CPUC chief decries lawmaker's deadline for release of emails regarding San Onofre deal

California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker has issued a strong statement in reply to Utilities and Commerce Committee Chair Anthony Rendon, who recently issued a July 31 deadline for CPUC's presentation of emails relating to the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The plant, which was shut down after its owners installed faulty equipment, has already cost Southern California ratepayers some $3 billion, thanks to a sweetheart deal between CPUC and the power companies it is supposed to regulate.

"Frankly," says Picker, I think Mr. Rendon has a lot of nerve dropping some kind of hard deadline on us. CPUC is a big outfit, and many of our employees send over 50 emails a day. His committee is asking for every email pertaining to a very specific subject, and finding them is hard, tedious work. It's not like there's some magical way to search through our communications and pick out just the ones you need. Maybe that was true in the old days, when you had a secretary whose whole job it was to file correspondence in an easily recoverable fashion. Say, alphabetical by sender, with the most recent correspondence in the front of the file. But those days are gone, and Mr. Rendon is just going to have to accept that fact."