Handling of Crisis ‘Poor,’ O.C. Poll Says

Orange County residents take a dim view of the way elected officials, regulators, utilities and power suppliers have handled the state’s electricity crisis, a survey released Tuesday found.

Only residential and business electricity users were considered to be doing a fair to very good job of improving the electricity situation, according to a telephone survey of 532 Orange County residents conducted between June 19 and July 2 for Cal State Fullerton and the Orange County Business Council.

“Everybody who plausibly has something to do with electricity supply and price is rated predominantly ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ in their job performances in this area,” said Alan Saltzstein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton.

Out-of-state energy providers came out the worst, with 63% of respondents saying their job performance was poor or very poor. State and federal utility regulators and politicians, as well as the state’s utilities, fell in a similar range of low marks, with about 52% to 59% branding their performance poor or very poor.

Although heavily Republican Orange County might be expected to slam Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and the Democrat-controlled state Legislature, nonetheless more than half of the respondents rated their respective job performances as poor to very poor. There also was significant displeasure with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were given a poor-to-very-poor job rating by 55% and 54% of respondents, respectively.

Nearly four in 10 residents said they had endured power blackouts at home or at work, with nearly half saying the experience was somewhat or very inconvenient. Nearly 22% of blackout victims said it was “no inconvenience at all.”