CA: Panel (Little Hoover Commission) Urges Rejection of Energy Plan

Los Angeles Times ^ | June 24, 2005 | Marc Lifsher

[calcowgirl]

SACRAMENTO — A bipartisan citizens' panel Thursday recommended that the Legislature reject Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to create a state Department of Energy, dealing a blow to his plan to reorganize the state's tangled energy bureaucracy.

Members of the Little Hoover Commission, which analyzes all state government reorganization plans, said they favored the idea behind the governor's proposal to centralize California's energy policy under a cabinet-level energy czar.

The committee, however, voted 7 to 1 against the plan after lawyers from both the Legislature and the attorney general's office questioned the constitutionality of provisions that would transfer some rate-making functions of the state Public Utilities Commission to the California Energy Commission.

"If the plan submitted to the commission in May were allowed to go into effect, it would be subject to legal challenge," commission Chairman Michael Alpert, a Democrat from Coronado and a retired securities lawyer, wrote in a letter to lawmakers and the governor that was sent hours after the vote.

The commission's recommendation is nonbinding, but makes it unlikely that Schwarzenegger's plan can pass the Legislature.

(snip)

The energy reorganization would combine functions of the Energy Commission, the PUC, the Electricity Oversight Board and other agencies into a streamlined Department of Energy. According to the governor's original proposal, creation of the agency would send "a clear message to the public, the business community, energy industries and the financial markets that a coherent energy policy direction is not only important, it is imperative."

Critics, however, countered that the governor's plan would give too much power to his appointed energy czar by also making that person head of the currently independent Energy Commission.

"Streamlining is just a code for eliminating checks and balances," said Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), chairman of the Utilities and Commerce Committee.

[tobyhill]

The only way to deal with this California Liberal Crap is to cut them off from receiving any energy from other states and let them sink or swim on their own. They will sink. They won't allow offshore drilling, they have at least 17 blends of gas that most is exclusive to CA and they are tanking the rest of America. Let them pay $6.00 a gallon on their own and maybe they will get with reality. This is not intended to be critical of you calcowgirl, just venting from another state that's affected by CA.