California Public Utilities Commission's Debt Collection Practices to be Audited

It’s audit time for the California Public Utilities Commission's debt-collections systems.  After some sleuthing by the Contra Costa Times, it turns out that $33 million in fines, mostly levied against telecommunication companies for violations of consumer-protection law, have gone uncollected since 1999.

Sort of defeating the purpose of a debt-collection agency.

"A substantial amount of PUC-levied fines may not have been properly established as accounts receivable, the necessary collection efforts ... may not have occurred (and) such receivables may not have been properly evaluated as to their collectibility," the controller's chief auditor, Jeffrey V. Brownfield, wrote in a letter to the commission.

In that time, some of the businesses with unpaid debts have gone out of business – which means that money may no longer be collectible.

It doesn’t look better for the CPUC: According to an internal memo, the commission's procedures for pursing debts "were not in written form and were ineffective and inadequate.”