The lawmaking process has often been compared to making sausage – and never is it messier than in a true crisis. To an outsider, efforts by Governor Davis and the Legislature to grapple with the crisis appear slow and chaotic. Yet for months there has been agreement on a strategy consisting of three goals:
- Stabilize wholesale electricity pricing and consumer rates.
- Restore creditworthiness to the investor-owned utilities.
- Promote electricity conservation by consumers.
While the goals are simple, the means of achieving them are often in conflict with one another.
One of the most fundamental conflicts is how to reconcile the need to regain control over consumer energy prices with the need to achieve power system reliability by encouraging the construction of new power plants.
