WASHINGTON-California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey is poised to take control of the deregulatory telecom bill-of-rights plan championed by Commissioner Susan Kennedy, who is set to leave the agency at year’s end to become chief of staff to GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Kennedy, a pro-business Democrat, had intended to issue a proposed decision last month and have the CPUC vote on it this month. That schedule has now changed. The Kennedy plan could be out next week for a brief public comment cycle. A vote on the revised bill of rights, however, is not expected until the first or second commission meeting in January.
Lester Wong, a telecom aide to Peevey, said it is standard procedure that rulemakings assigned to commissioners default to the CPUC president when commissioners leave the agency before their terms expire. The CPUC president typically re-assigns dockets to other commissioners. That is unlikely to be the case with the bill of rights because the proceeding is so far advanced. Thus, Peevey likely will hang on to the controversial Kennedy bill-of-rights rewrite.
How Kennedy’s departure impacts next year’s vote by the five-member state agency is unclear. At a minimum, rounding up a majority to approve the Kennedy alternate will be more difficult. However, it is possible Schwarzenegger could appoint Kennedy’s replacement in time for a vote next year.
One thing seems certain: Kennedy will continue to be a force on the bill of rights for longer than her few remaining weeks at the CPUC.
“They (Peevey and Kennedy) have been bouncing around some ideas,” said Wong. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she assists in the selection” of her replacement on the commission.
Peevey and Kennedy voted against the bill of rights approved by the CPUC last year. At the same time, two of the three commissioners who voted for the rule have since left the agency. Schwarzenegger, who along with the mobile-phone industry opposes additional wireless regulations, filled the vacancies with Dian Grueneich, a Democrat, and Republican John Bohn.
In January, Grueneich joined Kennedy and Peevey in suspending the current bill of rights. The guidelines, crafted through compromise by Commissioner Geoffrey Brown (D) and supported by consumer proponents, disability rights advocates and others, cover wireless and wireline carrier disclosure, marketing, service initiation and changes, billing and other business practices.
Grueneich subsequently said she believed some provisions of the current bill of rights could be reinstated even as controversial components of the rule were further scrutinized. Thus, without Kennedy, the deregulatory bill of rights proposal would appear to pit Peevey and Bohn against Brown and Grueneich.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D) also favors keeping the existing bill of rights intact. Likewise, Senate Democrats in the California state legislature were so incensed about the sidelining of the bill of rights in January, they introduced and passed a bill to make it a state law. However, the measure failed to advance in the California Assembly.
The mobile-phone industry, which until the CPUC bill-of-rights fracas largely stayed out of state battles, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists trying to upend the initiative for fear it could become an attractive regulatory model for other states. As such, the cellular industry opposes the Kennedy plan, but would take it over the current rule.
