Proposition 9 Study Withheld

* “Study on Electric Initiative Shelved Before Election” (Nov. 19) is worthy of “Alice in Wonderland.” This study might well have led to Proposition 9 passing, but it was withheld because it might “influence the outcome of the election” and that is prohibited by law.

It would indeed be a scandal if information and reasoned argument were allowed to influence the passage of propositions. I knew that to be the case already, but I did not know that it was legislated that way.

WALTER MAYA

Claremont

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Your story comes a little too late. As one of the volunteers who worked on the Yes on 9 campaign, I talked to thousands of California voters, trying to convince them why voting yes would lower their utility rates. Your article said that the California Energy Commission “prepared but then withheld an analysis of Proposition 9 that showed the measure would have dramatically reduced electric rates for nearly 10 million Californians.”

We could have used the information from the report around the time it was to be released, Oct. 16. By then most of the people I approached had been bombarded by the No on 9 $40-million ad campaign, and had already made up their minds to vote no. It would have taken a miracle to get them to vote yes. That report could have been the miracle, and 10 million Californians would not be the losers.

STEVE WEATHERWAX

Los Angeles

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No exhaustive study was required to reveal the meaning of Proposition 9. It would have prohibited the electric utilities from charging against their residential customers the losses incurred by foolish investments in unusable nuclear plants and from financing the required reduction in inflated residential rates by a bond issue to be serviced--interest and principal--by those same residential customers.

The mystery is why The Times failed to reveal this to its readers and, indeed, actually urged a no vote on the grounds, as I remember, that, while the proposition had laudable aims, an initiative was not the proper means for achieving them.

DON M. MANKIEWICZ

Monrovia