For-profit government granted monopolies are a terrible idea. They should be government-run, or watched, and should not choose between providing a service to customers or money to shareholders.

I'm not in California, but sounds to me like PG&E maximized profits by reducing maintenance, then when they were really far behind and running into issues, they begged for more money from taxpayers because they could not afford to make up for years of maximizing shareholder and senior management profits... I.e. corporate welfare.. they made lots of profit knowing this would bite them in the rear end, and then want the government to bail them out. It's nearly always win-win when you're that large of a company to pull these shenanigans