Michael R Peevey

The California Public Utilities Commission is poised to raise wholesale phone rates by 20% to 54%, a move that critics said would scuttle competition for local phone service in the state. Three of the PUC's five commissioners released proposals Thursday to increase what rivals pay SBC Communications Inc. to lease the lines and gear they need to offer dial tone to homes and small businesses. All were assailed by consumer groups and competitors like AT&T Corp.

In a win for California consumers, an appeals court ruled Tuesday that federal regulators must consider cutting the cost of billions of dollars in power contracts that state officials believe were overpriced because they were signed during the state's energy crisis and based on market rates that were rigged. The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates a case that could yield California electricity customers $1.

What has the Clinton Administration, which during the campaign promised Californians so much, done for the state's economy? Not that much, so far as we, or almost anyone else, can see. When they visit California, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and other Administration plenipotentiaries are all action. Moving from one public appearance to the next, they express unquestionably sincere concern.

Calling for "bold yet practical steps," a special commission appointed by the state's Community College Board of Governors has urged the 107-school system to wean itself from traditional classroom lectures and embrace high technology as a more efficient way to teach a rising tide of students during the next decade.

STATE REGULATORS DREW THE WRATH of consumer advocates last week when they tentatively endorsed two mergers of telecommunications giants -- SBC acquiring AT&T and Verizon snapping up MCI. California Public Utilities Commission members Susan P. Kennedy and Michael R. Peevey wrote draft decisions blessing the mergers with minimal conditions, rejecting the notion that either company should have to share with California customers any of the savings generated by the mergers.

Gov. Gray Davis on Friday released details of contracts totaling more than $51 million for the consultants, lawyers and experts his administration has hired to work on the energy crisis, which is bleeding state coffers at a rate higher than previously estimated. A confidential report released to lawmakers this week showed the state buying electricity at a rate of $58.6 million a day from Feb.

It's hard to believe that a private company might be allowed to build a massive and potentially hazardous liquefied natural gas terminal at the Port of Long Beach without state regulators blessing the deal. Yet that could happen if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- the same agency that left California dangling in the wind during the state's 2001 energy crisis -- wins a battle among agencies over a proposed project to bring badly needed natural gas into California.

General Motors said Friday that it will severely cut back its electric-vehicle manufacturing plans and hopes to share development costs with the other two big U.S. auto makers. GM had long said it would have an assembly line in place by the mid-1990s, producing thousands of electric cars for ordinary consumers. On Friday, the company said instead that it would build, by hand, 50 versions of its prototype Impact vehicle in 1993.

At a late night session Thursday, the California Assembly emulated its deregulation forebears, narrowly adopting another complex, half-understood energy bill from the back rooms. There are many problems with the proposed state bailout of Southern California Edison. Here are the most fundamental: * The bailout is much bigger than advertised . Backers, including Gov. Gray Davis, parent company Edison International and some Los Angeles progressives, advertise it as a $2.9-billion deal.

I am compelled to respond to Michael Hiltzik's "PG&E's Recovery Stifles Oversight" (Golden State, April 8) regarding Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s emergence from bankruptcy protection. Mr. Hiltzik would have your readers believe this is a tragic event; however, the settlement approved by the California Public Utilities Commission that allowed PG&E to emerge from bankruptcy has numerous benefits for Californians. The settlement gets PG&E out of bankruptcy and back under regulation by the people's representatives in California, the PUC. The settlement plan is costly, but that is the unfortunate result of the electricity crisis.