Initiative on Alternative Power Sellers Revives Regulate vs. Deregulate Debate
A ballot measure would bar nonutility suppliers from signing up new electricity customers.
By Marc Lifsher, Times Staff Writer
Four years after enduring power shortages and rolling blackouts, California voters are being asked to decide whether to reverse a key element of the state's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation.
Proposition 80, an initiative on the Nov. 8 special election ballot, would ban consumers who aren't already doing so from buying their electricity from independent power providers.
By limiting the state's retail market for electricity, which gives users such as homeowners, hospitals, factories and farms an alternative to buying power from regulated utilities, Proposition 80 would roll back an important feature of the state's 1996 electricity deregulation law....
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It's a question of great import in a state that's preparing for electricity shortages this summer. The officials who oversee the state's power grid are bracing this week for record electricity usage and the possibility of issuing the first Stage 1 power alert of the year.
Proposition 80 would do little to quickly solve the problem at the core of California's energy woes — getting enough power where it's needed, when it's needed. But backers, led by the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco ratepayers' advocacy group known as TURN, say the initiative would bring stability to the state's power grid and encourage investors to provide the financing for new power plants, helping the state meet its future energy needs....
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-prop18jul18,0,947320.story?coll=la-home-business
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