Commission

EVEN IF 3,000 WORKERS AT THE LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT of Water and Power should opt for a separation package instead of wholesale layoffs, an ad hoc employee group plans to go ahead with a lawsuit claiming the deal violates California's restructuring statute, Assembly Bill 1890.

That move to go to court - as described by a representative of the Employees Legal Defense Fund - could supply a bargaining chip to help the ELDF save the jobs of a few hundred workers who might not take the package but whose positions are targeted for cuts. The department has about 8,600 employees.

PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION. Chief Judge D. Brock Hornby of the U.S. District Court in Maine, decided to allow Portland Natural Gas Transmission System access to electric transmission corridors owned by Central Maine Power Co. The access will be used to install a natural gas pipeline.

Portland received FERC approval Sept. 24 for installing and operating a 292-mile, $302-million interstate pipeline. CMP owns about 70 miles of the electric transmission corridor. The preliminary injunction, issued April 10, gives Portland access to property on CMP-owned transmission corridors.

UNISOURCE Energy Corp. elected Larry W. Bickle and Harold W. Burlingame to its board of directors. Bickle is the former chairman and CEO of TPC Corp. and cofounder and managing director of Haddington Ventures LLC. Burlingame is executive vice president of human resources at AT&T and a director of the Work in America Institute.

John Devine, vice president of Duke Engineering & Services, was elected president of the National Hydropower Association. Devine has served as a director of the National Hydropower Association since 1993.

James E.

IF CONGRESS SHOULD CONSIDER LEGISLATION TO MANDATE retail wheeling - and even with a date certain - those states that have already opened their markets will still likely ask for reciprocity to guarantee that any competitor seeking entry will welcome competition in its own home territory. Why? Some states are moving more quickly than others. Second, others have indicated they do not intend to open at all.

Arguably, state lawmakers could enact a reciprocal covenant on their own.

UNIVERSAL SERVICE ATTRACTS MUCH ATTENTION these days, both in energy and telecommunications. But how do you measure success? Do regulators decide when goals are met by looking across an industry, or should management make the call company by company?

Consider the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It identifies the maintenance of affordable, or "universal," service for low-income consumers as an explicit statutory goal. In the electric industry, virtually every piece of restructuring legislation and every regulatory decision to date has included a universal service provision.

TWO YEARS HAVE ELAPSED SINCE CONGRESS PASSED THE Telecommunications Act of 1996 to "provide a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced telecommunications and information technologies and services to all Americans." %n1%n

Today, however, telephone deregulation has reached an impasse. Few customers enjoy competitive alternatives for local exchange service. Concentration in long-distance markets appears to be increasing.

RECENT CONFERENCE on independent system operators held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was, in many respects, a tremendous achievement. It is a testimony to this Commission that its members can muster the stamina to listen to one-and-a-half days of mind-numbing technical discussion of power technology and regulation.

Nevertheless, there is inevitably a misstep or two in these massive "hearing-thons." In this case, the discussion nearly went awry when it turned to comparisons between transcos and ISOs.

Courts

ENERGY SUPPORT SERVICES. An Illinois appeals court affirmed a 1997 decision by the state commission that had denied authority to Commonwealth Edison to offer "energy support services," such as design, engineering, construction, analysis and management of electrical power equipment and energy systems. The court made this decision despite the utility's argument that no evidence existed to support the commission's finding that ComEd enjoyed a monopolist's advantage over competitors.

FERC Commissioner Vicky A. Bailey named Robert H. Solomon as her new attorney advisor for electric matters. Solomon has been with the Office of General Counsel since joining FERC in 1988. He has held key positions such as Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Electric Rates and Corporate Regulation.

AmeriGas Propane Inc. announced the election of Richard C. Gozon as director. Gozon will replace Robert C. Forney who recently retired. Gozon is executive vice president of Weyerhaeuser Co.

AN EDITOR'S JOB IS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS. Reveal the truth, unmask what's fake. Simplify, but entertain. Attract attention, but don't get noticed.

Sometimes, however, you've got to stick your neck out. So that's what I did a few weeks ago when I wrote how Commissioner Curt Hébert had become a "loose cannon" at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by sometimes refusing to go along with the full agenda. I posed a question: Was Hébert the Commission's nemesis?

Well, this time I did get noticed (em by none other than the commissioner himself.