story would be,
we actually have been very eagerly spreading the word
about the benefits of GO 156 certification
to our current contractors and suppliers.
So we've been actively encouraging them to go to the website
and helping them fill out the certification, the forms.
So we have secured an additional five certified vendors
this year, and that may not be,
we have one more on the way, that may not sound like a lot
that's actually double what we had last year,
so we're up to 12 from six last year.
So we're very happy about that.
And we realized we still have a long way to go,
but we're working hard to find ways to increase diversity
in our procurement.
-: And next is East Bay Community Energy.
-: Yes, thank you, Commissioner.
So I think briefly in response to
having to do things differently in response to the pandemic,
we all had to had to pivot
and some of our community outreach efforts
and communications like everyone we had to pivot as well,
but we are really proud that we were able
to quickly pull together and strategize,
distribute $2.2 million to community relief grants
in efforts in our service area in Alameda County
and the City of Tracy,
and one of the grant recipients through our
oversubscribed grant process, just given the needs.
Ended up being a certified diverse supplier,
and I was even an I&R.
And so that was again,
something that we're grateful to be able to see
and report in our 2020 report.
In terms of our outreach and education efforts in 2020,
as we've all alluded to really building
the foundation of our programs,
we found that even just the act of
sending out our questionnaire to our contractors
helps us really gather a lot of level-setting data.
Really building a baseline of who our contractors are,
because of course we don't gather that information
until after we have contracted with them.
And in that we also identified a number of contractors
that were eligible, but not yet certified
and so just this questionnaire, sending an information,
sending process, was incredibly informative
to many of our vendors
and we're continuing to use that information
to build programming efforts
as we've learned more about our cohorts and vendors
in regards to their eligibility or certified status.
Otherwise we've incorporated standard language
into our solicitation materials
and are also building out partnerships with local ethnic
and diverse chambers of commerce
and so a lot of this will continue
to build upon the beginnings of our work in 2020
going forward.
And in terms of technical assistance in the questionnaire
sending process and the follow-up with those eligible,
but not yet certified vendors,
we also offer technical assistance.
That's something that we're proud to be able to offer
and plan to continue to make that exceedingly clear
to our vendors.
The last thing I'll note
is in terms of this particular success,
is that we did find in this first year
kinda gathering information through the questionnaires
that our local businesses are often diverse businesses.
We had seven certified businesses in 2020,
three of those are local to our service area,
which supports our local first procurement process.
Three others were in support
and surrounding bay area counties
and the last one was also California business.
So, we think that that's very supportive data
to support our local first procurement approach.
-: Thank you, Stephanie, I'm gonna turn to you now
and since we're gonna, the next question after this
was gonna be, what are you gonna do differently next year?
I'll ask you to answer both questions.
The first one, what did you do this year?
What were your successes?
And then what are you plan to do differently next year?
And then we'll turn to the other panelists
for their different plans.
I do wanna ask you all in your answer
to this next question
if you've been listening,
you've heard today that major impediments
for diverse suppliers especially small ones
who prop payment.
So I'm wondering if you could also just,
if you do offer prompt payment
and if not, if you plan to offer it?
So, Stephanie you have a compound question there.
What have you done this year?
What are you plan to do differently next year?
And then we'll turn to the others plans,
different plans for next year?
-: Absolutely, thanks Commissioner.
I hope I get all of those.
In terms of outreach and education
in addition to the kinds of efforts
that many of my colleagues here have mentioned,
I wanna highlight MCEs, Certify & Amplify event,
which we will be hosting for the fourth time next year.
And this is an event that encourages suppliers
who are eligible but not yet certified to certify.
Provide some technical assistance
and encourages by promoting the benefits
of getting certified.
In the past, we have had representatives from the CPUC,
from the Clearinghouse,
as well as some PG&E supplier diversity team
and our own local and diverse suppliers participate
in this event.
And, one of the silver linings
resulting from the pandemic was that in 2020
Certify & Amplify went virtual for the first time,
which meant that we had a much broader reach
and a much broader audience.
And it turned out that our attendees,
we had more attendees from outside of MCEs service area
than we did from within MCEs service area,
which we actually consider a win
when it comes to sort of spreading the word
about the benefits of certification
and answering some questions about how to get certified.
To the question of prompt payment,
I am pleased to report that MCE standard contract terms
for non-energy contracts are Net 30
and that's for all non-energy contracts.
And particularly for our small businesses,
we often pay those invoices in less than 30 days
in recognition in part,
because we know that that cashflow is a challenge.
I will also go beyond that and say that
for some of our contracts where we're able to do so,
we will waive some of our liability insurance requirements
on contracts for sole proprietors
or with sole proprietors,
so that they're not disqualified from holding a contract
with us simply because they can't hold an insurance policy
as high as what we might ask for in an standard contract.
Which of course can significantly reduce barriers
to entry for sole proprietors
where that insurance requirement doesn't need
to be quite that high.
In terms of efforts next year I think the thing
that we're really gonna be doubling down on next year,
which we've already planted the seeds for this year
is trying to spread the word
to our renewable development partners
about the importance of incorporating diversity
into their own supply chain.
And it's a bit challenging
because that's, that all of the diverse subcontracting
or all of the subcontracting
where many of the diverse suppliers can play
happens before the facility comes online
and starts delivering power
but nonetheless, those are dollars
that are flowing into local businesses, small businesses,
diverse businesses
and we wanna make sure that our renewable suppliers
understand those value of considering
and incorporating supplier diversity
into their own operations.
So we'll really be looking forward
to working with our developer partners
both next year and in the coming years
to really start to make some progress there.
-: Thank you, Vanessa can you talk about
what you gonna do differently next year
and prompt payment?
-: Yeah, absolutely.
