Talk with John Shelk in our DC office.

Jim

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Perrino, Dave  
Sent:	Monday, October 08, 2001 1:25 PM
To:	Steffes, James D.
Cc:	Nicolay, Christi L.; Comnes, Alan; Karen Denne (E-mail); Walton, Steve; Landwehr, Susan M.; Mara, Susan; Kaufman, Paul
Subject:	Causes and Lessons of the CA Electricity Crisis - by the CBO

Jim,

Last week some time I had been on the distribution of a paper published by the CBO entitled, "Causes and Lessons of the CA Electricity Crisis".  In reviewing this paper several things struck me.  The paper is not particularly accurate, they make unsubstantiated claims of market power abuse, they ignore the lack of implementation of demand-side response programs that were supposed to be a integral part of the AB1890 and they use inappropriate terms, such as "Idle" when describing plants that were unavailable because of maintenance or repair.

My reason for writing is to ask you, how politically influential is a paper like this?  Are papers published by the CBO looked at as the authority on problems, especially with those associated with the problems experienced in CA?  And if so, because of some of the mis-representations it contains, do we want to develop a fact sheet for our folks in DC to use to refute some of the claims made in this paper?

Thanks,

Dave

David F. Perrino
Director, Government Affairs
Enron Corporation
101 California Street, Suite 1950
San Francisco, CA  94111
Phone: 415.782.7801
Fax: 415.782.7854
Mobile: 415.794.8740