Undaunted by a quick and negative response from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week on their effort to force federal regulators to install price caps in the West (see Daily GPI, May 30), California lawmakers fired off a filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Tuesday, seeking rehearing of an April 26 FERC decision. The state lawmakers

“The (9th Circuit) court ruling notwithstanding, California still needs real relief — not the smokescreen federal regulators have offered so far,” said state Assembly Speaker Robert M. Hertzberg. “The bottom line is that (FERC) has failed to do its job, which is to protect Californians from runaway wholesale energy prices.”

The petition, filed for the state lawmakers by a Washington, DC, law firm, asks FERC to rehear its order, which the state argues “fell far short of placing the temporary cost controls needed to help relieve California’s energy crisis.”

Among other things, the state lawmakers’ filing contends that the FERC order contained a number of legal errors by: (a) imposing price mitigation only during statewide grid emergencies, (b) allowing prices well above suppliers’ reasonable costs and (c) “arbitrarily and unreasonably” terminating price mitigation after one year.

In response to the appeals court rejection, Gov. Gray Davis noted that he is going to continue to seek wholesale price relief, and following his meeting with President Bush, he was preparing for another filing to FERC.

Both the state lawmakers and the Davis administration are pinning their hopes on being “legally” entitled to relief. A state Assembly resolution passed this week cites FERC’s roots to the old Federal Power Commission and the 1935 Federal Power Act, both of whose missions were to “promote the interests of consumers through the provision of an adequate and reliable supply of energy at the lowest reasonable cost.”

The latest state resolution “simply implores FERC to implement its own statutes and vision statement to protect consumers from bad players who are unfairly manipulating the market,” said Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, sponsor of the lawmakers’ latest plea to FERC.

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