Electricity Deregulation

I am told that there is a preference in the entertainment industry for publicity, virtually any publicity, so long as the name is spelled correctly. Were that lesson to apply to the institutions the people of California have created as part of their government, I should be grateful for your editorial, “Sparks Fly Over Electricity Deregulation” (March 21). Lamentably, there were a number of other statements that were the very opposite of accurate.

You assert that “when the agency held expanded public hearings on the electricity issue, often not one commissioner was present.” In fact the commission held no fewer than 16 public participation hearings beginning in Eureka on Aug. 25 and concluding in Huntington Park on Jan. 23. A commissioner presided at 13 of the 16. In addition, all commissioners conducted the full panel policy hearings which began in Los Angeles and extended to Sacramento, San Francisco and San Diego.

I am deeply troubled when you tell readers: “And the PUC does not routinely hold scheduled open meetings. Bad idea.” For decades the commission has met twice a month (approximately once every two weeks) in a large public meeting facility and acted on a publicly noticed agenda in public. Good idea and unvarying practice.

Passing from these vexing inaccuracies to the concerns you raised, I applaud The Times for alerting readers to issues that we have made the object of the most extensive public discussion of any major public policy proposal in California’s recent history. Anyone who consults the Internet can find virtually every paper, comment and pleading, which currently comprise the body of information and opinion being consulted by my colleagues and myself. Our policy hearings were broadcast by most of California’s cable systems and are available on video cassette in many public libraries.

What you could not have known at the time you wrote the editorial is that we would elect not to act on March 22. We have concluded that it is prudent to wait for the appointment of the two new commissioners recognizing that, given the staggered six year terms fixed by California’s Constitution, it is they who will have the most longstanding stewardship for the reforms that will put downward pressure on electric rates and buttress our state’s competitive posture as we complete one century and enter another.

DANIEL WM. FESSLER

PUC Commission President

San Francisco