Editorial: Luckily, Guinn fails in this effort

Thursday, March 23, 2000 | 9:34 a.m.

Last month residential customers and businesses breathed a collective sigh of relief when the state Public Utilities Commission rejected Nevada Power's request to raise electric rates by $110 million. So imagine their shock when it was revealed last week that Gov. Kenny Guinn was trying to broker a deal behind closed doors that would effectively overturn this sound decision, instead granting Nevada Power some type of rate increase.

Luckily for Nevada Power's customers, though, it was announced Tuesday that all those involved in the discussions -- the governor's office, Nevada Power, the PUC's staff, the consumer advocate, gaming and mining industries -- were too far apart to reach an agreement to raise rates. Guinn's chief of staff, Scott Scherer, said the governor was "disappointed" a deal wasn't struck during these talks, which got intertwined in the unresolved, nuts-and-bolts issues involved in initiating electric deregulation.

So the governor was "disappointed"? Guinn should be thanking his lucky stars that a settlement, which would have been dubbed the "Guinn rate hike," wasn't reached. Nevada state law is very clear that if a utility feels it has been unfairly treated by the PUC, it can appeal those decisions to a court. There is no provision in law for the governor's intervention -- and for good reason. These decisions are supposed to be made on their merits by an independent regulatory body, free of outside political influence. That Guinn is a former utility executive himself, the CEO of Southwest Gas, compounded what already was a bad move on his part. Guinn should show better judgment in the future and not exert his influence over what are supposed to be independent regulatory agencies.