New questions about ex-CPUC president’s deals with utilities

FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 file photo, Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, listens to a speaker at Irvine City Hall in Irvine, Calif. Peevey, California's chief utility regulator, under fire over accusations of secret dealings with the state's largest utility, said Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 that he will not seek reappointment when his term ends at the end of the year. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Mark Rightmire, File) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT less FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 file photo, Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, listens to a speaker at Irvine City Hall in Irvine, Calif. Peevey, California's chief ... more Photo: Mark Rightmire, Associated Press Photo: Mark Rightmire, Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close New questions about ex-CPUC president’s deals with utilities 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The former head of the California Public Utilities Commission pressured two Southern California utilities last year to make donations to a school at UCLA where he then landed a post on an advisory board, documents revealed Wednesday show.

The panel’s then-president, Michael Peevey, urged that Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. donate the money as part of a deal to shut down their jointly owned San Onofre nuclear power plant, which had been offline for more than a year because of steam generator problems, according to documents that Edison made public.

Peevey, who led the panel for 12 years, left in December under a cloud, the target of state and federal investigations into possible influence peddling stemming from deals he allegedly made with utilities. He has declined to comment about the probe.

In a search of Peevey’s Southern California home in January, state investigators found notes of a secret March 2013 meeting at a hotel in Poland with a Southern California Edison executive that appear to show the utility agreeing to earmark $20 million for greenhouse gas reduction research as part of a deal to close the nuclear plant.

The company denies it reached any such deal with Peevey, and when a tentative $4.8 billion deal on the San Onofre shutdown was reached in March 2014, it included no money for greenhouse gas research.

At two meetings with Southern California Edison executives in May 2014, attended by both Peevey and Commissioner Mike Florio, Peevey grumbled about the lack of greenhouse funding, according to one of the executives, Ron Litzinger. He said in a sworn affidavit released Wednesday that Peevey had waved notes of the Poland talks during the first meeting and demanded that Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric give $25 million to UCLA for research over five years.

Litzinger said he had promised to get back to Peevey. The commission president later called him several times and brought it up again at the second meeting, Litzinger said.

In one call in June 2014, Litzinger said, “Peevey stated that he was getting nowhere with me.”

In another call, Peevey “expressed frustration and demanded to meet with” Ted Craver, CEO of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, Litzinger said. That meeting took place that June 2014. Peevey also lobbied other company officials, according to Litzinger.

In September 2014, when the utilities commission took up the San Onofre shutdown deal, Florio proposed that it include $25 million from Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric for greenhouse gas research at University of California campuses over five years. About one-fourth of the money for the first year has gone to UCLA.

That same month, Peevey joined the the advisory board for the UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy’s Center for Innovation. E-mails released earlier this year show that in December 2013, Peevey had mentioned to a university official the possibility that utility money could be directed to UCLA’s Center for Sustainable Communities, which is affiliated with the Luskin School.

The utilities commission is considering reopening the San Onofre deal because of questions about Peevey’s role. The documents that Edison released Wednesday were ordered made public by Commissioner Catherine Sandoval, who is overseeing the case.

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com