In terms of next year,
we are actively in the process
should be in the coming week or two,
having a dedicated web page on our website
about supplier diversity to have a constant resource
available for vendors,
whether EDC vendors or not
to have information access to
supplier diversity program as well as our offer
for technical assistance.
We'll also on there highlight the value
of the supplier Clearinghouse for contractors
who may have their own supplier diversity programs
and may want to source certified leads
for their subcontractors
and being able to also provide technical assistance
for folks to navigate that process should they need it,
that technical assistance that we offered includes that
as well as the certification process.
I think something I mentioned earlier,
really building those relationships with some of our local
ethnic and diverse chambers
is going to be key as we continue
to build a really broad and holistic network
of the business community and our service area
and surrounding area
and working on potentially doing some more events,
if that's helpful, if not,
absolutely continuing to promote MCEs wonderful
Certify & Amplify event every year,
it's a fantastic resource.
And in terms of prompt payment
our standard contract is Net 45,
but we are consistent in providing that.
So I think for this year going forward,
it's continuing to build upon our processes
and really building very strong relationships
that continue to grow throughout our service area.
-: Carole, Sonoma Clean Power.
-: Sure, thank you Commissioner.
So I'll start with the prompt payment.
We have a couple of programs where we pay in advance.
We pay, we have an advanced energy rebuild partnership
with PG&E and in that program,
we pay the admin costs upfront
and in PG&E later processes the portion of the payment
from Energy Efficiency Fund.
We also have the extra program self-generation,
the solar program where we pay the full incentive
to contractors upfront,
and then they submit the SG publication on their behalf,
and then that amount of state
that those dollars are paid back.
So we're nimble in our payments.
We feel like we have a great way
to reduce the number of days and make,
have opportunities for our customers to engage
and participate in programs
through this kind of support.
As far as changes for next year we actually,
this year have begun adding language in our RFOs
to encourage diverse businesses
to respond to our solicitation.
And so in our RFOs we consider qualitative measures,
so we can assess whether contractors
are contributing to the local workforce
and the local economy by supporting local small
and underrepresented contractors.
So we have recently submitted an RFO for the local,
for our local resource plan.
This is a, it's one to 10 megawatt size development.
So, small scale, local renewable storage resource,
where we had that language
and we submitted an RFP just a couple of weeks ago
for contractors to provide technical assistance
and energy audits to commercial customers.
Then that RFP we encouraged minority-owned
and women-owned businesses to respond.
So these are some of the changes we're making this year
based on our experience last year,
and trying to figure out ways to increase participation.
-: Thank you and Matt over to you for Clean Power Alliance.
-: Thanks, there's a number of things
that we're looking the different leads finishing out 2021,
and then looking into 2022.
First of all in our power procurement area
we've added questions in our solicitations
about GO 156 eligibility.
It just so happens that today
we launched our midterm reliability article
for new reliability resources,
and we had our bitters conference for that
and we had a discussion as part of that
there's conference about supplier diversity in GO 156
eligibility and our interest in seeing diverse suppliers
and subcontractors stand as well.
In addition to that,
I think one of the big things as we talk about this for us,
and one of the big lessons learned looking back
at the first part of 2021,
and back in 2022 and 2020 in the early year,
is that it's not enough for us
to just be here spending money
to necessarily attract the groups suppliers.
We really need to make up a much more hands-on
outreach effort, and that means partnering
with the diverse chambers of commerce,
other industry organizations
and affinity groups that are out there
representing all of the different segments
of the diverse economy to try to get our name out there,
to try to advertise the procurements that we're doing,
to try to get more folks knowing who's clean power line,
and understanding that we're actually doing
a lot of procurement in a lot of different areas
and that there's really a lot of opportunities
to do business with us.
So I think that to me the biggest lesson learned,
and I'll probably come back to it
on some of the other questions
is do we really need to get out there
and do the hand sell about CCA
and understand how does everybody understand
that the diversity is a priority
in our procurement activities.
On the question of payment timings,
we have standard terms of Net 30.
Which we (indistinct), pretty reasonable.
But as we listen to the comments
on some of the other panels earlier today,
I think we're open to having discussions
if there's other versions of payments flexibility,
or past payments that we need to introduce
to be a more attractive business partner
for getting the suppliers.
-: That'd be very helpful as you probably heard,
especially for smaller firms
and a lot of diverse firms tend to be smaller payment,
sooner progress payments within 15 days,
full payments within 30 days is the gold standard.
So I very much appreciate your willingness to look into it,
and hopefully the other panelists will as well.
I'm gonna stay with you, Matt,
you back in the hot seat
and ask you another question.
All of you have indicated,
and these are the new reports that Prop 209
prevents you from setting targets
based on race, ethnicity, and gender.
We talked about that,
I'd like to ask you what type of procurement targets
do you currently set in fact given that limitation,
what others are you considering?
So back to you, Matt, to start off that answer.
-: Sure, so a couple of things to think about here.
So, in terms of procurement targets,
where we have procurement targets
those around local procurement.
So we have a number of different programs,
including the disadvantaged communities,
green tariff and community,
solar green tariff that is, that we're administering
with Commission (indistinct) allowance funds,
that's focused on local procurement
and we also have a number of a number of other initiatives
where we have focused on local procurement.
But really I think the important thing here
and within the restrictions that we have in Prop 209
it's about getting more participation
and solicitation from a diverse cross section of suppliers.
I think when we see those diverse suppliers come in
with the little send that the tenants
have been able to achieve,
but some of the successes that we've had.
I don't see it as a problem of competitiveness
for these small suppliers
and we're able to do business with those suppliers
when they come in.
So that's why I keep harping on used to do better outreach
to get those folks in front of us,
and I think we're going to naturally see those firms compete
and do well.
