WASHINGTON -- Veteran consumer advocate Ralph Nader weighed in on the California electricity crisis Tuesday, publicly opposing any bailout of the state's troubled utilities and warning of a ratepayer revolt if the Legislature increases consumer rates to rescue the companies.
Nader, who lost his Green Party bid for the presidency in November, also promised to lend his support to any initiatives in the 2002 election that would re-regulate the state's energy market.
He favors proposals to have California go directly into the power business itself, buying the generating and distributing facilities of Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison and selling power in a market watched by a full-time Citizens Utility Board. The idea has been advocated by state Treasurer Phil Angelides and David Freeman, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which the city owns and operates.
Nader also called for California to develop a long-range energy policy that stresses efficient appliances and the use of solar and wind power.
``I think there's going to be a ratepayer revolt if the bailout transfers itself into 20, 30, 50, 70 percent rate increases,'' Nader said, warning that many elected officials could be voted out of office in 2002. ``If the Legislature passes the wrong type of bill, it's going to be called a term-limits bill, and there's likely to be even some recall attempts before the 2002 election.''
The legislation being considered in Sacramento to have the state buy what amounts to stock options in PG&E and Southern California Edison will force Californians to ``transfer unimaginable amounts of dollars to these insatiable corporations and the unstable, avaricious speculative bazaar that is now inflicting itself on the people of California,'' Nader said.
Nader had been relatively quiet on one of the biggest consumer issues in the nation in decades. In late December, he held a brief news conference during Public Utilities Commission hearings in San Francisco on the issue.
But he spoke out Tuesday in hopes of influencing state legislators in Sacramento, who are considering bills to resolve the crisis. He was joined by a representative of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which he founded, in lambasting the utilities and energy companies nationwide for creating the problems in California.
Wenonah Hauter, director of the group's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, released a report titled ``It's Greed Stupid! Debunking the Ten Myths of Utility Deregulation.'' Among the misconceptions are that California's environmental standards have slowed power plant construction, that electricity deregulation has worked well elsewhere and that California's crisis can best be resolved by state, not federal actions, she said.
``Proponents of deregulation have developed a litany of excuses for why deregulation is failing in California,'' Hauter said. ``And they refuse to admit that a speculative market for a life-sustaining commodity like electricity that everyone needs, is both inefficient and it doesn't benefit small consumers, residential consumers or small businesses.''
Nader said the state's utilities helped create the 1996 deregulation plan and profited from it by receiving billions of dollars to help pay off so-called stranded costs for investments in things such as nuclear power plants that would no longer be profitable without regulation.
``This is such an outrageous situation of corporate rapacity,'' he said, arguing that utilities made money off deregulation and ``now they're going to go for another round to get themselves out of a mess that they created.''
Nader also was critical of both the Clinton and Bush administrations for not capping wholesale power prices throughout the West. California Gov. Gray Davis has pushed unsuccessfully for such a cap from federal regulators. Several members of Congress from California, including Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, also have pushed for such caps, but Nader said the state's congressional delegation was not working hard enough to put pressure on the White House.
Contact Jim Puzzanghera at jpuzzanghera@krwashington.com
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