Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists . Californians struggling with a chronic shortage of electricity face a 17th straight day of living under a Stage 3 power alert, meaning rolling blackouts are possible Thursday. The Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature, also was expected to pass the measure and send it on to Gov. Gray Davis for his signature.
Solar power can help California.
But lawmakers adjourned proceedings after the measure failed to secure enough support from Republicans to pass, and Democrats said they would make another attempt to push the bill through later Thursday. Many Republicans and some Democrats in the Assembly took issue with a provision that would let the state Public Utilities Commission raise power rates to cover wholesale costs. Spikes in the wholesale price of electricity in a deregulated market helped trigger the California electricity crunch, and state laws deregulating utilities prevented utilities from passing along most of those costs to consumers. The people not to blame are the ratepayers and taxpayers. It is time for us to say on their behalf that we are not going to continue a practice which requires us to buy on a spot market the most expensive energy you could buy.