One thing I will mention specifically
in our energy procurement that we do have a preference for
is for projects in disadvantaged communities.
And that's not a one-to-one match
between doing business in disadvantaged communities
and doing business with diverse firms.
But I think in many cases,
there's an alignment there
where when we focus our spend on disadvantaged communities,
we're having a positive impact on those communities
and we also have an increased number of opportunities
to do business with the first firms.
So that's another area that we consider this,
but for us given the constraints that we have,
it's not so much about hard targets
as a matter of trying to get as much diverse participation
and diverse spend as we can get.
And I think we have a lot of progress
that we can make for having specific targets
is gonna be the limiting factor.
-: Thank you, lets go to Carol for Sonoma Clean Power.
-: Great, thank you, Commissioner.
So we do have,
we had a board adopted procurement targets
for small one megawatt projects.
We call these our profit projects.
We had six of these are target with six megawatts
these are all local projects in our service territory,
and we've developed all six megawatts.
So now we're moving on to a larger project.
The board recently adopted the local resource plan
for slightly larger, up to 10 megawatts of solar
and 10 megawatts of battery.
Again, in our service territory,
we issued the RFO.
We received a number of responses from local businesses,
and we've shortlisted that to three
and we'll soon be selecting selecting
one of the respondents.
So that's something we're working on.
We also have targets, we have targeted programs
such as the,
we have a targeted electric vehicle and charging program
where we offer rebates in low-income and disadvantaged
rural underserved areas to encourage
the infrastructure investments in those communities.
And then we also have targeted,
(indistinct) incentive program
where we've targeted low-income and care fair customers
that were offering rebates there.
Another area where we have established
a board adopted targets is our community giving.
So this, we've the board adopted an allocation of 50%
of all our community giving
is now being distributed to nonprofit organizations,
to advance justice and racial equity issues
in marginalized communities.
And then another 25% to support small businesses
and workers affected by COVID-19.
So we have in the last 25%, it's for fire relief efforts.
So those are some of the areas
where we have board adopted targets,
and we look forward to continuing to progress with that.
-: I appreciate that we're most interested
in the procurement targets, Carole,
not that those are not incredibly worthwhile programs,
but that's the focus of our discussion today.
I'm gonna turn to Stephanie now from Meridian Clean Energy.
-: Sure, so our approach is very similar
to my colleagues here.
We have for several years operated
under our board approved sustainable workforce
and economic development policy, which directs us to buy
from local businesses wherever possible.
We also have established preferences in our procurement,
in our RFOs for disabled veterans,
which Prop 209 does not preclude us from doing.
And similar to what Matt mentioned
we also have established preferences for businesses
that not only are located in EJ communities
identified by the current viral screen,
but also that are doing the majority of their hiring
in those communities.
Again, here we know that that's not necessarily
a one-to-one match,
but particularly with that hiring component in there,
we feel confident that we're hopefully able to create
some positive economic impact in the communities
where we're working,
even if it's not a community that we happen to serve
with our electric supply.
Rechtschaffen: Thank you, and then Vanessa.
-: Yep, thank you.
So I think a lot has been been covered
in terms of small and local.
Those are the preferences that we currently have
we do not currently set any procurement targets.
We do have those preferences
in our administrative procurement policies
for small and local.
And following Stephanie's comments
regarding disabled veteran-owned businesses.
We're working to finalize our understanding
of the legality of preferences.
We understand that MCE does it,
many state agencies in California do it.
So we are planning to bring this too onboard
and that would then be upon approval incorporated
into our administrative procurement preferences
alongside our local labor preferences.
-: Thank you very much.
I'm gonna ask one more question before I turn it over
to my fellow Commissioners, all of your reports,
talk about your internal efforts to improve diversity
of significant length.
Very helpful to have that information.
I'm wondering if any of you can provide us with figures
on the diversity of your workforce,
and or of your governing body.
And we'll note that I saw no reports
that Clean Power Alliance indicated it intends
to conduct a survey of board members this year.
So let me start with you, Vanessa.
I don't know if I called it new first.
I don't think I'm talking to be fair, but in any case,
do you have information on the diversity of your workforce
and your governing bodies?
-: Sure, thanks, Commissioner.
So in regards to our workforce, our staff in 2021,
our HR did issue
the equal employment opportunity Commission, EEOC,
voluntary self-identification form to staff.
It's now a standard process and onboarding
for all new staff members.
I think for everyone,
not just CCA the public agencies that is voluntary.
So we have a staff of around 40.
Now we have a response rate of about 31%.
So I don't have a full data set
to fully answer the question,
but we do have that data.
And we'll continue to be gathering that
from new hires going forward.
And we do have a staff from a variety of backgrounds,
demographics, and communities.
We're also putting significant effort
into ensuring that recruitment process
is reaching an increasingly broad and diverse network,
as well as thinking about how we can provide mentorship
for students of all backgrounds
who are interested in energy,
careers to support effectively the rising generations
of energy professionals.
In regards to our board,
we have not to date collected this EOC,
self-identification information, but who already do so,
we followed the same process of staff
sending them that form.
And this is true for all CCAs, and our board members
are elected officials, of course.
And so that's a product of our local elections
and it's a product of the local elections.
We can collect the information,
but of course cannot influence the makeup of our boards.
-: Understood it, that you're in a different position
than the board appointed in a private utility.
Carole, a question for you for Sonoma Clean Power.
-: Thank you.
So we do look at our staff composition, and in 2021,
the diversity of our workforce
reflected exactly the demographics of our service territory,
which is Sonoma County and Mendocino County.
24% of our staff self identified as Latino or Hispanic.
And that our 25% of our territory
is of Latino or Hispanic origin
based on the 2020 census data.
