Initiative Put Back on Ballot

Proposition 80, an initiative that would roll back a key provision of California’s experiment with a deregulated electricity market, is back on the November special election ballot.

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a Friday decision by a state appeals court that would have removed the proposition from the ballot.

The initiative was sponsored by the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based ratepayers’ advocate, and bankrolled by Democratic activist groups including labor unions.

If passed, it would remove one of the few remaining features of California’s 1996 electricity deregulation law. Its most important provision would ban large consumers such as businesses and institutions that aren’t already doing so from buying their electricity from independent power marketers rather than from utilities.

The Independent Energy Producers Assn., a trade group for power plant owners, filed a suit to block the proposed ballot measure, contending it was unconstitutional.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento agreed, finding that the proposal illegally impinged on the Legislature’s constitutional authority over the California Public Utility Commission, which oversees the investor-owned electric utilities.

But the state Supreme Court, taking two business days to deliberate, said it was “more appropriate to review constitutional and other challenges to ballot propositions or initiative measures after an election rather than to disrupt the electoral process by preventing the exercise of the people’s franchise.”

Although it took no position on the merits of the lawsuit, the court indicated that it would review the constitutional challenge after the Nov. 8 election, if Proposition 80 passes, because it found no “clear showing of invalidity.”

“We’re glad to see the Supreme Court agrees with us that voters should have an opportunity to weigh in on these consumer protection issues,” said Bob Finkelstein, executive director of the initiative’s sponsor, which is known as TURN.

Jan Smutny-Jones, head of the Independent Energy Producers Assn., said he remained confident that Proposition 80 would be defeated.

“It would have been nice to have a decision before the election,” he said. “It would have saved millions of dollars that would have been spent in a campaign.”