Wilson Names 2 to PUC as Merger Looms

Gov. Pete Wilson on Tuesday nominated a former Republican congressman and a UC Davis law professor to the Public Utilities Commission just days before the powerful agency begins pondering a merger that would create the largest electric utility in the country.

Wilson’s selection of former Rep. Norman D. Shumway (R-Stockton) and legal scholar Daniel Fessler for the prestigious $92,465-a-year posts drew mixed reviews from consumer advocates opposing the proposed merger of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

It also disappointed PUC watchers in San Diego, where those opposing the merger had hoped that their onetime mayor would appoint one of their own to the agency that regulates service and rates for more than 25,000 privately owned utilities and transportation companies in California. The agency would have final word on the SDG&E; merger.

“We had pushed for someone from down here, and we’re disappointed we didn’t get someone,” said Dave Moore, business manager of Local 465 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Improved representation of San Diego at the PUC “was a big thing when Wilson was mayor down here . . . so we were kind of surprised” by Tuesday’s announcement, Moore said.

Michael Shames, executive director of Utility Consumers Action Network, a San Diego-based consumer group, said Wilson’s selections were “fairly safe appointments that likely will be approved by the Senate. . . . It doesn’t look like there’s anything controversial here.”

But Audrie Krause, executive director of the San Francisco-based Toward Utility Rate Normalization, a statewide consumer group, said her organization may oppose the nomination of Shumway--an ardent conservative who has sided with timber interests, big business and banks during his 12 years in Congress.

The Senate has one year to confirm the Wilson nominees, who can assume their duties immediately.

“In terms of Shumway, we’re very, very disappointed,” Krause said. “His general voting record indicates he’s a very anti-consumer person. He appears to be somewhat ideologically inclined to oppose regulation of monopolies, and oppose regulation.”

But the governor predicted both men would “bring a fair and aggressive approach” to PUC business, including the proposed $2.6-billion merger between Rosemead-based Edison and SDG&E.;

Oral arguments over the controversial proposal are scheduled to begin March 6 before the five-member PUC, leaving Tuesday’s nominees extremely short notice to study up on the issue.

The governor’s move to fill the two PUC vacancies comes at a crucial time in the proceedings. Earlier this month, two state administrative law judges recommended the merger be turned down because it would be anti-competitive, although it would save 5 million Southern California ratepayers more than $1 billion over the next nine years.

Both Shumway and Fessler said they were only vaguely aware of the proposed merger before talking to the governor, who emphasized to them privately that it was a matter of the highest importance.

“He said that one of the first things that was going to be on the plate for his appointees would be an obligation to participate in what he described as one of the most serious decisions to be made by the PUC in its history,” Fessler said.

However, he and Shumway said Wilson never tried to influence them on the merger, which is bitterly opposed in the governor’s hometown of San Diego. “I came away . . . with absolutely no impression of whether the governor of California is in favor of or opposes that merger,” said Fessler, 49.

Fessler received a law degree from Georgetown and Ph.D. from Harvard before joining the Davis faculty in 1970. An expert in contract law, he helped fashion arguments in a landmark 1970 civil rights case that held that government must deliver comparable services to all of its citizens, regardless of race or economic status.

That experience eventually led to “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” a critically acclaimed book Fessler co-authored in 1985.

The book argued that common law has established a legal precedent for monopolies treating all of its consumers equally--a treatise that Wilson commented on when Fessler first met the former U.S. senator in Washington several years ago.

Fessler, who has worked with state governments in Alaska and his native Wyoming, said he never sought the PUC post, but that Wilson actively recruited him starting last month. He said he met with Wilson for an hour last week and was persuaded to take the job starting today, when he is scheduled to be sworn in.

Unlike Fessler, the 56-year-old Shumway said he actively sought the PUC post. Shumway retired from Congress last year after representing his San Joaquin Valley district since 1978. During his 12 years in Congress, he earned a reputation as a pro-business member of the House Banking Committee who opposed Reagan-era tax reform because he claimed it shifted too many taxes on corporations.

Shumway also opposed economic sanctions against South Africa and was in the vanguard of timber-industry efforts to defeat a successful measure to set aside 2.4 million acres of Northern California land as a protected wilderness.

The former congressman, whom Wilson said would “provide a realistic viewpoint” on the PUC, said in a telephone conversation from the Washington area that consumer criticism of his appointment is premature.

“I admit to having a strong faith, an abiding faith in the free enterprise system,” he said. “And I’ve voted in a pro-business way, but that’s not against consumers. What’s good for business is good for consumers.”

Lewis Phelps, a Southern California Edison spokesman, said that “both seem to be qualified for the openings. We’re glad to see the PUC up to its full complement because they’ve got some important matters before them.”