Since mid-year, we've lost a couple of staff
of Latino origin who actually went to other CCA.
So they stayed in the CCA family,
and so we're now our numbers are a little bit lower.
We're hoping to regain that balance.
We have currently we're hiring
a bilingual customer service representative.
Another step we took is we're encouraging applications.
We're encouraging diverse applications
by changing some language in our job descriptions.
So that rather than requiring
a four-year degree, for instance for some positions,
we're looking at, we're not requiring a college degree,
and we're looking at a combination of experience
and training, and we're finding that,
so it's a way to improve access to skilled employees,
skilled workers who may not have had economic privileges
in their early school years.
So we're working on getting backed up to that 24, 25%,
which we had earlier this year.
As far as our board composition,
as was just mentioned by Vanessa,
or board made up of elected officials
who were not in a position to select our governing board,
the individuals are selected by their constituents
and which differs from IOU's as you know,
where IOU shareholders can elect their boards
and have more direct way to influence diversity.
So we're not in a position to do that.
-: Thank you, Stephanie.
-: Thanks, Commissioner, I think my response
is fairly similar to my colleagues here.
We have conducted a board diversity survey in 2019.
We did not get a terribly complete response there.
And so additionally,
since then we have had a number of folks turnover
as a result of local elections.
We've had a lot of new faces on our board.
And so we're looking forward to reissuing that survey
in the coming months to see what our board diversity
is looking like now.
In terms of demographic information from our staff,
as others here has mentioned,
we do issue the same survey on a voluntary basis.
So there are two, we do have a bit
of an incomplete response.
Of the folks who did respond,
our staff are just under 40% people of color,
and 62 1/2%, women, which we're particularly proud of
in the energy space as well.
But again those are are fairly incomplete datasets.
So we will be looking at at ways that we can encourage folks
to help us fill out those datasets in a more robust way.
-: Thank you, and finally, Matt.
-: Thanks, so we actually did publish
our staff diversity dumpers in the 2020 report.
I can recap that briefly here.
And as you mentioned, we are planning to survey our board
on the diversity and the makeup of our elected board.
So for CPS staff, we are 11% Black,
25% Asian and Pacific Islander, 10% Hispanic,
11%, two or more races, and 43% White Hispanic,
55% female, 7% LGBTQ and 3% disabled.
Those are information that we were able to gather,
and we're putting our 2020 report.
One thing I will point out
and I'm sure this is true for everybody,
but I think reporting like this,
this was a 2020 data in the last nine months,
we've had a significant amount of employee turnover,
and a significant amount of new hires.
So we're different organizations when we were a year ago,
and some of the people are different.
So those numbers like I expected
would look a little bit different today,
but we do believe that we're here to talk
about supplier diversity,
that I'm glad you're bringing up this question,
because I think it's really important.
And we've always as an organization
that reflecting the diversity of our customers
is a really important part of who we are.
And it's the way that we can better serve our customers
by understanding their perspective
and their value and how we do our business.
So that's what we have there.
-: Thank you very much.
Thank you panelists for your answers.
Now, I'm gonna turn it over to my fellow Commissioners
to see if they have any questions.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you, thank you everyone for updating us
on your progress.
I just wondered, and I know we have very short time,
so you're not able to always use all the right words
and express the fullness of your perspective,
but I do still a lot of words from you
that are viewing this GO 156.
That's something that you're constrained by in some way,
and you've referenced multiple times Prop 209
as an example, but I would encourage you,
maybe it's in a very, it's only words,
but certainly, there has been a racial awakening
in our country over the last few years
as Sacramento, and I know many of our service territories,
particularly the mayor of LA,
although he is obviously many of the mayors in there,
and I show many of the supervisors have called core
government measures to address the wealth gap,
to address many of the racial inequities that exist
in our society, but have been driven
by the economic development opportunities
that they need to foster.
So my question is really,
you have the advantage of being integrated
of local government.
How are you optimizing all of the initiatives
that the local leadership has taken
to now say we as local government have an obligation
to address the wealth gap.
And that's what I would love for you
to integrate into your talking points.
So maybe it says every time you say Prop 209,
you put a comma and you say,
but we also recognize the obligation
to address the wealth gap that exists in our communities.
And by the way, four of our members have mayors
that have this following initiatives,
and we're collaborating with them on that initiative.
So I'm just wanting to really call on you to expand on that
and to see the legal obligation in parody.
And so can you talk about what are the partnerships
that you have with your member local government,
and what they're doing to address this wealth gap.
-: I have been in Waterloo (indistinct)
Thank you, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
I think your framing there is very helpful,
and I think it's absolutely spot on,
I see nothing but opportunity in this, and I actually,
I really appreciate,
first of all, is the participation of everyone today
(indistinct) I think there's a lot of ways
we're sending signals here about the importance
of these efforts, and we feel it in our communities.
And I think I can speak for probably all the CPAs
when I say that our connection to a community
is just part of our DNA of who we are,
and addressing those social inequities
that you're referring to.
I think beyond just start thinking about that in 2020,
I think that's always something
that's gotta be really important for what we're doing,
and you're right.
I think the opportunities for collaboration
with our local governments who are in some cases,
nationwide leaders on some of these efforts,
I think it's just a huge opportunity.
So I can say for Clean Power Alliance,
one of the big areas of collaboration for us
is with LA County.
That's a little different than LA City,
but I will also say that LA County is a leader,
a nationwide leader in its efforts
around diverse procurement
of its efforts around social equity
and in a number of policy areas.
So we have our vice chair, Sheila Kuehl,
who's on the LA County board of supervisors.
We have a very close relationship
with the county government.
We actually started, CCA happened to start
as an initiative within LA County that got spun out
into its own agency.
