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.”