George P. Radanovich: “The very ones he vilified, many times they have not been able to speak to him unless it was at his own fund raisers.…”

“The very ones he vilified, many times they have not been able to speak to him unless it was at his own fund raisers. This is the way the whole thing worked out. But the problem could have been solved a year ago, and I will make this point: if the Governor would have allowed for a modest retail rate increase by the utilities of, say, 25 percent, it would have driven down future prices; and he could have encouraged the utilities to get into long-term contracts where the wholesale price was below the retail price. We would never have been in this situation. It was his delay in imposing a modest increase of 25 percent that, by the time he had to impose it, grew to 48 percent, and on top of that, diverting his energies to State bio-energy, the transmission lines. I give him credit, he was working for ways to get the utilities creditworthy, but his decision was delayed and delayed for political expediency and the fear of doing something wrong that might hurt politically. That was the crisis in California.”