Campbell in thick of California power crisis

Paul Clinton

NEWPORT-MESA -- Nothing like a crisis on your first days on the job.

During his little more than two weeks as a member of the state

Legislature, 70th District Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine) has come

eyeball to eyeball with the deregulation nightmare.

Campbell wasn’t a member of the 1996 Legislature that unanimously

passed the bill that led to skyrocketing electricity bills and rolling

blackouts. But he is a member of the Legislature that is having to solve

the power crunch.

Earlier this month, Campbell was one of 18 members tapped by Assembly

Speaker Robert Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) for a special legislative

committee to deal with the issue.

“I like to try and fix problems,” Campbell said from Sacramento.

“There are a lot of people that want nothing to do with this.”

As a member of the Energy Costs and Availability Committee, Campbell

and his colleagues are hammering out bills to guide the state out of its

worst energy crunch since the gasoline shortages of the 1970s.

Working to end the constant threat of rolling blackouts, Campbell and

his colleagues have already passed four bills since Jan. 16. Campbell has voted in support of all but one, known as AB1X.

When it came to the Assembly floor for a vote Jan. 16, Campbell, who

made securing energy for California’s high-tech businesses a main point

of his fall campaign, abstained. The bill, which has undergone several

revisions since its passage, would allow the state to buy power on the

open market for 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Campbell said he passed on the bill because it didn’t limit the total

dollar amount the state could spend or the time frame for the purchases.

In one of the rewrites, the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Fred Keeley

(D-Santa Cruz), added a so-called “sunset clause” to limit the state’s

time frame for purchases. Keeley’s chief consultant, Guy Phillips,

discounted criticism of the bill, saying it opens the door to cheaper

power purchases in a market where kilowatts go for 50 to 60 cents per

hour.

“It’s like going to a gas station and paying 10 cents a gallon,”

Phillips said. “At 10 cents a gallon, it’s pretty hard to spend too

much.”

Along with his concerns about AB1X, Campbell said he has noticed a

larger problem in how the state has dealt with the crisis.

“There’s nothing in any of the bills that have gone through that would

add one electron of power to our system,” Campbell said. “We want to have

the ability to add power plants in the state.”

Campbell and others have also knocked Gov. Gray Davis for failing to

act quickly to solve a growing problem.

Davis’ spokesman said those attacks are doing nothing to solve the

problem.

“Monday morning quarterbacking is pretty easy, but the governor is

working to get things done,” Davis’ press secretary Steve Maviglio said.

“Taking potshots is not helpful to solving the problem.”