With only two regularly scheduled meetings left before their six-year terms expire, two entrenched and embittered California regulators are not leaving quietly. This Thursday’s meeting is expected to see a continuation of the series of bitterly contested 3-2 splits with their three newer colleagues as the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) wades through an agenda full of potentially controversial energy items.

When the five-member regulatory body met Nov. 19, eight of 11 energy items were decided by 3-2 votes, with Loretta Lynch and Carl Wood staunchly refusing to join with the equally entrenched majority of CPUC President Michael Peevey, Susan Kennedy and Geoffrey Brown. Peevey and Kennedy have four more years on their appointments; Brown two years; and the minority pair are finished Dec. 31.

Lynch and Wood often find themselves on the opposite end of issues for alleged process and legal reasons, cautioning that they often think the Peevey-led majority oversteps its legal authority. So far there have been no legal remands of the CPUC’s actions, including last year’s approval of the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bankruptcy settlement, which Wood and Lynch challenged in the courts, using pro bono outside legal services in a losing battle.

In a relatively straightforward administrative matter related to existing direct access electricity customers changing accounts covered under their power load that they buy separate from the local utilities, Wood and Lynch reacted to the lack of CPUC monitoring and enforcement of the large customers’ legal declaration that they were not padding the amounts of power falling under direct access.

“In this decision we are not only allowing direct access to continue, but we may be allowing it to expand in direct conflict with (state law) AB 1-X,” Lynch said before she and Wood voted against the measure last month. “This is a toothless order because we don’t require the contracts to be filed with us or a verification process.”

This Thursday even more major energy issues — some 13 orders or resolutions — are on the CPUC agenda, including ones in which both Lynch and Wood have competing proposed orders with ones submitted by one or more of the three majority commissioners. Southern California Edison’s long-delayed rate stabilization plan to end a rate freeze and increase charges is one item, and another is the disputed separate cost-of-service rate increase settlements by Sempra Energy’s two utilities, San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Gas.

Either Lynch or Wood has the lead on the two rate items, along with four others on Thursday’s agenda, including Edison’s future rate treatment to cover the costs of its majority owned and operated coal-fired Mohave power plant in Nevada and a PG&E utility-proposed experimental discount rate for large commercial/industrial customers to keep them from moving facilities and jobs out of state.

Last week just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Sempra’s utilities asked the CPUC to keep Lynch from voting on an upcoming issue set from consideration in mid-December involving alleged natural gas price manipulation by the utilities at the California-Arizona border. Sempra claims Lynch has demonstrated a “personal bias” against the utilities. The utilities’ motion asks for a response from the CPUC this week.

Lynch has not reacted publicly to Sempra’s action.

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