Eight years ago, federal investigators announced that a “litany of failures” by California’s largest utility had caused a massive gas explosion that killed eight people, injured 58 and incinerated a neighborhood in the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno.
Two days after that announcement, under blue skies at a baseball diamond on the edge of San Francisco’s financial district, the city’s mayor, Ed Lee, threw out the first pitch for a charity event sponsored by that same utility, Pacific Gas & Electric.
“PG&E is a great local company who gets it,” the mayor, who died in 2017, said at the event.
For critics of PG&E, Mr. Lee’s praise was a symbol of a recurring frustration: Despite evidence that the company was responsible for repeated safety violations and involved in deadly wildfires, lawmakers in California continued to benefit from political donations from the company.
