
DATE: Saturday, April 19, 1997              TAG: 9704190340

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER 

        STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   94 lines

PUBLIC UTILITY BREAKUP: WHO REAPS THE BENEFITS?

Friday's congressional hearing on power industry deregulation was a circus of bleating cell phones, jockeying lobbyists and nail-biting power executives.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-Va., and Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Dan Schaefer, R-Colo., are leading the charge to break up power industry monopolies, which have stood for 60 years. If the monopolies go, American households will save 15 percent to 43 percent a month on their electric bills, they say.

Skeptics argue that consumers likely won't see any savings and that some will end up paying more.

Close to two-thirds of the panelists who spoke before the subcommittee at the Henrico County Government Center supported federal legislation to bring about retail competition in the $200 billion-a-year electric power industry. Wholesale competition, which involves the sale of big blocks of power to municipalities, regional co-ops and other large customers, is already here.

The big winners of such ``retail wheeling,'' say supporters, will be consumers - all of them.

``Injecting competition in a mature, stodgy industry will benefit consumers,'' said Jim Rogers, CEO of Cinergy Corp., a Cincinnati-based power company.

Rogers, who fashioned himself as a ``renegade for consumer choice,'' said a number of his company's wholesale wheeling customers in southern and southwestern Virginia paid 20 percent less than under their previous power supplier.

Consumer groups worry that retail competition would hurt residential customers. Power companies, they say, will chase big industrial customers with low prices while making homeowners subsidize them.

``Customer choice is not an end in itself,'' Jean Ann Fox, president of the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, told the subcommittee. ``Residential electric customers are at great risk if utility restructuring is done poorly.''

``States have regulated their own retail electric service for generations,'' Eva S. Teig, Virginia Power's vice president of public affairs, told the congressmen. ``It would not only be wrong but foolhardy to toss out state regulation and experience by imposing federal standards.''

Said John Bonfadini, director of Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, ``You can't be against competition. You can't be against parenthood either. But there's a right time for each of them.''

Many groups who weren't invited by the subcommittee to speak inside took their message outside.

One consumer activist group went so far as to fly a plane over the government center, trailing a banner that read ``Citizens for Customer Choice.''

A giant ``dog'' dressed as a wealthy corporate titan - in the employ of Alexandria-based Citizens for State Power - made its point: In a deregulated power industry, the ``big dogs,'' or heavy industrial users of electricity, will ``eat first'' when it comes to reaping savings.

Some outside the hearing complained that it was little more than a staged back-slapping event for supporters of a quick move to deregulation.

``It's a cheerleading session,'' said Wenonah Hauter, representing the group Citizen Action. ``There hasn't been an honest discussion.''

Chris Cooper, a spokesman for Indiana-based Electric Consumers Alliance, agreed.

``Even the opponents seemed handpicked,'' Cooper said.

Electric Consumers Alliance, which represents 180 consumer, business and government organizations, released a poll saying 69 percent of Virginians were in favor of the state deregulating utilities while 20 percent thought the federal government would do a better job.

The subcommittee held a hearing in Atlanta on Monday and is scheduled to travel to Chicago and Dallas. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Protesters on both sides of the public utility deregulation debate

campaign outside of the Henrico Government Building auditorium where

congressional hearings were being held Friday.

HISTORY OF DEREGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES

- 1978, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act requires

electric utilities to purchase power from co-generation and

renewable energy power plants that could otherwise be denied access

to markets.

- 1992, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act gives federal

regulators authority to require owners of power lines to deliver

other utilities' electricity, opening the door to competition in