Power crunch heightens anti-California sentiment among neighbor states

Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001 | 5:48 a.m.

And predictably, resentment is mounting as Westerners worry that California's poor energy planning will mean higher bills and less reliable power supplies across the region.

"I think everybody in the West kind of feels that California is the big pig in the sty," said Pat Bagley, who drew an editorial cartoon in Wednesday's edition of the Salt Lake Tribune that shows the region's biggest state borrowing an electric outlet from snowbound Utah to run a hot tub.

"They get all the electoral votes and they've got all the influence," Bagley said. "Now they're coming to the Western states with hat in hand and saying, 'Help us out."'

The West's other states don't need much reason to make fun of California. The state and transplants from it are often blamed - sometimes unfairly - for traffic congestion, housing prices, environmentalists and tofu.

But as California began rolling blackouts and the keeper of the state's grid accused out-of-state suppliers of withholding power, some Western policy-makers are especially on edge.

"Certainly, we're nervous," said Arizona Rep. Jeff Hatch-Miller, chairman of that state's House Energy committee. "They have a huge population and they have a huge political presence. And you get a little nervous because you're a neighbor and you realize they may look toward you."

With that in mind, the governors of Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Utah and Wyoming wrote a letter last week to California Gov. Gray Davis, scolding the state and telling it to put its house in order. Their voices have gotten louder with recent developments.

On Tuesday, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt pointed a finger at California's "disastrous deregulation scheme."

"California consumers cannot be shielded from the true cost of power while major utilities are allowed to perish in bankruptcy and consumers in other Western states are left to pick up the tab," Leavitt said in his state of the state speech.

Montana Gov. Judy Martz told state senators Wednesday that bigger states "are successfully bribing our energy away."

"We must not leave our citizens, our families and our businesses unprotected and empty-handed for the sake of those who may outbid us," she told a state Senate committee.

Tim Hay, Nevada's consumer advocate, said no one begrudges California its power, especially since so much of the West's economy depends on the Golden State's business. But, he said, there are concerns that the environmental and economic costs of generating new power for California will fall on the rest of the West.

"You don't necessarily want to have our air quality degraded or our water consumed just to sell power outside the state," he said.

Already, some Western businesses have had to shut down operations due to the increasing power crunch, and that could cause layoffs or other economic problems, said John Maddox, president of the Denver-based Center for the New West.

If that trend continues, cursing California could become more common nationwide.

"I don't think that it's just a Western phenomenon," Maddox said. "I think in many places, California is credited with a lot of innovation and trend-setting, and anytime a state that claims a trend-setting cultural leadership is struggling, all this pent-up resentment will come out."