Posted on 09/07/2001 6:24:31 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
None of that power has been paid for, according to the ISO, as previously reported. The ISO and DWR have been negotiating the procedure for settling the accounts, but sellers to the ISO have been complaining that it shouldn't take eight months for the state agencies to get payments flowing. "Until we get a bill that we can account for, we can't write a blank check and send it out. We haven't even received an improper bill," said Hidalgo. The ISO was unable to comment immediately on whether it has sent a bill to the DWR for power purchased on behalf of the utilities. The ISO has said previously that it can't supply all the information the DWR wants without violating its own confidentiality rules. The Independent Energy Producers Association, which represents many of the suppliers to the ISO, said this week the ISO market is on the verge of collapsing. Merchant power companies in California, such as Dynegy Inc. (DYN, news, msgs) and Mirant Corp. (MIR, news, msgs) continue to sell to the ISO, as ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The ISO, which has ultimate responsibility for avoiding blackouts, ensures there is exactly the right amount of power on the state's transmission lines to meet demand at all times, which requires constant buying and selling of electricity. In mid-January, after the state's two main utilities ran out of cash, an executive order from Davis - backed by state law passed in February - authorized the DWR to pay for any purchases the ISO needed to make for the utilities. "There is no bill. I don't know as a government agency how the process of payment for a significant amount of money - over $1 billion - would be in anybody's mind as a possibility," Hidalgo said. The DWR, which has paid more than $9 billion for power it has bought from suppliers directly since January, has set aside money to pay for the ISO's last-minute purchases. The ISO considers the entire $3.3 billion unpaid, though DWR operations chief Pete Garris said earlier this week that DWR may have paid a majority of that bill directly to power suppliers. The DWR has set aside about $1.25 billion to pay suppliers once it receives a detailed bill from the ISO that meets DWR requirements. Other procedural problems have prevented the DWR from making payment. The DWR wants to pay suppliers directly, which Garris said the ISO is uncomfortable with. The ISO declined to discuss this direct-payment issue. ISO market rules require that buyers pay the ISO, which, in turn, pays sellers. The FERC has ordered the ISO to stop buying power on behalf on parties that aren't creditworthy, specifically Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Edison. PG&E has said that it continues to receive bills from the ISO, and has been told the bills are for informational purposes only. -By Mark Golden, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4604; mark.golden@dowjones.com
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Huh?
a billion here, a billion there... </red davis>
Pete Wilson and lewislynn notwithstanding...
Well now we understand some of the background behind this item:
Increasingly, plants put grid at risk: OPERATORS REFUSE STATE'S REQUESTS TO ADJUST POWER LEVELS -CA
Why this is happening remains unclear, according to California and power company officials. Jan Smutny-Jones, the ISO's former chairman who heads the Independent Energy Producers Association, which represents generators, said, ``It's very hard to tell'' because a number of factors appear to be at work.
Like they were not getting paid!
This is the misbegotten product of public education.
The voter has come to expect a certain level of corruption in government. Even a certain amount of blundering.
But what we have here is a display of gross incompetence of a scope heretofore unknown to civic experience.
The Davis administration has made every mistake in the book...and invented a few new ones in the process. All of them resulting in a calamitous waste of public funds.
No individual, group or company in the private sector would ever have been able, or allowed, to produce such a ruinous performance.
If the media were ever to examine the Calpowercrisis from an objective viewpoint, they would find that the waste truly beggars description.
This man actually proposed to run for President. Imagine what he could accomplish on a national stage...
Davis hasn't quit running for President. In fact, the international media (such as The Economist) thinks he's successfully dodged the power crisis bullet, right or wrong.
Guess I'll look around and see what other revelations have appeared during the night !
When the media covers politics as a sport, as opposed to public service, such a half-baked assessment is to be expected, I suppose.
They recently went to a color format and simultaneously slimmed the reporting. It reminds me of when the Christian Science Monitor did the same thing about ten years ago. I dropped that subscription a year later.
I'll bet there are payment penalties in the contracts that are well above the State DWR cost of money. In the past when I was with a public agency and the state auditor came around, they always looked for payment penalties and tried to make a big deal out of it regarding wasting of public funds. I wonder if an Cal Auditors or others are going to follow up on this.
I will stop by our local library once in a while to check in. That's where I am now.
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