Rate Hike: ‘Tell Me This Is a Nightmare’

* Re “PUC Approves Largest Electricity Rate Increase in State’s History,” March 28: Tell me this is a nightmare. Our tax dollars are now buying electricity from vampiric power suppliers, but not from local clean-energy providers. In turn, consumers of PG&E; and Edison continue to make payments to those utilities, which are not paying anyone except themselves and their parent companies. Meanwhile, the state is poised to float $10 billion in bonds for energy contracts on behalf of the utilities, to be repaid by customers who will have already purchased that power. And now, the PUC has jacked up rates for a second time this year under the auspices of saving Uriah Heep (the utilities), as well as “convincing” an already energy-efficient California to conserve power.

BILL B. BUTLER

Palm Desert

*

The PUC recognized the inevitable and made a tough decision. It is to be applauded for taking the only direction out of the power debacle. Meanwhile, the indecisive, clueless, blatantly cynical Gov. Gray Davis continues to distance himself from the problem, much less the solution.

California needs a governor, not another ill-informed man on the street. Politicians of both parties now recognize that Davis has presided over squandering huge sums of money and has refused to take a leadership role. He has pandered to the view that the situation is somehow contrived. Davis should go down in history as the governor who inherited a mess and made it worse through indecision, inaction and political grandstanding.

JEF KURFESS

Westlake Village

*

Outrageous, to put it mildly, that Duke Energy and other generators calmly admitted they raised rates from $30 per megawatt-hour to $430 per megawatt-hour because PG&E; and Edison owed them money and had rather suddenly become “poor credit risks” (“Federal Energy Agency Unlikely to Order Refunds,” March 28).

If customers--like PG&E; and Edison--get behind, the usual practice in business is to either cut them off or require them to put up adequate security, like assets (transmission lines, some of the generating plants not already sold to companies like Duke Energy) or the business itself. You don’t raise the rates beyond belief. If they’re having trouble paying the old rate, how can they pay ever-higher ones? And how did Duke Energy and its peers arrive at a penalty rate over 1,400% higher?

MARK DAVIDSON

Costa Mesa

*

If we just let the power companies go bankrupt, isn’t it a “win-win”? The incompetent managers lose their jobs and the parent companies lose the money they stole from the consumers; the unscrupulous, manipulating energy suppliers don’t get their money from inflated prices; and the taxpayers don’t have to bail anyone out. It won’t happen because the incompetents and crooks have friends in high places.

BILL MOSIER

Hermosa Beach

*

Let’s give credit where credit is due. By successfully opposing the construction of power plants for the last quarter-century (and with an assist from the deregulation fiasco), environmental extremists have finally accomplished their goal of forced conservation. Folks, enjoy those rolling blackouts and skyrocketing energy prices and be sure to thank the Sierra Club and friends!

CHARLES J. O’CONNELL

Stevenson Ranch