Subject: Your Energy Policy and California Performance Review

Dear Governor,
California needs more energy (and water). Without energy, our economy will fail and you will soon be presiding over (cold) soup lines.

Before we can develop the needed energy, however, we need to create a business climate where prudent, environmentally- and fiscally- responsible investments in energy can be made in this state. This should be easy, given our tremendous and increasing demand for energy. It would come naturally, excepting for the horribly- failed policies, and continued bungling, of the Public Utilities Commission.

We need not recount the whole sordid, corrupt his to ry of the PUC in the last fifteen years to realize that PUC is now a major part of the problem - and most certainly not a way to solve our energy needs, The PUC has never generated or delivered a single kilowatt of energy for California, while it has so confused the marketplace that billions of dollars of investment — investment that would have solved our energy “crisis” long ago, has been driven away. Other needed businesses are prevented from building in our state due to the unreliability, and high cost, of our now-very-inadequate energy. People are losing their jobs because of the PUC.

Your California Performance Review report contains the seeds of a workable solution. It recommends “eliminating' the PUC, transferring all of its duties that are not “constitutionally” required to the new Department of Infrastructure. This will permit a rational, coordinated energy policy. It will eliminate confusion between the PUC and the other, newer agencies created to deal with problems the PUC created (such as the state Energy Commission). And, it will assure that energy (and other utility and infrastructure) policies are, for the first time in many years, responsive to the people of California through their democratically- elected leadership.

None of the state's energy (or telephone, or water) duties must be assigned to PUC. The state constitution provides only that the PUC must approve transportation rate increases (work the PUC no longer performs). All energy, telephone, and water work done by PUC can be transferred to the Department of Infrastructure, or any other agency, or can be otherwise changed, by simple legislative action. While the constitution denotes electric companies as “public utilities” and allows the legislature to assign their oversight to the Commission, the legislature can re-assign the work elsewhere (as it did, in major part, when it created the Energy Commission, the Power Authority, and the Independent System Opera to r). Again, the constitution does not require PUC to have any role whatsoever in energy, telephone regulation, or the water business. [Do not let any self- serving bureaucrats try to mislead you.]

You can ask the Legislature to transfer energy (and other utility) work (and staff) away from the discredited PUC, and to a new, responsive Infrastructure Dept.

The CPUC can then be abolished for lack of any significant function. While an outright elimination would necessitate a constitutional amendment, without work or staff the PUC could easily be dc-funded. [The terms of sitting commissioners would probably have to be continued to their natural expirations. This would be the only cost to the taxpayers.]

Eliminating the PUC is not a new recommendation, either, see for instance the Little Hoover Commission's report. The LHC studied the PUC extensively. The LHC determined that PUC is structurally unable to perform its many assigned duties, stretched as they are across so many different industries. Like your CPR, the LHC recommended moving duties out of PUC and in to responsive administrative departments.

The new Infrastructure Dept. will serve California better by bringing to gether all of the state's energy work in a single place where you could then coordinate it. Decisions could be implemented in ‘real time,' without the laborious, extraordinarily expensive “judicial hearings process” the PUC uses to , in many instances, obstruct (and delay, often for years) needed solutions to our state's energy needs. You could put honest people in charge, to o, people who would be respectable parts of your administration, not blemishes on our state's image and your administration's reputation for integrity.

An agency as discredited as PUC should not be suffered to continue, in any case.

We support your Performance Review team's recommendation to “eliminate” the PUC and replace it with a rational, responsive, and respectable Department of Infrastructure accountable to your (elected) office.

Sincerely yours,
Michelle Fox, for CHEF
Consumers for an Honest Energy Policy, West Los Angeles Area Chapter
Santa Monica , California