Finally, there’s some very good news on the California Public Utilities Commission front. On Monday, the CPUC announced that agency Commissioner Catherine J.K. Sandoval and Administrative Law Judge Maribeth A. Bushey had issued a ruling ordering the reopening of the state regulator’s 2014 decision to make Southern California Edison and SDG&E ratepayers cover 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of shuttering the broken San Onofre nuclear plant.

Sandoval and Bushey cited evidence first reported in February 2015 by the Union-Tribune that there had been undisclosed, improper contact between Edison officials and commission staff members when the bailout plan was being crafted — in particular a 2013 meeting in Poland involving then-Edison Executive Vice President Stephen Pickett and then-CPUC President Michael Peevey. They concluded that the San Onofre settlement could no longer be considered to meet CPUC bylaws requiring that it be “reasonable in light of the whole record, consistent with law, and in the public interest.”

The CPUC’s chumminess with the utilities it regulates and its hostility to transparency won’t go away because of this overdue decision. But it’s a huge and important step in the right direction.