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Enron Mail |
Jim: Thanks for your update. As you recall, Phil attended the April 2000
Congressional staff trip to the Enron building. Further, for years we have negotiated directly with his boss on electricity legislative efforts and we have gained his support and leadership for Enron's positions. We continue to constantly update him and all staffers on our positions. We will continue to do so with yearly fact finding trips to Houston, meetings, letters, hearings, briefings, coalition building, ope-eds, etc. Fact is, the California issue climaxed after federal legislation was declared "dead" for this Congress. As such, other active legislative vehicles have claimed Congressional attention. Thus, Phil was referring to a recent Senate hearing on the California situation (October 5th) where we supplied questions, information, etc. that no other member except Senator Gorton attended (i.e. low interest.) Having said this, as the cycle ramps up after the elections and the new Congress convenes in January and February, Congressional interest will return with "understanding" California being a key focus. Educating on the California situation will be amongst our primary objectives although in the Congressional downtime, we must continue specific efforts with key targets (i.e. Congressman Barton, Congressman Tauzin, Senator Murkowski, etc.). This is why, for instance, I had requested travel approval to attend the Rippon Society's trip with the Speaker and these members in order to be able to take advantate of opportunities to educate in informal settings. We will continue to find other opportunities and make opportunities to visit with these Members while they are out of D.C. between now and January. As for Private Use legislation, Enron developed and led the strategy which brought EEI to the table with resulting final consensus legislation. This consensus came very close to being added to the tax package which may move Friday but was dropped due to its high price tag. As for NAERO, there is NOT consensus. In fact, we support Senator Gorton's version of the bill but oppose Congressman Wynn's version. Since Joe Hartsoe has been the lead with NAERO, I will defer further comment to him. As for comprehensive legislation, the Senate came very close and indeed pass a bill out of Committee. The issues that doomed the bill were the two "non-consensus" issues: the native load exception and RPS (which indeed a deal was actually cut.) In truth, we also had cut the deal on native load exception but consensus came too late in the year for EEI and NARUC to formally sign-off. This is why we have tried to get the EEI process moving now. Thank you again for your speech and the update. James D Steffes 10/16/2000 08:46 PM To: Cynthia Sandherr/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Joe Hartsoe/Corp/Enron@ENRON, Tom Briggs/NA/Enron@Enron, Mary Hain/HOU/ECT@ECT cc: Richard Shapiro/NA/Enron@Enron, Steven J Kean/NA/Enron@Enron Subject: Congressional Opinion of Restructuring Cynthia, et al -- FYI. I was on a panel with Phil Moeller today in Las Vegas (he was the moderator). Very nice guy. No real issues developed. I used (very liberally) Steve Kean's testimony in San Diego to talk about California and some material on RTOs. My speech is attached below. Phil indicated that he thought that there was agreement on the Public Power Tax issues and on NAERO language. He highlighted that comprehensive language could be difficult if not impossible next year. (Joe - can you please send me a copy of the NAERO bill and any summaries). While Phil seemed to have a great sense of what is happening in California and the electricity markets, he indicated that many of his staff collegues were not so up to speed. Any way that we can help them out before their minds are made up? Jim
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