So I think there's more opportunities for us
to do better in that collaboration,
but there are a role model that we look to
but it's not just LA County, we have 32-member agencies,
and there's a lot of different outfits
that we can work with we drop those.
We've done some work in that space,
particularly with Dalton County,
but I agree it's a huge opportunity.
And when I think of Prop 209 and this,
and how this fits into the mix of things,
I don't see that we've gotten as far as we can,
before we run into any kind of barriers.
I think we're, there's just a ton of room for progress
to be made and I do appreciate it.
I appreciate the question.
-: Does anyone have a comment?
-: Yeah, I can add something.
This is Carole Hakstian from Sonoma.
-: Okay, good job.
-: Thank you.
I'll just start off by saying
that we are in a position where we'd like to report
as much as we can for the goal
and towards the goal on 56 program.
We are, as Stephanie alluded to or mentioned earlier,
a large percentage of our procurement is power procurement.
So because of limitations there, we can't procure.
We can't report a lot of the procurement that we do outside
of power procurement.
So we are limited in a way there,
we currently do a lot of outreach in our community.
We're in contact with over a dozen chambers of commerce,
county wide organizations.
We have an organization called Los Cien
which is a service as a liaison between the Latino community
and the wider community.
We sponsor events.
We have speakers, we have great connections
with the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce
and Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
and North Coast Builders Exchange.
So we're reaching out.
We have now with the advanced energy center,
we have a way to bring people into the center
and to reach people through events
and educational opportunities.
So that's we're doing a lot.
We wanna do more.
We're gonna continue to do more.
And, but as far as the procurement,
we're forced to use a proxies that work around the solutions
like favoring local because we're forbidden
from explicitly favoring protected classes.
But I just wanna make sure that that's, I mean,
I wanna mention that.
I know, you know, it's something that we're working with.
We have some recommendations that we can put forth.
If I have a few minutes, I can do that now or do that later.
-: I don't think we have time, unfortunately, Carole,
but it would be great if you followed up with us after this.
-: Absolutely.
-: I was gonna say Stephanie and Vanessa,
if you have something you're absolutely totally pressing,
you need to say on this quickly, let me know.
Otherwise, I wanna see if Commissioner Houck
or Commissioner Shiroma have any questions
before we get to public comments.
So if you're ready, you absolutely must say on this topic.
-: Thanks, Commissioner.
I would like to highlight really quickly
that our board passed earlier this year,
a racial equity resolution
that builds upon 19 jurisdictional commitments
from among our member communities to advance DEI efforts,
including of course the racial wealth gap issue
that Commissioner Guzman Aceves mentioned.
And then it's just one example.
I wanna highlight our partnership with Richmond Builds,
which is a program of the city of Richmond that was created
expressly to address the wealth gap issues
that we're talking about here.
We have partnered with Richmond Builds
on many, many projects and have sponsored many cohorts
of trainees who are going through their programs.
And one of the great things is that Richmond Builds
does not only provides that hands-on training,
but also provides job placement assistance.
And we're thrilled every time a cohort graduates
to see just how many folks end up with permanent placements
in career track jobs,
particularly in the construction trades.
So we're very excited to continue
those kinds of opportunities in other areas
around our service territory.
-: If I may mention her very briefly.
-: 30 seconds.
-: Okay, I think in terms of our focus on affordability,
generally in terms of rates,
but particularly during the pandemic,
making sure that we have a very robust portfolio of programs
and outreach efforts to reach not only our residential,
but also small business commercial customers
that are struggling during the pandemic have been,
and continue to struggle is definitely key focus for us.
And I think going forward,
continuing to really built the relationships
with our local chambers and with our cities
as Commissioner Guzman Aceves mentioned all their efforts
and continuing to use those channels to reach folks,
reach our business community, and eventually,
hopefully as soon as possible,
we'll get to the level of awareness and engagement,
that some of the other utilities have in this space.
So we can continue to provide very strong relationships
and resources to our business community and help
promote not only economic development,
but for diverse businesses.
Well, on the Alameda County
is one of the most diverse counties in the state.
-: Okay, I think we have time for one more quick question.
If Commissioner Shiroma,
before we go to public comment or Commissioner Houck,
Commissioner Houck.
-: It was not so much, but I agree that you should.
It's good to hear that you're looking to continue
to build the relationships and try and be creative.
These are as you know important issues.
And we understand that you do have some constraints
and I would be interested in hearing the follow-up
that Carole mentioned and just exploring ways
to be able to further these goals with the CCAs.
So I appreciate all of you participating today
and the good start that you got and hope to continue
and see more as we go into next year.
-: Thank you, Commissioner, Commissioner Shiroma,
did you want to say something or did you have a question?
-: Yes, just raise hands.
Anyone who has a small business contracting program.
Okay, and I think it would be interesting to see if in fact,
you took out the power procurement
and looked at what the procurement
that is non-power purchase.
What percentage of that is GO 156 type of procurement?
Anyways, didn't maybe that
can be admitted in writing by folks.
-: Were any of you would know that offhand,
the percentage of your contract with small businesses?
-: Or with your diverse businesses, okay.
Pick out the 90% and that represent power procurement
and the remaining procurement,
what percentage was with the GO 156
type of other businesses?
I'd like to say Carol.
-: Carol.
-: I just like to note that we're working
with the CPUC diversity staff now to try to figure out,
to try to define what small and local health,
small local be defined.
So we don't really have a like a firm definition
We know within our territory who we're serving,
but as far as a number, we're not reporting that yet.
I think we're going to start doing that this year.
Is that what you're asking for?
Sort of does not be small just GO 156 contractors.
What I'm saying is okay, yep 0.02%.
