Wendy Sherman: “I should point out that while I say Los Angeles has no problem, we are bound together with the rest of the State, just…”

“I should point out that while I say Los Angeles has no problem, we are bound together with the rest of the State, just as the whole country is bound to California, and the economic problems facing the other cities in the State of California affect us. I should also point out for our colleagues, who might think well, if Los Angeles has no problem, a huge part of California has no problem, that the Los Angeles municipality is roughly 10 percent of the State of California. So much of, as the gentleman knows, the Los Angeles area lies outside the city limits and outside the protection of municipal power. What has happened to our State is that we are being bled dry. We paid $7 billion for the generation of electricity for our State in the year 1999. In the year 2000, we used the same amount of electricity but instead of paying $7 billion, we paid $32.5 billion. This year for the same amount of electricity, we are going to pay $60 billion to $70 billion. Now, this has fully hit home in San Diego because the utility there had a different deregulation deal than the one in the rest of Southern California, or Northern California.”