I am attaching the latest draft of the captioned stipulation which I received from Rick Roberts, counsel for ISO.  As you are aware, the stipulation is the next item to attend to in the CA proceeding, given that Judge Birchman gave us a week from last Wednesday to agree on the text of the stipulation.  The Judge considers it important to limit the scope of the proceeding to only those matters that should be before him.  Therefore, in the absence of agreement, he will hear oral argument on the morning of 9/17 and decide the matter for himself.  

The current draft is pretty well down the road between the ISO and generators.  Although the draft appears to be "harmless", dealing with "settlement disputes", it has the purpose of limiting the scope of the proceeding.  I was therefore concerned with the vagueness of it and the possibility it could be interpreted in such a way as to limit our ability to bring offsetting claims in conjunction with the "Finding 3" that the Judge must make in the proceeding.  My concern is that almost anything could be couched in terms of a "settlement dispute".  My fears were confirmed when I talked to Rick Roberts and asked him how he interpreted the language.  Roberts sees it as excluding from the proceeding, 3 types of disputes:

1.	disputes under the ISO and PX tariffs, whether already resolved, unresolved or not yet raised
2.	disputes pending resolution before the Commission
3.	disputes ongoing over existing orders issued by the Commission

I consider this a pretty broad interpretation, but that's how he sees it nonetheless.  Roberts gave as an example of what would be out of the proceeding, pursuant to the draft, the "$150 breakpoint" issue.  I don't have a problem with the breakpoint issue being excluded since the Judge already ruled that it should be "out".  However, if this is Roberts' interpretation, then the problem is that he would also likely consider the ISO underscheduling penalty to be pending before, or not finally resolved by, the Commission.  This interpretation would foreclose our ability to bring, in the CA refund proceeding, the offset for amounts due us under the underscheduling penalty.  It would relegate us to chasing our money in a different proceeding.  This would be unacceptable.  What other possible offsets could he try to interpret out of the proceeding?

I am writing this to raise the "red flag" as to this important issue.  Dan, we will need your immediate attention and input on drafting/negotiating this stipulation.  I would expect that conference calls could be called as early as today, given that there are only 5 days left to agree the text of the stipulation.  I am available to discuss this today or over the weekend on my cell.  Thanks.  Ray