On New Year’s Eve, as people partied around the globe, a massive power blackout sent Puerto Ricans scrambling in the dark. Blackouts have also been common in California prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom, in 2019, to proclaim as state “energy czar” Puerto Rico native Ana Matosantos, billed as a woman of “unrivaled professional accomplishment.” Embattled Californians soon had cause to wonder.
The blackouts and energy shortfalls continued and in 2020 the state urged electric car owners not to charge their vehicles during peak hours. In July 2022, Newsom appointed Matosantos to the University of California Board of Regents, and in August to the State Personnel Board.
Matosantos now appears as the co-author of “Unlocking California’s Climate Ambition,” released last July by the Boston Consulting Group, which boasts $12.3 billion in annual revenues and operations in more than 50 countries. That invites a look at Matosantos’s full back story.
At Stanford University, Matosantos earned degrees in political science — not the same as atmospheric or earth science — and feminist studies, which fails to qualify as an academic discipline. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped Matosantos to head the state Department of Finance, a post more suitable for an experienced economist. Recurring Gov. Jerry Brown retained Matosantos in the post and, in 2011, refused to accept her resignation after she was arrested for drunk driving in Sacramento. Her tenure as Brown’s chief budget advisor was marked by multibillion-dollar shortfalls.
The state’s Obamacare subsidiary, Covered California, took on Matosantos for a six-month stint at $120,000. Her performance failed to prevent Covered California from generating what health journalist Emily Bazar called “widespread consumer misery.”
In 2016, President Obama appointed Matosantos to the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board. Matosantos is also on the board of the Matosantos Commercial Corporation, owned by her wealthy family. As Christopher Coursen, former counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee noted, it was not disclosed that the family maintains a solar energy facility and renewable energy company and that the Matosantos family has “gone to great lengths to conceal their role and ownership.”
In Coursen’s view, the board was “a complete failure” and “given the recent evidence of blatant conflicts of interest of Ana Matosantos, her removal seems like the best place to start.” The Obama appointee remained on the board until 2020.
Matosantos served on Gavin Newsom’s transition team, rewarded with a post as “cabinet secretary” before appointments as the state’s energy czar, personnel board member, and UC Regent. Matosantos now reprises her energy czar role in “Unlocking California’s Climate Ambition,” all about “economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2045.” In addition, “a willingness to adopt novel and diverse approaches will be crucial,” and “California can unlock these benefits of decarbonation for communities, the environment and the economy, but the action must start now,” and so on.
Readers get little clue that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, that claims of changing climate are a matter of debate, and that all public policy requires trade-offs. For example, California’s “bullet train” project will require huge energy inputs from gas and diesel-powered machinery and cause considerable environmental damage. The climate ambition study avoids that reality, and Californians have heard it all before.
In 2021, Newsom authorized the state’s Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management (CalGEM) Division to end fracking permits by 2024. In a similar style, the governor tasked the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to “analyze pathways to phase out oil extraction across the state by no later than 2045.” As people should know, there’s more to it.
Automobile manufacturers and dealers normally stock the kind of vehicles people want to buy. The unelected bureaucrats of CARB oppose the transportation choices of the people. In 2022, CARB launched a plan to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars and light trucks. Newsom, who never had to work for a living, supports a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035, only 10 years down the road.
Meanwhile, Ana Matosantos, a political crony of dubious qualifications and accomplishments, essentially recycles Newsom’s climate agenda through a seemingly neutral source. As the title indicates, the study is more about the governor’s climate goals, and empowering bureaucracy, than meeting the energy needs of the people.
Climate change alarmists want the people to get only the energy and vehicles the government wants them to have. That’s more like a plan for statism than a free and prosperous society moving forward.
READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley:
Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s Choice for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Battled Woke Policies in California
Californians Could Seriously Benefit From DOGE in ‘Trump-Proofed’ California
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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