It is clear we won’t be getting much in the way of leadership from our guv, Dithering Davis, whose management style could be described most kindly as glacial. In the nine months since the power price crunch hit San Diego, he has been in denial, apparently wedded to the if-I-do-nothing-it-won’t-be-my-fault theory of governing.
Did he really think this mess would go away on its own? Did he think he could save his political backside by reminding voters that his Republican predecessor signed deregulation into law? Not any more, sir.
An instant replay:
It’s December, and Davis blasts the feds for rejecting his bid for a regional price cap on wholesale rates in favor of a temporary cap while ordering an overhaul of the state’s wacky electricity market.
Then he spends about $3 billion buying electricity for the utilities, which say they are going belly up. Next he tries to broker a deal to buy the transmission lines to give utility companies enough money to pay the billions they owe to power generators. None of this solves the real problem. Californians use more power than they produce.
Obvious answer: Use less while you figure out how to produce more. Politicians can’t take this tack because it angers their big donors and frustrates voters.
The new power plants under construction belong to out-of-state companies. Hey, they know a good thing when they see it. The plants will use natural gas, also in short supply and getting costlier every day. Could it be these same guys own the natural gas wells?
Meanwhile, existing co-generation plants sit idle because they haven’t been paid for deliveries to the utilities since last fall. Wind generating plants in Tehachapi are often off production, not because the wind doesn’t blow, but because transmission lines aren’t adequate to handle the load. And negotiations to buy the existing lines have bogged down over whether the state can buy the land beneath them or just the lines.
All the while Davis swears he will not allow rate increases to consumers and businesses. When the state Public Utilities Commission orders a hefty hike March 27, our fearless leader leaves PUC President Loretta Lynch out to dry, “distancing himself” from the rate-hike decision. Puhleeze.
Davis spent billions of taxpayers’ money to shore up the state’s utilities, saying the state can’t allow the lights to go out. Why couldn’t he have spent the money buying back the power plants from the Texans and building new transmission lines? And maybe funding construction of new plants that use alternative energy sources. We seem to have more than enough wind in Sacramento to give the state power independence.
In his much heralded address to the state Thursday, with deer-in-the-headlights delivery, he reversed every position he had held until Wednesday. He says, with a straight face, rate hikes are now good, conservation is now good, out-of-state power generators are still bad and federal regulators are worse for not cracking down on those dirty price gougers. This is a plan? What does he expect? The feds work for Dubya. The power generators are Texans. Duh!
The next day debt-ridden PG&E files for bankruptcy, notwithstanding the $2.5 billion cash it has on hand, but not before paying its own managers more than $50 million in bonuses. Aren’t these the same folks who took the billions they got from selling their power plants a few years ago and paid it to the parent company’s shareholders? Is this whole thing a giant shell game? Whose money is it? Where is it? Better not wait for our guv to produce the answers.