That's new skill, okay.
But that's because you've got the power contract in there.
It takes projects out and then you have, oh.
-: This is Stephanie Green.
If I could just interject,
if you took the power out, it would be about 2%.
-: Okay.
-: And that will be with diverse firms.
So it'd be about 2% instead of the 0.06.
-: Ah, thank you, Stephanie.
So yeah, there's a lot of, and that's where the IOU started
20 years, 30 years ago.
Wait, anyways, it's a lot of work to be done.
-: I can say for Clean Power Lines, similar numbers are,
if you look at the percent of overall spend at 0.08%,
if you look at the percentage of thought energy spend
it's 3.16%.
So pretty significant difference there,
but I think it's the trend.
-: All right, we've got to wrap up.
Thank you very, very much to all our panelists.
We appreciate a really informative panel
and look forward to the specific follow-ups
and your more general work with our staff
to implement SB 255.
President Batjer was called away
to another meeting temporarily.
So I'm gonna take over the reins of leading us
through the next stage, which is a public comment period.
We wanna give the public an opportunity to comment
on the topics today.
If you would like to make a public comment,
please call 800-857-1917.
That's 800-857-1917.
The access code is 5180519 pound for English.
That's 5180519 pound for English
and 3799627 pounds for Spanish.
That's 3799627 pounds for Spanish.
We asked you to limit your comments
to no more than two minutes per speaker,
so that folks have a chance to talk.
The operator will call your name when it's time
for you to speak, you will hear a bell sound
when your time is up.
Please be mindful of the other people waiting in the queue
to provide public comments.
I will now turn it over to the operator
to open the public telephone line.
Operator, can you open the line
and call on our first commentor, please?
Operator: Yes, thank you.
Again, if you would like to make a comment,
please unmute your phone, press star one,
and clearly record your first and last name when prompted.
Again, that is star one to make a comment.
They'll take a few moments for questions
or for comments to come in, please stand by.
And our first comment comes from Pam Baker.
You may go ahead.
Pam: Good afternoon.
Thank you, Commissioners,
and everybody on this panel,
I found this very, very informative.
I'm wondering if you can provide some direction,
once you are certified.
Our business situation is we're MBE certified,
we're woman-owned certified,
we've recently been awarded an LPA contract within DGS.
We're also small business microbusiness certified.
Difficulty that we're having is finding who to connect with
within agencies to make them even aware
that the contract exists.
So my specific question is how do we find resources
within agencies to make them aware that we're even there?
My second question would be,
does each agency have any kind of an advocacy
or mentorship program that can help businesses
such as ourselves guide us through this process
once we have been successful
and have been awarded some contracts, thank you.
-: I'm gonna suggest that you contact our staff,
Stephanie Green or Drisha Melton offline,
and their contact info is on our GO 156,
diversity supplier wEPPage
to answer some of those specific questions,
but thanks very much for the call.
Operator, next caller, please.
-: Operator in the chat.
-: Thank you, I'm sorry, Stephanie indicated
she'd put in the chat.
Let's call it.
-: Sorry about that.
Our next comment is from Faith Otiso, you may go ahead.
Faith: Hi, good afternoon, greetings.
I would like to encourage everyone to consider
access to capital.
A lot of the small businesses,
especially the micro businesses would have a hard time
or have a hard time doing business with the utilities
with the cable company, but to help the economy back,
creating an investment with the CVFI.
So we can help the small businesses get the loans.
A lot of people that credit score has gone down,
and the back and they are still not doesn't fit in the box
of the lending program of the banks.
It would be great for going outside the box,
being innovative, enriching the small micro businesses
that otherwise can't get access.
For example, charter is doing that in a lot of the CDFI
in working with different CDFI and chambers of commerce.
T-Mobile I know is also thinking about that,
but I really believe that access to capital.
We've been discussing this for many, many, many years,
and it's still the biggest problem
for a lot of the small businesses.
And thank you, so much.
-: Thank you very much, Faith.
Operator, our next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Paul Pendergast.
You may go ahead.
Paul: Hello Commissioners.
My name is Paul Pendergast,
and I'm here on behalf of BuildOUT California,
which represents LGBT and allied firms
and architecture, engineering and construction
across the great state of California.
And I want to underscore our support
for many of the comments made by chamber leaders
in this morning's diverse community panel.
And as an industry association that represents LGBT firms
in core areas where utilities have demonstrated
they have large spends.
We understand the frustrations, our associates face
in dealing with utilities
while some utilities are really, truly dedicated
to the engagement of LGBT firms like T-Mobile
who are consistently leading the pack on LGBT utilization,
still far too many other utilities under GO 156
are truly completely missing an action
as it relates to LGBT engagement,
we do need more transparency.
We do need more meaningful engagement
with a larger cross section of utilities.
And most importantly, with their tier one suppliers,
we need those LGBT firms with on-call
or active MSA contracts and facilities
to actually be called up for duty.
GO 156 is all about diversity.
And unfortunately the last couple of years at the Ambox
have been had speakers from companies that well,
many of them have been very informative.
Most of the speakers do not represent the utilities
that are truly struggling with contacts
and contracts with LGBT businesses.
As Marquita Thomas from the LAG LCC said this morning,
20 utility firms are not contracting with LGBT firms.
It's imperative that you as Commissioners
hear from those firms as well.
We do look forward to the CPU,
establishing a 1.5% goal
with LGBT businesses this year, not in three or five,
but in 2021.
And we were so heartened to hear this morning
from your energy and water panel recommitting our engagement
but BuildOUT California looks to engaging
on a utility by utility basis
to establish a utilization plan, to meet the 1.5% goal.
Thank you, Commissioners.
-: Thank you very much, Paul.
Operator, our next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Lianne Lami.
