California Public Utilities Commission

On the morning after Labor Day, back from one last beach fling, Wall Street Journal assistant features editor Max Boot published an editorial castigating California Gov. Pete Wilson for his alleged failure to "take a stand" on electric deregulation in the Golden State ("California's Governor isn't Plugged into Deregulation Debate," Sept. 5, 1995, p. A15). "There's a leadership vacuum here," writes Boot. "Governor Wilson is partly responsible for the problem ... he appointed Mr. Fessler and the other PUC members.

demand-side management (DSM).1

With broad-based support from utilities, consumer representatives, environmentalists, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and the California Energy Commission (CEC), some $1.8 billion has been spent since 1990 (and $

Will the Crown accept the olive branch offered by its colony, or will conflict ensue? That was the question posed on July 13 by Thomas Page, CEO of San Diego Gas and Electric Co., at the "Western States Workshop on California Restructuring," the first industrywide meeting to discuss the policy proposals issued six weeks before by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).The Crown sent its emissaries.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has once again turned back an attempt by the Communications Workers of America to invoke state utility regulation to solve labor complaints against Pacific Bell.The union had complained that PacBell's use of lower-paid technicians to perform duties allegedly reserved for higher-paid contract classifications violated the state's public utility code.

executive director of Toward Utility Rate Normalization (TURN), a consumer advocacy group, has asked California Gov. Pete Wilson for the vacant seat on the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has filed comments to support the "majority proposal" by the California Public Utilities Commission on deregulating the electric utility industry, which calls for formation of a wholesale power pool.

SDG&E noted that while a key element of the proposal involved creating an independent system operator, the company would go further and set up a regional transmission company to own the grid.

Municipalities in the San Francisco Bay area are joining together to form an electric buying group in anticipation of the deregulation of the California electric market. The group, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), will flex its collective buying power first in natural gas.

The profound changes now occurring in the electric industry will most directly affect those who are engaged in the enterprises of generation, transmission, and distribution of power. But challenges and opportunities confront gas companies as well. Certainly, the electric industry will continue to influence markets for gas: both in bulk fuel supply and in retail energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission has issued a "positive" performance rating for the first year of a two-year, experimental performance-based rate program for San Diego Gas and Electric Co.'s gas procurement and electric generation and dispatch activities. It extended the plan another year, to facilitate the second year's annual review, and said it expects the plan to stay in place "well into the third year" of the trial. Re San Diego Gas & Elec. Co., Decision 95-04-051, Applica. 92-10-017, Apr. 26, 1995 (Cal.P.U.C.).

federal-state tensions currently affecting energy regulatory policy in America.

Sen.