Edison: Plenty of Pain, Plenty of Blame

Congratulations to Nancy Cleeland for her three-part series, “Edison’s Agony” (May 6-8), which shows the devastating impact this power crisis has had on a utility previously viewed as one of the best-run in the nation. Once again it suggests that the real failure of leadership rests with Gov. Gray Davis, whose unwillingness to face up to this crisis borders on criminal negligence. Painful as it might be, customers have to pay for the costs of power. The sooner those higher costs get passed along, the more incentive there will be for people to conserve--and the less debt the state will run up for obscenely high wholesale power costs.

Richard Puz

Los Angeles

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I read “Utility’s Workers Watch Helplessly as Company Falls” (May 6), about poor Southern California Edison and how the company was allegedly dragged kicking and screaming into deregulation. While I certainly feel sorry for the long-time, loyal employees who are now hurting financially and emotionally, I have not yet seen any documentation that shows that Edison opposed deregulation. I really can’t feel sorry for a company (or its employees) when the top-level executives are raking in obscene salaries while retirees and other stockholders are on the brink of bankruptcy.

I hope the Edison employees quoted don’t expect the public to jump on the rate-increase bandwagon. I’m sorry they have lost faith and their retirement expectations. I would respect them more if they were as angry as I am.

Cynthia Steinberg

Fountain Valley

Thank you for the thoughtful articles regarding the power crisis and its effect on Edison. We have to keep in mind when so-called consumer advocates call for Edison to be punished just whom they are talking about. They are talking about the 80-year-old retiree whose income depends on the dividends that don’t come anymore and 70% of his or her investment is wiped out. They are also talking about employees who have been laid off or their incomes cut.

The California Public Utilities Commission created this mess. When is it going to be held accountable?

Tom Gibbs

Pomona

For four years I served as the chief account representative to Edison for a major Southern California telecommunications provider. During that period of time I found that Edison had created the equivalent of an entire telephone company, complete with fiber-optic cable networking, telephone switching equipment and a huge (and well paid) staff to support it.

My team and I fought an uphill battle during that period, attempting to show the considerable cost savings that Edison would enjoy by allowing at least a portion of the communications infrastructure to be replaced by outsourcing these services. No doubt Edison’s ratepayers were paying the tab for this in-house phone company, which was established not to save money, but to satisfy Edison’s need to feel that it controlled its internal communications. If Edison had truly been interested in being cost efficient prior to this present debacle, perhaps the economic malaise that it now faces could have been avoided or at least mitigated.

Shel Theodore

Granada Hills