Ex-L.A. attorney elected president of Public Utilities Commission.

Ex-L.A. attorney elected president of Public Utilities Commission

Former Los Angeles attorney Patricia Eckert this week will score a couple of firsts.

The California Public Utilities Commission is set to conduct her first meeting as its president Jan. 15, flexing muscles as the state's top utility regulator.

Elected president by fellow PUC commissioners for a one-year term, Eckert becomes the first woman to lead the powerful panel, founded in 1912. The PUC oversees gas, electric, telephone, water and transportation companies in the state.

The 18-year Los Angeles-area resident, who moved to the Bay Area after the governor appointed her to the San Francisco-based PUC in 1989, also becomes the only Southern Californian to lead the board in more than 20 years.

The former Beverly Hills resident takes on the $90,860-a-year job knowing she'll draw fire from angry consumers and pushy utility lobbyists for PUC-regulated companies that last year charged businesses and other consumers $50 billion.

She declined to discuss the merits of the proposed mega-merger of Southern California Edison Co. with San Diego Gas & Electric Co.: "It's so emotional in Southern California, for a lot of reasons."

Eckert admitted that the $519 million rate increase granted Edison last month would be "really noticeable" for big electricity users who enter a higher-priced tier of charges. Such "demand-management" pricing -- forced conservation -- is part of the commission's current policy, which she supports.

Eckert told the Business Journal she would not veer from the "market-based" course of her predecessor, G. Mitchell Wilk. "We'll be looking at incentives for the gas and electric companies to be efficient, and that will definitely impact Southern California Gas Co. and Edison." Those prime local suppliers will likely be dealt an "indexed" rate system in 1991 that will preclude most rate increases beyond the inflation rate, she said.

Edison will be required to buy certain electricity produced by wind, solar, biomass and other "qualifying facilities" as in the past, she predicted, but may pay slightly more in the future: "We expect to vote for a formula that will give monetary recognition to electric producers that don't pollute."

In the past, so-called clean energy had to be cheaper to warrant Edison's purchase. Next year the commission will likely strengthen the hand of renewable, clean energy producers seeking supply contracts with Edison. Eckert, 43, said her "initial impression" is that environmentally conscious consumers will agree to swallow the higher rates passed along by electric utilities.

More difficult is convincing utilities to encourage conservation.

"The tricky side of demand-side management," Eckert said, "is asking business to not sell its product."

Eckert, however, is armed against utility lobbyists and consumer pressure groups. As president, she'll have three full-time advisers on call (for nuclear, petroleum and legal issues) plus the commission's 1,000-person staff.

The president also chooses which commissioner plays point on which issue.

The Minnesota native has time to hit the briefing books. She's single with no children.

"If I'd had any of the above, I coudln't do it," commented the one-time marketing manager for Dow Chemical in Pasadena, who was fast-tracked through affirmative action into upper management.

"It takes a lot of personal energy to get things done" in the sprawling bureaucracy, she stressed. "I came from the private sector, where I was accustomed to action plans," said Eckert who, after Dow, practiced business law as managing partner of Eckert & Colman in Beverly Hills.

She still maintains a home in Manhattan Beach, she said.