You may go ahead.
Leanne: Hello.
Thank you, for the opportunity to be present today
to the CPUC and all the panelists
of the certified diversity supplier.
My name is Leanne Lemming.
My pronouns are she, her and hers.
I am CEO and founder of Bocci Engineering and Construction.
Bocci develops sustainable solutions that pay for themselves
in energy and water infrastructure.
I participated through this national LGBT
chamber of commerce and mentor protege program in 2021
as an LGBT protege with California American Water Company.
My mentor was Edward A. Simon II,
director business performance and supplier diversity
for California American Water.
Aligned with the CPUSA theme of thriving and surviving,
my goal and the California American Waters program
was to further develop skills,
capabilities, and business development,
and marketing and utility infrastructure.
Batjer presented a few key challenges to overcome
through the program, our insurance capacity limitations,
new market penetration issues,
capability industry transfer issues,
closure rates, retention,
and rebuilding Bocci sales team,
post and through the pandemic.
There've been so many successes.
Mr. Simon with California American Water
has become both a friend and advocate for myself
as well as my company.
He was remarkable in the way he prepared,
organized our time and facilitated Cal Ann's resources
to address the challenges and goals we chose
for our mentor protege program.
The first meeting outcome was a referral
and full marketing review of our capabilities
to critically understand how we could fit
into their protege programs.
Our second outcome was a company introduction as the protege
for American Waters procurement engineering, construction,
and diversity inclusion leads.
Through his advocacy, we receive resource support
from California American Waters legal, the risk management,
their operations, their marketing,
and we're even included in recognition
and their internal and external public communications.
I described the biggest three successes.
It would be advocacy, education and visibility.
Thank you for this opportunity.
-: Thank you very much, Lianne, our next caller please.
Operator: And our next caller is Julian Kennedy.
You may go ahead.
Julian: Thank you, Commissioner.
Thank you, Commissioners.
-: We're having trouble hearing you.
Can you start again?
We did not hear the beginning of what you said,
you faded out.
Could you please maybe get closer to them the phone or,
but we were having trouble hearing you.
Please start again.
Operator, are you able to connect with Julian?
Julian: It looks like Julian disconnected,
but he may dial back.
'Cause this is the second time
he's been in the call today, so.
-: Okay, well let's wait for that.
Are there other callers in the queue?
Operator: Yes, Christopher Fleming,
you may go ahead, sir.
Christopher: Well, thank you.
Good afternoon, distinguished Commissioners or the CPUC.
My name is Christopher Fleming.
I live at 1513, Flying Mist Road, San Leandro, California.
And I wanted to speak about rooftop solar
and battery storage.
I wanna protect that from being overtaxed
and driven out of existence,
and I wanna make it more equitable.
I'm calling today to ask you assurances
in protecting the rights of retired senior citizens,
like my wife, since he and I to enjoy the energy efficiency
and cost savings of rooftop solar on our home.
PG&E is pressuring you,
the California Public Utilities Commission
and the state legislature to yield to their demand,
to tax and increase the cost of rooftop solar for retirees
and fixed income families, trying to do their part
to reduce the carbon footprint on an earth in peril.
Many of California's wildfires and the deadly natural gas
firestorm in San Bruno were a direct result of PG&Es,
lacks management of transmission line infrastructure
oversight, and maintenance.
Now, PG&E wants to tax you on right
to generate rooftop solar and battery storage in our homes.
Why upon your senior citizens like Governor Newsome
and you members, the distinguished Commissioners of the CPUC
to stand with and defend rooftop solar power
and battery storage for California families
and senior citizens.
Respectfully submitted on this day to you,
by Chris, and since this Fleming retirees,
San Leandro, California.
-: Thank you very much, operator our next caller please.
Operator: And our next caller,
we have Julian Kennedy back.
You may go ahead.
Julian: Thank you, Julian Kennedy
with California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
And thank you Commissioners again
for this wonderful En Banc hearing.
Again, I did wanna address first.
You guys just finished with PTA.
I did wanna say
that the California Senate Chambers of Commerce
is pleased to say that we've met
with the DCA State Association,
and we're putting together a collaborative effort
to help them in this area
as you guys were all talking about.
So again, we're excited about that.
Being able to make sure we connect them
with our diverse chambers throughout the state
where they're our CCA so they can help and assist
with the developing procurement opportunity.
Secondly we have had wonderful relationships
with our investor owned utility, the PG&Es,
the San Francisco and the certain (indistinct)
on the electrical side.
And I do wanna say one thing we've been concentrating on
and something that I think is important is that number one,
we've always speak of supplier diversity and development,
but really getting down to the point
of making our businesses competitive
so they can win that contract.
So we have to do more than just bringing diverse suppliers
to the table, developing.
We have to also make them very competitive
so they can compete and win that contract.
And finally we have another,
a number of new opportunities out there
that are being created at developing diverse suppliers,
and keeping that pipeline fields for GO 156,
and also one right now is with T-Mobile
who were doing some fantastic work
of being able to help them
build their supplier base as well.
But other telecom companies have also been working with us
on the telecom side as well.
So again, thank you.
We thank you for your support in this area as always.
And we look forward to continuing to bring you our comments
and hopefully ideas that are innovative
and continue to create that strong supplier base, thank you.
-: Thank you very much, Julian.
Are there additional calls, operator?
Operator: Yes, we do have additional callers,
before we go to the next caller.
If you wish to speak during the public comment,
please press star one on mute your phone
and provide your name when prompted.
Our next caller is Lucas Micha.
You may go ahead.
Lucas: Hi, as I mentioned, my name is Lucas.
I am with (indistinct)
and we're doing a lot of wild fire mitigation.
-: We're having trouble hearing you you're breaking up.
