More Overbilling Charges Come to Light

What began as simple curiosity by two retired Garden Grove residents has surged into a wave of official suspicion over electricity bills.

Inspired by the efforts of the two men, who documented thousands of dollars in overcharges by Southern California Edison, cities and government agencies countywide are literally taking to the streets to make sure they are not overcharged.

The latest to join the battle is the city of Orange, which last week accused Edison of overbilling nearly $300,000 for street and traffic lighting over the past 14 years. The claim comes after a report by a police officer who spent six months inspecting each of 7,200 street lights in the city.

Moreover, the two activists whose inspections sparked the current flurry of bill checking now say they believe that Caltrans might have been overcharged as much as $1.3 million--about $15,000 a month--for freeway lighting across Orange County since 1989.

“This thing has become a monster,” said Jack Schild, a retired electric plant manager who with his friend, former Garden Grove City Councilman Ray Littrell, began investigating street lighting in 1993.

An Edison spokesman said the company is looking into the allegations involving the city of Orange and freeway lighting, but said he thought the figures are inflated.

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Orange officials, however, say they aren’t exaggerating.

“I am surprised,” said Police Chief John R. Robertson, who assigned one of his police officers to inspect each of the city’s traffic and street lights and compare them with the bills from Edison. “It’s alarming. This could be a problem throughout Southern California.”

Most of the disputed bills, Robertson said, fall into four categories:

* Lights for which the city was charged that actually exist in other cities, including Westminster, Fullerton, La Habra and Santa Ana.

* Lights that were double-billed at more than one rate.

* Traffic lights that were erroneously billed at higher-than-appropriate rates.

* Nonexistent lights for which the city was charged.

“Maybe I’m being naive,” Robertson said, “but I was surprised at the number of errors and the [percentage] of them that were in Edison’s favor.”

The majority of alleged irregularities on the Caltrans bills, Schild said, involved lights that were double-billed. He and Littrell discovered the discrepancies by inspecting a portion of the lights, as well as comparing Edison’s bills with a list of the agency’s freeway lighting circuits, according to Schild.

A spokeswoman for Caltrans, which maintains the freeways and pays Edison for power, said last week that the agency is aware of the billing problem but could not confirm any specific numbers.

“We don’t have a firm figure on what the exact amount is,” said Maureena Duran-Rojas, adding that the agency has met with Edison representatives several times.

Since 1992, she said, Caltrans has received about $400,000 in refunds from Edison for overbilled freeway lighting in Orange County.

“There have been discrepancies in the billing and we have identified some of those discrepancies,” she said. “We are continuing to review those billings and [believe that] any additional discrepancies will be reimbursed.”

Terry Kerr, a spokesman for the utility, said the utility company is working closely with both the city of Orange and Caltrans to determine whether any further refunds are due.

“It is far too early to say,” he said, adding that the utility would reimburse any documented overpayments only for the three years prior to their discovery.

Public Utility Commission rules exempt utility companies from reimbursing overcharges more than 3 years old.

“We are all paid professionals,” Kerr said. “We will straighten it out and do it to the best advantage of the customer.”

The bill-checking flurry began last year when Schild and Littrell--after spending 18 months inspecting each of the 7,716 street lights in Garden Grove--issued a report that persuaded city officials to submit an $83,498.59 claim to Edison for overcharges dating back to 1963.

The utility reimbursed the city about $14,000. It also stopped billing Garden Grove for electricity for nearly a year while the city’s street light maps were revised.

Edison refunded Westminster about $3,000 as well.

Schild and Littrell later launched street-lighting investigations--still ongoing--in Santa Ana and Laguna Beach.

“We want to see if what we’re paying is accurate and, if it isn’t, we’d like an adjustment,” said Wayne L. Peterson, the mayor of Laguna Beach, which spends about $204,000 a year on street lighting.

Teri Cable, a spokeswoman for Santa Ana, said her city spends nearly $1.5 million a year on street lighting. “We’re looking at it to make sure that we’re not being overcharged,” she said.

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Other cities that have contacted Schild and Littrell about street lighting include Long Beach, Cypress, Huntington Beach and Stanton.

Officials in those cities wanted to know how to go about checking their own electric bills, Littrell said.

In Orange, Chief Robertson assigned Officer Jack Nanigian, a 21-year veteran, to inspect the city’s street and traffic lights and compare them with Edison’s bills.

“At first I was incredulous,” Nanigian, 45, said of the alleged overbilling. “Then I saw it was so.”

Since he completed his inspection, Nanigian said, street lights have taken on a whole new meaning in his life.

“They pop out at me where I never noticed them before,” he said. “I notice street lights on in the middle of the day. It’s become kind of an obsession. It’s difficult now to drive down the street and not pay attention to what I took for granted before.”