My feeling is that this is an election year, and that there is no way that Davis, wants to make electric power rates a campaign issue. PG&E has gone into bankruptcy and the lights have remained on in San Francisco, so the feal of bleeding to death another utility is not too frightening to the governmental wonks in Davis employ. That also means that all the power projects that PG&E and SCE have contracts to and those contracts were used to back up financing are now in question. Perhaps this is an attempt at a "grab" of those resources to sign new deals with the new state power authority that Freeman may or may not head. (p.s. kind of interesting that we haven't heard much in the past few days about him or about his legislative confirmation hearings--I guess the first blasts by Dunn sort of delayed a lot of things.)
Excellent prognosication! I'm intensely suspicious, due in large part to a certain "consultant" to the CPUC namely Tim Duane, a Berkeley Urban Planning professor who grew up in Grass Valley that's fanatically anti ANY development and anti ANY private sector economic progress!
He is a burgeoning socialist/commonist, and he has adherents in the previous administration, namely Doug Wheeler Secty of Resources and even more so in the Davis Administration who like his charismatic dreams of Ecotopia. He needs to be watched like a hawk. (or a spotted owl)