Here is an email: Today's hearing was dominated by : 1) many lawyers arguing over whether the Commission must declare that the "rate freeze" is over before raising rates, or whether the Commission can rely on its general constitutional and statutory authority to raise rates on an interim basis, without addressing the issue of the rate freeze, and, 1) an appearance by Ralph Nader. The Legal Issue In general, our proposal seems to have gotten some traction. Whether it sticks remains to be seen, however. We proposed that: The Commission has the authority to raise rates without addressing the rate freeze issue. The Commission will not have the facts it needs, and it won't have provided the due process necessary by Jan 4th, to address all the complex issues tied to the rate freeze. And if it tries, it's likely to face a flurry of law suits, which is in no one's best interest. For it's Jan 4th decision, the Commission should confine itself to determining whether, and if so by how much, to raise rates to maintain the utilities' access to capital markets. (We've taken no position on whether there's a need to raise rates.) setting a hearing schedule to examine the "rate freeze" and all related issues thoroughly and methodically. The utilities argued that the Commission must declare an end to the rate freeze; otherwise any Commission decision to raise rates would be easy to attack in the courts. (In reality, the utilities want the Commission to end the rate freeze in order to assure lenders that the Commission will permit the utilities to recover going-forward procurement costs. Under the rate freeze, the utility is at risk for procurement costs that exceed the rate freeze.) In his presentation, our outside counsel offered numerous citations to past Commission decision and court cases supporting the Commission's ability to raise rates if it found it necessary to do so. Many other parties agreed with our position. A few parties said that the issue was too murky to make a call. During questioning, both the President of the Commission (Loretta Lynch) and the presiding judge seemed to indicate that they believe the Commission has ample authority to raise rates without having to address the rate freeze issues. The Ralph Factor Apparently, having lost the Presidential election, Ralph Nader's still looking for work. He showed up at the hearings today and held a very lengthy news conference. From what I could hear, he targeted all of his criticism at the utilities for being greedy, and at the Governor for being too ready and willing to bail the utilities out. Even when thrown some soft balls about "out of state generators," Nader stuck to bashing the Governor and the utilities. But I couldn't hear the entire press conference, so he may have said things that I missed. The Next Steps The hearings that were scheduled to end today will now go into next week. Tomorrow, the utilities are scheduled to make their case for financial hardship. Customers intend to question the utilities very aggressively (as does the PUC). The utilities will also have the chance to question the consumer representatives who filed their own proposals and analysis with the Commission. On Tuesday, the Commission is likely to take up the issue of how big any rate increase needs to be and how much of the increase each customer group should shoulder. More tomorrow on the call. Best,
What is a potential subject line for this email?
Update--Day 2 of California PUC Hearings