ACT QUICKLY TO REGAIN CONTROL OF ELECTRICITY.

Byline: Thomas D. Elias Local View

SEVEN years after the era of deregulated energy began in California, this state now has a rare chance to turn back the clock and return to the stodgy old regulated system and its reliable energy supplies.

No one doubts that deregulation set up conditions that allowed the energy crunch of 2001-2002, which saw electricity become unreliable and prices shoot sky-high.

If there was one thing about which Gov. Gray Davis has been correct during his troubled tenure, it was his early-2001 statement that Californians were being victimized by out-of-state power-generating companies acting like ``pirates and buccaneers.''

One of those companies saw its own corrupt business practices drive it into bankruptcy and international ignominy - Enron. But others just as guilty of price gouging and market manipulation got off with little more than light slaps on the wrist.

The energy crisis triggered a downward popularity spiral that helped make Davis the target of an unprecedented recall election. Ironically, that recall might now give Davis an opportunity to get back at the very companies he once characterized as pirates.

That chance comes in the form of a state Senate bill that would end the state's failed experiment in electricity deregulation. This plan is the product of a two-year investigation of the energy crunch by a Senate committee headed by Orange County Democrat Joe Dunn, sponsor of the new bill.

Dunn seeks to end the ability of some electricity customers - mostly large industrial customers - to make their own deals with generators, a practice that drives prices up for ordinary consumers who usually can make no such arrangements. It would also prohibit utility companies like PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric from selling any power-generating plants until at least 2010. The 1996 deregulation law encouraged those firms to sell more than a dozen plants, whose massive capacity was then used by their new owners to drive supplies down and prices up.

Dunn's re-regulation plan would also provide incentives for the big utilities to invest in new transmission lines and power plants, while committing customers to cover the costs of prudent investment. As it did before 1996, the state Public Utilities Commission would decide what is prudent.

``This returns to the utilities an obligation to serve, in return for a guarantee that they will recover their costs, plus a profit,'' Dunn told a reporter. ``It encourages utilities to return to generating power.''

If utility customers want this bill fast-tracked - and they'd be crazy not to want that - they will have to pressure legislators, just as consumer groups and private citizens shamed the lawmakers into resurrecting and then quickly passing a landmark consumer-privacy bill.

With weeks to go in the current legislative session, there is plenty of time to pass re-regulation, if there's a will to do it.

Republican legislators generally oppose this measure, known as SB 888, just as they fought the privacy law. This implies that if consideration of re-regulation carries over until after the recall election, and if a Republican were to replace Davis, deregulation's pernicious effects could become permanent.

Meanwhile, Davis has stopped short of endorsing every aspect of Dunn's proposal, but has allowed that he's ``clearly leaning toward a more regulated environment than we have now.'' In short, he will sign the bill if it reaches him in time; a replacement might not. The same set of facts applied to the privacy bill, one reason it passed with urgency seldom seen in Sacramento.

But unless voters and consumer groups become as vocal about pushing this bill as they were about consumer privacy, re-regulation will not be fast-tracked. If it's not, it will almost surely be amended and compromised into something largely without meaning. And even a halfway measure could be vetoed.

Which means Californians can act now to ensure their own energy security. Or they can stand by and leave energy in the hands of companies that have demonstrated neither honesty nor reliability nor any spirit of public service.