Off Peak

February 1, 2001

Who Lost Deregulation?

 

California Sen. Steve Peace says it wasn't him, and he has the video to prove it.

Sen. Steve Peace is widely seen as the architect of Assembly Bill 1890, California's key law on electric restructuring. Yet long before that bill was introduced, the Cal PUC had started the ball rolling, by mapping out a vision of a competitive electricity market in its 1994 "Blue Book"-a sort of manifesto for change in the utility industry.

Peace tells this story in a 10-minute video posted to his website in December. By identifying common myths about electric competition, and debunking each in turn, Peace attempts to set the record straight, and remind voters that his legislation came only after the horse was out of the barn. Excerpts follow.

Myth 1: The state Legislature deregulated electricity in California in 1996. That simply is not true. The California Public Utilities Commission filed its restructuring plan with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, a year earlier, in December 1995. FERC ultimately approved these filings, and the PUC-not the Legislature-subsequently ordered California's utilities to sell a portion of their power plants.