PUC Says Merger Hearings to End Aug. 3; Foes Protest

The state Public Utilities Commission, responding to a request by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, on Friday directed its staff to end hearings on the controversial merger by Aug. 3.

Although utility spokesmen applauded the ruling, merger opponents said the decision will keep them from fully exploring whether the merger would be beneficial to Southern Californians.

Opponents also suggested that the decision to close testimony on Aug. 3 will open the door to lawsuits should the commission approve the merger.

State Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) said Friday that the PUC has violated state law by “arbitrarily rushing the . . . merger proceeding based on the commission’s desire to reach a decision by the end of 1990.”

“This could come back to haunt the PUC,” warned Bill Shaffran, a city of San Diego attorney who has long represented the city in the merger review. Shaffran said the PUC action will prohibit merger opponents, such as the city, from completing their cases.

Edison spokesman Lew Phelps, however, praised the decision.

“In a nutshell, we view this as a positive development,” he said. “These hearings have been going on for . . . a very long time, and it looks as though it’s going to be two years . . . before it’s brought to a close. We think that’s long enough.”

Michael Strumwasser, a Los Angeles-based special assistant to state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, who has opposed the merger, said the attorney general’s office is “increasingly worried that, whatever the commission decides would be (negated) because it can be overturned in court because of procedural errors.”

Commissioners restricted the hearing’s length in order to complete deliberations and issue a decision by Dec. 31. The commission hopes to finish the case by then because two commissioners’ terms expire at year’s end, and it could be months before their replacements are familiar with the complicated case.

Rosenthal, in a prepared statement Friday, complained that “the commission’s blind adherence to an arbitrary year-end deadline appears to have crossed the line from expeditious review to a violation of the basic rights of interested parties.”

Rosenthal said he intends to hold hearings on the PUC’s merger review to determine if the commission has fully explored environmental impacts of the proposed merger and whether the merger would produce benefits for Southern Californians.

Strumwasser also questioned the PUC’s desire to move so quickly to complete the hearings.

Friday’s order “has the suggestion of pre-judgment,” he said. “Why are they in such a hurry? Is it because (they) don’t need to hear the evidence because they already know what’s going to happen?”

Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers Action Network, a consumer group that opposes the merger, said the PUC decision is “not as bad as I expected.”

Shames based that opinion on the fact that commissioners had been considering an allocation plan that would have divided remaining hearing time among the utilities and opponents. That would have been “devastating” to merger opponents, who need time to cross-examine utility officials, Shames said.

The PUC instead extended daily hearing times and added six hours of testimony, to be taken on Saturdays. The administrative law judges who are conducting the hearings will also take steps to speed cross-examination of utility company witnesses, sources said.

Still, Shames said, the time limit puts opponents of the merger at a disadvantage because, even with longer weekday sessions and additional Saturday sessions, “we’re not going to get the time we need” to complete cross-examinations.

Phil Weismehl, an attorney with the PUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, the San Francisco-based organization that represents the public in the merger, described the six-day workweek as unprecedented in the PUC’s history.

“My staff is already suffering from fatigue,” said Weismehl, who was home sick with a cold Friday. “This is incredibly burdensome to our staff. . . . We’ll have to see what happens. As everyone gets very tired, the quality of presentations may go down.”

Fatigue will hurt the DRA, which has six attorneys working on the case, more than the utilities, which have mustered a legal force that includes more than two dozen attorneys, Weismehl said.

“For Edison, the accelerated schedule and the longer days are not that much of a big deal,” Weismehl said.