Angry Edison Wants PUC’s Police Powers Scaled Back

Southern California Edison wants the Legislature to change state law to severely restrict Public Utilities Commission investigators’ police powers, after the state’s allegations that the massive 1996 Calabasas fire started on a utility power pole.

That blaze scorched 13,000 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains, hospitalized seven firefighters and left one with burns over 70% of his body.

The chairwoman of the Assembly’s Utilities and Commerce Committee called the effort “audacious and outrageous” and an attempt to get even with a state regulatory agency for doing its job.

“This is like criminals saying they don’t like how law enforcement treats them so we should take away their guns and badges,” said Assemblywoman Diane Martinez, (D-Monterey Park).

Edison executives, still angry over the raid that saw 50 law enforcement officers serve criminal search warrants on its Rosemead headquarters, made no secret of the utility’s intentions when they met recently with top PUC enforcement officials.

“Edison came in here and told us this was in retaliation because we went along on that raid,” said Larry McNeely, an enforcement director for the PUC. “They told us point-blank: ‘We want to make sure this never happens again.’ ”

Gary Schoonyan, who heads Edison’s San Francisco office, acknowledged that he met with McNeely and expressed the utility’s “concern” over the raid. But he said the purpose of removing PUC investigators’ police powers is to force “a public debate” about the need to allow them the power to serve search warrants and make arrests.

McNeely said Schoonyan made it clear that “they want to repeal our powers altogether.”

The raid, which included Edison’s yard in Westminster, occurred because Edison refused to cooperate with state arson investigators who had traced the cause of the Calabasas fire to an Edison power pole.

A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney declined in April to prosecute Edison because he didn’t think he could prove Edison had acted with “criminal negligence,” but he noted in his 12-page analysis of the case that Edison’s equipment had caused the fire.

Edison’s attack on the PUC involves an otherwise innocuous piece of legislation introduced by Martinez that would update and clarify certain sections of state law.

Known in legislative parlance as a “cleanup” bill, such actions are virtually never opposed because they rarely deal with substantive policy matters.

In fact, the primary change sought by the PUC, McNeely said, would note that the name of the division for which they work had been changed from “safety and enforcement” to “consumer services division.”

But Schoonyan said Edison is concerned that that same proposed amendment also shifts to the PUC’s executive director the authority to give any employee police powers and that might lead to an expansion of empowered investigators who lack the proper training and oversight.

“We may be more sensitive to this because of [the raid],” said Julie Miller, an Edison lawyer, but no adequate safeguards exist to prevent the PUC from introducing evidence seized during an “illegal arrest.”

On Tuesday, Edison proposed its own amendment to further restrict the PUC’s police powers.

“Schoonyan told us that Edison’s general counsel was very upset by the raid and wanted to teach us a lesson,” McNeely said. “That’s what this is really about.”

Consumer advocates are watching the bill closely.

“The PUC has to have that enforcement power, no question about it,” said Lenny Goldberg, lobbyist for the Utility Reform Network (TURN). “If this is an effort to weaken that, this would be a real problem for consumers.”

The bill, now out of the Assembly, is tentatively scheduled to be taken up July 14 by the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. “We’re going to watch it like a hawk,” said Randy Chinn, a consultant to the committee.

Although rarely exercised, PUC investigators have had police powers since 1986. At first, they dealt mostly with consumer and railroad issues, but lately have handled cases involving telecommunications companies cheating consumers and, most recently, utility safety violations.

All PUC investigators are required to pass the state’s accredited training for peace officers. And as a matter of policy, the agency takes its criminal cases to district attorneys.

In fact, Orange County Dist. Atty. Mike Capizzi, a past president of the California District Attorneys Assn. said he has always found the PUC’s investigators to be “very responsible and cooperative team players, and I think it would be a shame for them to lose peace officer status.”

PUC investigators have also worked criminal fraud cases with the consumer fraud section of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. “They’re very competent investigators who primarily put together white-collar cases,” said Don Kass, a supervising deputy city attorney.

Kass said the PUC investigators recently brought a case to his attention involving a fraudulent billing practice called “cramming,” in which telephone customers in the San Fernando Valley were repeatedly charged for services they never ordered.