Utilities Commission set for latest power struggle

Friday, July 28, 2000 | 10:18 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state Public Utilities Commission is going to ring up a big telephone bill in August and it may be due to continuing tension between the chairman and one member.

At its Thursday meeting in Carson City the commission will consider settlements involving Sierra Pacific Power Co. and Nevada Power Co. on opening the electric market to competition.

Commissioner Judy Sheldrew, a critic of the negotiated settlements, will be in Germany on vacation but nevertheless present via telephone.

Sheldrew had asked Chairman Don Soderberg to postpone the meeting a week so she could attend. She had wanted to follow up on the three-hour grilling she had put the power officials through at the last meeting.

The chairman declined to delay the meeting and he said Thursday the material needed for the meeting will be transmitted to Sheldrew so that she may participate by telephone.

"We typically don't change the agenda for one commissioner's travel," Soderberg said Thursday. "We work with them so they can participate."

Soderberg and Sheldrew have disagreed on commission issues for more than a year.

It's not uncommon for telephone hookups, Soderberg said. He participated in one meeting while he was at Disney World and another while he was in New Mexico. But Soderberg conceded this would be the first time a commissioner would participate from Europe and that the telephone bill might be high.

Sheldrew said her travel plans had been set for months and couldn't be changed.

The commission last week voted 2-1 with Sheldrew dissenting to approve a plan to permit Nevada Power, to raise rates by 4.7 percent to residential customers in Clark County, and ratescould go as high as 9 percent by the end of the year. And rates for customers of Sierra Pacific Power in Northern Nevada could rise by 8.7 percent by September 2001.

Also agreed to was a schedule to allow deregulation in stages. The big casinos and other major power users will be able, beginning in November, to shop for electricity from other suppliers besides Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific. The small consumers will have to wait until September 2001 before deregulation kicks in for them.