California Update--Legislative Push Underway

Hertzberg (speaker of the CA Assembly) called a meeting yesterday afternoon
of the group of market participants that have been negotiating the
"core/noncore" proposal in California. The purpose of the meeting was to
brief us on their activities and their gameplan for trying to find a solution
for California. Here's a summary of the meeting. Please keep confidential.

Work will be done over the weekend to put the core/noncore proposal in
legislative language. (We will be in the room.)
Work done by the "Plan B" group in the Assembly (Joe Dutra and Joe Nation)
will also be put into legislative language over the weekend.
Because no proposal is "comprehensive," a complete legislative package will
be created from the various pieces that have been worked on thus far (i.e.,
core/noncore, "Plan B," Edison MOU)
In addition, there are Republican demands that Hertzberg will need to address
(e.g., end the litigation) in order to achieve bi-partison support, which is
what Hertzberg's shooting for.
To move the legislation, the plan is to establish a "conference committee,"
comprised of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.
The committe would begin work on Monday and would attempt to finish putting a
comprehensive bill together, vote it out of the Legislature and send it to
the Governor for signing by Monday, July 16th.
July 16th is the deadline because that is the date that the PUC will issue
its proposed decision regarding, among other things, how DWR's revenue
requirement will be put into rates, whether Direct Access needs to be
suspended, etc.
The PUC is issuing the draft on the 16th in order to give everyone 30 days to
review and comment before the Commission votes on a final order on August
15th. (The PUC will actually issue a "thought piece" on Monday the 9th and
will use reactions to the "thought piece" to craft the develop the proposed
decision it plans to issue on the 16th.)
All of this is still up in the air, however. As of right now, the leader of
the Senate (Burton) has not agreed to Hertzberg's gameplan and the
Republicans, while interested, have not yet committed to join the process.