-Caveat Lector- February 22, 2001 Pacific Gas and Electric Finds No Sympathy The New York Times By LAURA M. HOLSON SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 16 � Pacific Gas and Electric has long been a company that Californians love to hate. In the 1940's, activists protested the utility's monopolizing of San Francisco's electrical supply. In the 1980's, hundreds were arrested at the company's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, trying to block preliminary testing. Just this week, "Erin Brockovich," a Hollywood blockbuster that paints the utility as a 1990's corporate villain, was nominated for five Oscars. But nothing has done more to sully the utility's image than this winter's energy crisis in California and the debate over who should pay the billions that PG&E, as everyone here calls the company, owes its power suppliers. Critics say that Pacific Gas and Electric took full advantage of the state's deregulated market for electricity � a market it helped design � by funneling $4.69 billion from the utility to its parent company, the PG&E Corporation, and stockholders since 1997. A recent state-ordered audit concluded that the utility's executives knew the state faced an energy squeeze but did little to prepare for it. PG&E has said it hired bankruptcy lawyers last August. But that month, the company also said top executives were selling shares of the parent company's stock. None of this has raised the utility's esteem in its customers eyes. "They are just another corrupt company that wants nothing but to protect its own interests," said Judd Fischer, a banker, as he smoked a cigarette outside the Leopard, a bar in downtown San Francisco, one recent chilly afternoon. California politicians, in the habit of following PG&E's lead after collecting a century's worth of campaign contributions, now are competing to score points at the company's expense. After weeks of maneuvering, Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic legislators offered a plan today to save Pacific Gas and Electric and its Los Angeles- area counterpart, Southern California Edison, from bankruptcy. The proposal, which Republicans oppose, includes a new charge on consumers' bills to help recover the nearly $13 billion that the state's utilities owe their power suppliers. Governor Davis also wants big concessions, including control of the utilities' transmission networks, in exchange for what he calls "a buyout," not "a bailout." The companies "will have no undue influence in this situation," John Burton, Democrat of San Francisco and president pro tem of the State Senate, said. "In fact, they will have less than due influence. People are angry." The loss of control can only be disorienting for Pacific Gas and Electric, whose executives declined repeated requests for comment. Regarding last week's proposal from the governor, the utility said it was not seeking a bailout, but instead wanted wholesale costs passed on to consumers. In the 1980's, wags printed bumper stickers that read, "Welcome to California. Owned and Operated by PG&E." Built by PG&E, at least. In the 1920's, the company helped harness the power of the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley to light Northern and Central California. After World War II, Pacific Gas and Electric embarked on one of the largest construction programs by a power company at the time, fueling one boom after another as agriculture in California made way for the military industry, the high-technology explosion and the state's growth into the world's sixth- biggest economy. "PG&E was one of the ways California came to know itself," said the historian Kevin Starr, the California state librarian. "The people who ran the local utilities which flowed into PG&E were the establishment of these regions." As a result, he said: "PG&E became society. It was ground zero of the California establishment." That was true particularly in San Francisco where, in 1854, executives from the San Francisco Gas Company, which was later merged into PG&E, gathered at a banquet at the Oriental Hotel to celebrate the lighting of the state's first gas lights, according to a company history. Then, too, the revelers suffered a blackout � but at the hands of a prankster, not the deregulatory nightmare and supply shortages that have bedeviled California this winter. The party also established the utility's custom of courting politicians, with City Council members and San Francisco's mayor toasting the new gaslight era. Last year alone, the PG&E Corporation and its affiliates poured $1.34 million into the coffers of California politicians. Those who have squared off against Pacific Gas and Electric say that its executives actively work their connections in every aspect of political life. Nettie Hoge, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, a consumer group based here, recalled the battle in 1998 over Proposition 9, a measure that could have reduced consumer rates by as much as 18 percent, a state study later showed. One day when she was tracking the effort to get the issue on the state ballot, Ms. Hoge said, she got a call from Daniel D. Richard Jr., a senior PG&E executive. In detail, she said, he described the counties in which she did not have enough signatures. "It was creepy," Ms. Hoge said. "Dan was following us county by county. I always had this sense he was monitoring everything." Led by PG&E's $17.4 million, the state's three big investor-owned utilities spent $37 million to defeat the proposition 3 to 1. Afterward, when she ran into Mr. Richard at a meeting, he was still gloating, Ms. Hoge said, telling her, "We didn't need to bomb the rubble, but we did." Through a spokesman, Mr. Richard declined to comment. The company has not always had its way, but it has not been shy about trying to use its resources to wear down opponents. "There is a lot to dislike about PG&E," said Edward L. Masry, the lawyer portrayed in "Erin Brockovich" who won a $333 million settlement from PG&E in 1996 for residents of Hinkley, Calif. More than 40 years ago, Mr. Masry said, PG&E dumped water tainted with a cancer-causing chemical into unlined ponds, from which it seeped into Hinkley's water supply. Residents were not informed of the contamination until the late 1980's, and in 1993 they filed a lawsuit blaming the company for a spate of cancer- related illnesses. Throughout the proceedings, Mr. Masry said, the utility stalled, insisting it was not to blame for the illnesses. Only after settling the case in 1996 did a spokesman for PG&E tell The San Francisco Chronicle, "We screwed up," adding, "that's why we agreed not to contest liability and to enter into binding arbitration." Mr. Masry now represents another group of Hinkley residents who say they, too, have been harmed by the company. Pacific Gas and Electric said it planned "a spirited and vigorous defense" in that case. Some critics cut the company slack, chalking its conduct up to an understandable arrogance. "They have a 100-year history of getting bigger and prouder and putting their name on everything," said David Roe, an Oakland-based author and lawyer who has battled PG&E over its nuclear-energy policies while working for Environmental Defense, a nonprofit policy group. "In my dealings with the company, I've seen institutional incompetence and slowness of foot. But they are not out to really hurt people." Last month's audit report, though, has only embittered the utility's antagonists. And the prospect of bankruptcy makes them positively glow. "The demise of the company is the most exciting thing I've ever heard," said Angela Alioto, a former member and president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Like the activists back in the 1940's, Ms. Alioto has long agitated for San Franciscans to wrest control of their electricity supply from PG&E and manage it themselves. Some state legislators say a municipal utility for the city is now an inevitability; Ms. Alioto, who has fought the company before and lost, is not so sure. Still, the thought makes her laugh delightedly and threaten a bit of civil disobedience. "Maybe I won't pay my bill in protest," she said. Not everyone is so brave. As Mr. Fischer finished his cigarette outside the Leopard, five blocks from Ms. Alioto's office, he dismissed the notion that he could ever skip a bill. Why? "I'm not stupid," he said. "It's PG&E." ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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