Ex-Environmental Lawyer Will Replace Allen at SoCal Edison

Former utility regulator and environmental lawyer John E. Bryson on Thursday was elected chairman and chief executive of Southern California Edison and its holding company, replacing 64-year-old Howard P. Allen, Edison’s plain-spoken and colorful chief, who will retire Oct. 1.

Bryson is an executive vice president of the electric utility. Directors of SCEcorp, the holding company, also named another executive vice president, Michael R. Peevey, to the post of president, effective Oct. 1. Allen now holds all three titles. A third executive vice president, David Fogarty, will retire Dec. 1.

Bryson and Peevey were the only candidates for succession whose names remained before the board when it met Thursday to make the decision. The two seem to have been competing for the top job ever since they were hired on the same day in 1984.

Bryson and Peevey said in separate interviews Thursday that their most immediate challenge is the proposed $2.4-billion merger with San Diego Gas & Electric, which both said could win final governmental approvals by the end of the year.

“We have a major challenge in integrating San Diego Gas & Electric,” the 47-year-old Bryson said, “and in doing that very, very well. . . . That is where we need to train our sights.”

Allen was the architect of the deal with SDG&E;, which has generated fierce opposition in San Diego. Allen and Fogarty will remain with Edison for a year as consultants to help complete the merger, which would make Edison the nation’s largest supplier of electricity.

The merger, announced two years ago, awaits approval by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“We think it’s time to move on and have a decision,” Bryson said. “We think that the public interest would be served.”

Opponents, who included San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor and some prominent business people, argued that the merger would mean less local control, higher rates, fewer jobs and more pollution. Edison contends that rates will fall and customers will benefit from the merger. California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp has opposed the merger as “anti-competitive.”

Allen will continue as a director of the boards of SCEcorp and Southern California Edison and as chairman of the SCEcorp executive committee.

In another change announced Thursday, SCEcorp Vice President and Treasurer Michael L. Noel was given the title of chief financial officer, which had been held by Bryson.

In the early 1970s, Bryson was co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national public-interest environmental law firm with offices in New York, Washington and Palo Alto.

From 1976 to 1979, he was chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board. For the next three years, he was president of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates electric, gas, telephone and water utilities and intercity transportation services in the state. In fact, during Bryson’s term, the PUC fined Edison $8 million for defying a commission order.

There was a time when environmentalists and utility executives would not be found in the same room, let alone the same company. But times have changed.

“I think the company is in the forefront of (environmentalism), and I think the hiring of Bryson years ago reflects that,” said Paul W. Salazar, a utilities analyst in Los Angeles with the investment firm Crowell, Weedon & Co. Salazar added that the company has been aggressive in searching for alternatives to burning fossil fuels for generating electricity.

“They have a good relationship with the CPUC, and I think they’ve tried to be good corporate citizens,” he said.

To correct a poor record of minority hiring, promotion and subcontracting, Edison last year set forth a far-reaching plan that was lauded as the most comprehensive in the nation.

Peevey, 52, an economist, came to Edison after 10 years as president of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance. Before that, he worked as director of research for the California Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

Allen, who has been with Edison 36 years, has said he is retiring to let younger hands guide the company.

“With my retirement, I leave the active management of SCEcorp and Southern California Edison in the hands of two extremely capable and experienced individuals,” he said.

Allen’s management style was at times gruff and no-nonsense, but he presided over a diversification that kept Edison away from troubled nuclear projects and from savings and loan firms and other risky investments--which have proven disastrous for other utility companies.

“I think they look with kind of a dim eye at some of the things other utilities have done,” Salazar said. “They’re a blue chip utility.”