WASHINGTON-California Public Utilities Commission member Geoffrey Brown is seeking to delay the scheduled Jan. 26 vote on a scaled-back telecom bill-of-rights plan, while Commissioner Dian Grueneich crafts an alternative consumer protection measure.
Brown-whose telecom consumer-protection package was approved in May 2004, before being suspended seven months later-is outraged over a drastically revamped proposal issued last month by former commissioner Susan Kennedy and CPUC President Michael Peevey,
“This [the Kennedy-Peevey plan] is the handmaid of industry,” said Brown.
Consumer groups, disability advocates and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer support keeping the current bill of rights intact. The Democratic-led California Senate last year passed legislation to make the current bill of rights a state law, but the effort fizzled in the California Assembly, also controlled by Democrats.
The Kennedy-Peevey plan would create a telecom consumer-fraud unit, fund a consumer-education campaign and establish a toll-free hotline, while doing away with a myriad of guidelines governing carrier disclosure, marketing, billing and early service cancellation.
Brown is not impressed with newly proposed safeguards. “Now, it’s open season on consumers. They have no recourse,” said Brown.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kennedy, now chief of staff to the governor, have been highly critical of the current bill of rights. The mobile-phone industry has spent top dollar on California lobbyists to oppose any new state wireless regulations, including those in the Kennedy-Peevey plan.
Comments on the Kennedy-Peevey proposed decision are due Jan. 17, with replies expected to arrive a week later. The CPUC plans to vote on the matter at its Jan. 26 public meeting.
Brown said he plans to ask Peevey to hold the Kennedy-Peevey bill-of-rights vote from both the Jan. 26 and Feb. 16 meetings. Typically such requests are granted, but they can be overruled by a majority of commissioners.
“We’re going to go hard at this. This is a disgraceful document,” said Brown.
But this time around, apparently for strategic reasons, Grueneich will take the lead in countering the Kennedy-Peevey proposal with one of her own.
“She’s concerned with the repeal of cramming rules,” said Kelly Hymes, a telecom adviser to Grueneich. Those rules require subscribers to opt in to allow non-telecommunications charges to appear on monthly bills. Hymes said the rules exist to prevent fraud.
Grueneich, a Democratic and one of two Schwarzenegger appointees to the CPUC, voted with Kennedy and Peevey in January 2005 to suspend enforcement of the current bill of rights in order to review them. Later, however, she voiced support for reinstating many of the guidelines.
The other Schwarzenegger pick on the CPUC is John Bohn, a Republican.
“He is not commenting on it [Kennedy-Peevey bill of rights] at this time,” said Susan Carothers, a CPUC spokeswoman.
With Kennedy’s move to Sacramento, the five-member CPUC now has a vacancy. All signs point to a 2-2 deadlock on the Kennedy-Peevey plan to gut the existing bill of rights.
In the end, it could take intervention from Schwarzenegger to settle this latest round of the bill-of-rights brawl.
California law gives the governor authority to appoint a temporary commissioner for a CPUC meeting. Indeed, Schwarzenegger’s ousted predecessor, Gray Davis, is said to have done so on occasion.
“It is an unsavory tactic and one would hope that the governor wouldn’t use that kind of tactic on a very controversial matter,” said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network. “But it may be legally feasible for him to make temporary appointments. It is my hope that the governor makes a permanent appointment [to the CPUC] before the time for such a vote.”
The mobile-phone industry argues the bill of rights is unnecessary, given California already has tough consumer-protection laws on the books. Major wireless carriers, signatories to a voluntary code of conduct, also argue stiff competition allows consumers to switch service providers if they are dissatisfied with existing operators. Moreover, the cellular industry does not want to see the California bill of rights become a model for the rest of the country.
Massachusetts is headed in that direction. A cellular bill of rights championed by Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D) is pending in the Senate Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee. The panel, which held a hearing on the bill last year, is expected early this year to decide whether to give it a favorable recommendation.