Lucas: Excuse me, hear me better now?
-: That's better, but we were having trouble hearing.
Lucas: Okay.
So we're a drone company
that disabled veteran business enterprise,
and we do a lot of welfare mitigation,
and a lot of the technologies that are coming out
like drones are providing a lot of opportunities
for diverse suppliers,
but what other opportunities could drones provide
to this industry that a diverse supplier
like ourselves could fill?
Thank you.
-: Thank you, operator our next caller, please.
-: And I have no additional callers in queue at this time,
but again, that is star one,
if you would like to make a public comment.
-: Okay, it doesn't seem
like there are any additional public commentors.
With that I'm gonna thank the commenters,
thank you for keeping within two minutes,
I'm gonna turn to my fellow Commissioners
to see if they have any closing remarks or anything
they'd like to say.
Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Yes, I just want to thank all the staff in particular,
Stephanie Green and her wonderful team.
Drisha Milton and others.
I did wanna recognize one of the comments made
earlier today and also by the callers,
which is that we may need a separate set of focus
and strategies on those utilities and those CCAs
that are at a different evolution
and really having maybe a two tiered strategy
where there continues to be innovation with those
that have been implementing this policy for decades,
but also recognizing that we need
to maybe take a more focused approach
with those that are newer.
And so just wanna reflect on that and thank everybody
for their participation today.
-: Thank you, that is an interesting point.
They entities are in very, very differently situated,
both in experience, legal limitations,
and their ability to access the kinds of goods and services
that they contract for them.
Are there any other comments, closing comments or thoughts?
Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Thank you, again, a very important conversation.
Thank you, Stephanie, to you and your team
for the GO 156 effort.
I think again, it really highlights
the importance of the program
and that even some of the very large companies
and other communication companies, there are these big gaps,
and I'm hoping in this coming year,
and there's still a few more months left to 2021,
but really for there to be a I'll call it a core view
of the importance of California, the California economy.
We have the fifth largest GDP in the world.
We have an economic engine that helps in the rest of the US.
And so for these corporations and utilities,
and it is important to really pay attention
and fulfill the aspirational and real goals
of the original thinking by somebody who women more,
and I had was very much emphasized by Chris Holden
and Senator Bradford.
So I think that metrics are important to me
compared to seek them and figure out
how to drill down into those.
And then also the O-N-E-N-O Marketing Education Outreach
that to assure that there are budgets within the utilities
for reaching out to their GO 156 qualified suppliers,
to look at how to qualify more suppliers
and to see what best practices there are,
that can be used by some of the smaller folks,
the CCA to catch up.
So thank you very much.
Thank you, Commissioner Rechtschaffen
for heading up this effort this year, thank you.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Shiroma,
Commissioner Houck, please.
-: It just brings it, I wanted to also, again,
thank Stephanie Green team for all of their work,
your leadership on this important topic,
a lot of good discussion today.
And I do think given what we've heard today in the comments,
especially from the first panel
that we should look at exploring maybe a two tiered system
for the IOUs that are not meeting the goals.
And I look forward to continuing this discussion,
and appreciate everyone's participation today.
-: Thank you, I wanna echo our deep appreciation
and special thanks to the hardworking staff
that run this program and put this panel together.
And in addition to Stephanie Green and Drisha Melton,
I wanna also acknowledge and apologize
for not acknowledging earlier.
These are with Dr.Houck, a very, very hardworking,
incredibly competent staff to run a program.
That's the model of the country.
Thank you everybody who participated today,
all the organizations, community groups, and others,
I thought it was very educational,
engaging, insightful discussion.
And we got some very concrete ideas.
We weren't at just high level, nice sound bites,
but we really had,
we got down to brass tacks of things that are problems
and potential solutions.
And I appreciate the honest engagement from everybody.
With that, unless President Batjer
has just returned in time.
We were literally gonna sign off, but President Batjer,
I'm happy if you wanted to give any final thoughts.
We, our public comment period did not run
as long as we anticipated.
So we are all the other Commissioners
have all given closing remarks and thanks.
But before we do, do you wanna add anything?
-: Well, thank you.
I did hear the end of Commissioner Shiroma's
and Aceves and of course you're very wonderful and warm,
thanks to everyone.
But I do want just a couple of things,
'cause I know it's been a very long day,
but if I do wanna thank you in particular
for running this, this year,
you have a huge plate that is hugely full.
And I am always in wonderment of you,
and this is just one more added point of wonderment.
But adding to my great gratitude of course,
is my gratitude to Stephanie Green and Drisha Melton,
and Bezawit Dilgassa.
You are a mighty little team and you do an awful lot.
And the gathering of the data, analyzing the data,
the reportings of the legislature,
all that you do is quite extraordinary,
but it's not just the doing it is what it's resulting in.
And it's really resulting in employing thousands,
if not millions,
when you think of the secondary and tertiary impacts
of people in California,
people that really are the engine of our economy
and that's our small businesses,
and in the sectors that are so very important
and have really struggled during the pandemic.
So this is just extraordinary work that you've done.
And we're also appreciative.
We did see today, some real, not holes in our program,
but things that still need work
that each individual Commissioner can work on,
and in our own important ways.
And of course the program can work on,
and that's the IOUs utility, excuse me, should.
And the telcos, they have a lot of work to do.
I am for one, we're particularly concerned
about the telcos to tell you the truth,
and what they're doing and how they're doing it.
I think we have a lot of fertile ground there
to really work on.
So was that I do wanna thank everyone who's participated
and the public, the IOUs, the telcos,
all of the companies and all of the small business people,
you are to be congratulated and thanks.
And thank you to my fellow Commissioners,
have a lovely afternoon, what's left of it,
and a very nice evening.