what he should have done was obvious, as proposed by many freepers: As soon as the crisis hit, allow rate increases to be passed on to consumers. If he'd done that, there would be no half-bankrupt utilities, and the rate increases would have most likely been in place for only a few months. By now they would have been long forgotten. Intersting that you mentioned that, when you consider that Davis himself knew it all along. Didn't he make some comment to the effect of "I could solve this problem in 10 minutes if we allowed rate increases."
I'm not from CA, so I only know a little bit about Davis. I always thought of him as just boring and slow. Based on this article, I wonder if he is also a little bit delusional.
Yes, you are correct - and I believe the increase needed to fix the problem at the start was a whopping 10%. This isn't anything I'm going to remember.
I sure will remember what actually happened, though.
D