Energy Chairwoman Bowen Keeps Her Cool in the Hot Seat

She’s a computer geek with a knack for fixing things. An engineer’s daughter, she had her own workbench in the garage by age 5 and recently rolled up her sleeves to repair her balky toilet.

But this? This is different. This is a crisis of proportions no one expected and few fully understand. And state Sen. Debra Bowen--chairwoman of the Senate’s committee on energy--is under no illusion that she’s got it wired.

“Never in my life have I confronted anything like this,” Bowen said recently after another marathon day fighting the state’s electricity war. “No one has, because it hasn’t happened here before.”

That said, Bowen, 45, isn’t panicking--that’s not her style. Instead, she is plowing forward--head down, attorney’s brain fully engaged, diet Dr Pepper at her side--sorting through the solutions that are buzzing about the Capitol like so many electrons.

Those in the mix say Bowen--a Democrat from Marina del Rey--is well-equipped to occupy what is, at the moment, one of the state’s hottest seats. She keeps her cool, she’s a quick study and she rarely misses a trick hidden in the fine print.

“She knows everything,” said California Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch, “and what she doesn’t know she learns in a day. She’s amazing.”

Critics long for Bowen to be more innovative and aggressive in the hunt for answers. But others say that the head of the Energy Committee ought to have a different emphasis.

“We need a traffic cop, not more race car drivers,” said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers Action Network.

Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) agrees: “Everybody’s spitballing and throwing stuff up in the air and she’s staying focused. She’s excellent--getting the work done instead of going for the glory.”

A ‘Thoughtful and Sober’ Approach

As chairwoman, Bowen has mostly played the part of nonpartisan chief analyst--asking tough questions during hearings, ordering staff to flesh out new ideas, testifying before federal energy regulators in Washington.

On the one major bill that has come before her committee during the crisis--a proposal to allow California to buy electricity through long-term contracts with power plants--Bowen has expressed support for the concept but qualms about the details.

“Her approach has been very thoughtful and sober and not at all ideological,” said state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, a Fresno Republican. “She’s being very careful not to associate herself with extreme ideas.”

Deceptively petite with wavy blond hair and a passion for hats, Bowen served three terms in the Assembly before moving to the Senate in 1998. Although the electricity crisis is the most daunting challenge she’s faced, the divorced grandmother, raised in Illinois, has not built her political career by staying in shallow water.

One of her earliest battles was for campaign finance reform--a cause that is not popular with most politicians and, as such, went nowhere. More recently, she took on the state’s powerful dairy industry--again unsuccessfully--with bills that aimed to cut California’s highest-in-the-nation milk prices.

Alarmed about privacy issues raised by the Internet, Bowen has pushed bills to prevent companies from snooping through employees’ e-mail and to limit the use of Social Security numbers, which identity thieves use to pilfer personal information for financial gain. Gov. Gray Davis vetoed the first bill, big business killed the second.

The Senate’s Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications seemed a natural fit for Bowen, dovetailing with her interest in consumer protection. When she became chairwoman two years ago, today’s energy calamity was not on the agenda. Indeed, her initial legislation had to do with telephone service.

Warnings of trouble were aired during hearings early last year, and then intensified during the summer. Since then--and especially since December--Bowen’s life has been a blur of meetings, hearings, more meetings and general chaos.

Her days begin early and rarely end before midnight. Her hobbies, skiing and fly fishing, are history, at least for now. Her houseplants have died--victims of neglect and blinds left closed to conserve energy--and her cat, a needy black feline named Mapplethorpe, is no longer speaking to her.

At the office, her desk is a war zone, littered with books, stacks of paper and bottles of echinacea and ibuprofen. The lone bright spot in the conservation-caused gloom: a vase with fresh tulips.

While some committee chairs distinguish themselves with exaggerated displays of authority, Bowen has a selfless, orderly style laced with touches of humor. Opening last week’s hearings on emergency energy bills, she presented several props, including a toy 8-ball that, she said, “might be able to provide us with some guidance.”

Bowen also gets credit for some of the most colorful descriptions of the crisis, calling it, for instance, a problem “with more legs than a centipede.” Lawmakers, as the designated problem solvers, are caught “between the dog and the fire hydrant,” she said.

Some observers, while generally praising Bowen, said the chairwoman was for a time overshadowed by Sen. Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista), a committee member and energy expert who has recently been discredited for negotiating the 1996 law creating today’s energy market.

“For too long she lived under that shadow,” said Gary Ackerman, who represents power sellers as executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. Peace “can be rather forceful, and she’s a polite person.”

Others fault Bowen for an excessive bias toward energy conservation as a way out of the current troubles.

“She has good environmental bones, and that’s great,” said Harry Snyder, a lobbyist for Consumers Union. “But conservation is not the thing that’s going to fix this problem in the immediate or near future.”

Not One to Rush to Judgment

For the most part, however, Bowen’s appraisers say her meticulous, analytical style is just what’s needed in a catastrophe. As consumer activist Nettie Hoge put it: “Rushing to a solution on something this complex can have bad ramifications. Hallelujah that Sen. Bowen isn’t a cowboy who has her own agenda and will push it at any cost.”

Another asset lies in her employment history: While a young lawyer in Illinois, Bowen worked on the bailout of Chrysler Corp., which included the use of stock warrants--one approach that might be used to rescue California utilities today. Burton has suggested that if taxpayers are forced to help utilities pay off their multibillion-dollar debt, the state might get low-priced stock in return. Assuming that the price of the stock rose over time, taxpayers could be issued rebates based on the increased value of that stock.

As the days of stress and struggle pile up, Bowen says what frustrates her most is the inability to get ahead of the curve. Every time she thinks she’s got one problem handled, she turns around and sees a whole new line of dominoes tumble in another direction.

“It’s like any emergency, like dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster,” she said. “There are so many critical tasks--do we have natural gas supply disruptions, can we be certain we don’t affect gasoline availability--that it’s hard to make progress on the big picture.”

Not only that, but it’s treacherous business trying to balance the desire to act quickly with the desire to act responsibly. All of the options--among them, a state-run power authority, the government purchase of hydroelectric plants--are fraught with downsides. Many carry consequences that cannot be fully foreseen.

Bowen, with characteristic quotability, sums up the dilemma this way:

“I feel like I’m being asked to choose between strangling my mother and ax-murdering my father.”

Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Nancy Vogel contributed to this story.