PUC Delays Ruling in Edison Rate Dispute

The state Public Utilities Commission delayed a decision on a $56-million rate dispute Wednesday after one member lashed out angrily at a harshly worded staff report critical of Southern California Edison.

“We’re not here to play legal games,” said commission member William Bagley, who suggested that the PUC’s legal staff withdraw from a case in which it urged that Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. shareholders bear costs for correcting manufacturing defects that resulted in a 14-month shutdown of San Onofre Unit 1 during 1980 and ’81.

‘Gross Adjectives, Venom’

Electricity customers in the 19 Southern California counties served by Edison and SDG&E; would realize a small savings on their bills--less than 1% a month for the next three years--if the commission eventually adopts the staff’s position, utility officials said.

While Bagley did not challenge the report’s conclusion, he was sharply critical of what he called the “gross adjectives” and “venom flowing from” the report.

The report, written by staff counsel Robert Cagen, said in effect that Edison had only itself to blame for setbacks in its legal efforts to make Westinghouse, the manufacturer, pay for repairs to three steam generators that forced the shutdown.

Cagen’s report said Edison officials should have realized that a number of statements they made during 1981 and ’82 would come back to haunt them in their federal court lawsuit.

The staff’s investigation “revealed some of the most extreme examples of imprudence we have ever discovered,” Cagen wrote in the report.

Edison responded that the report was both unfair in tone and “reached a number of incorrect conclusions.” The company said the “staff’s motion transcends the reasonable bounds of advocacy and has no place in commission proceedings or elsewhere.”

Bagley’s displeasure with the staff found no echo among the PUC’s four other members, but disposition of the case was postponed for two weeks, until the commission’s March 20 meeting.

The PUC’s general counsel, Jan Kerr, sought to defend the language as a reflection of Cagen’s “anger at the situation.”

“We’re not here to be angry,” Bagley replied. “I believe that the general counsel’s office should remove itself from the case.”

The money in question represents about three-fourths of the repair costs for the nuclear-powered steam generators that resulted in the 1980-81 shutdown. Additional safety work required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission kept the unit shut down most of the time since. Unit No. 1 resumed full operation only last December.