When both houses of the Legislature approved a sweeping utility deregulation bill in the waning hours of the 1996 legislative session -- without a single dissenting vote -- it was evident that only a handful of those voting had more than a cursory understanding of its historic provisions.
The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, acted at the behest of their leaders and members of a bipartisan, two-house conference committee that had spent at least 100 hours working out details of the measure with lobbyists for consumer groups, utilities, power generators and commercial energy users.
The most vocal cheerleader for the measure was state Sen. Steve Peace, a Democrat who chaired the conference committee's lengthy meetings, which had become known to Capitol wags as "the Steve Peace death march."
"Increased competition could drive the price down even further as other energy producers try to expand into California," Peace said as the committee ended its work. "This is designed to reduce costs to all consumers of all classes and simultaneously bring stability to the system," he opined at another point.

A few critics worried aloud that while the immense bill had been massaged to satisfy the many political and economic stakeholders, its provisions didn't necessarily constitute a workable overhaul of the state's $20 billion-plus power market. But Peace defended his process as well as his product. "That's the way democracy is supposed to work," he said. "You can go through and pick out the threads. What you have to look at is the fabric."

The 1996 utility deregulation measure, we now know, was one of the most ill-conceived, disastrous policy decisions ever made in the Capitol, leading to manipulation of the market by suppliers, serious shortages that brought the state to the verge of mass blackouts, and the financial collapse of two large utilities.

Given that history, it's not surprising that the current crop of Capitol politicians is very leery about voting for any sweeping utility or energy policy, as state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, experienced Thursday. His oft-amended legislation purporting to unring the deregulation bell and return California to a regulated utility system was rejected by the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. Three Republicans voted against his bill and all Democrats refused to vote, saying they wanted to be certain about its effects before associating themselves with it.

"I don't want to repeat what happened in '96 when a lot of legislators rushed," Assemblyman Manny Diaz, D-San Jose, said.

Exhortations from Dunn and Sen. Debra Bowen, a Marina del Rey Democrat who chairs the Senate's utility committee, that California needs a new energy policy now, fell on deaf ears.

"We don't have until next year to wait," Dunn said, later ascribing the committee's non-action to "underlying fear of casting a vote and ... not knowing what it will mean."

The Assembly members' reticence was well-justified, given the manner in which Dunn's bill came to the committee on the final day for action this year.

When it passed the Senate on June 5, it was nothing more than a shell containing the words: "This bill would provide that it shall not become operative, and that it is for display purposes only." Dunn filled in the blanks with a new version on July 1, then dropped an extensive rewrite on the Assembly committee last Tuesday, a move that was off-putting to Chairwoman Sarah Reyes. She insisted on a two-day delay before voting on the measure and warned Dunn and others involved that there would be "no other amendments. Everybody get that straight?"

Thursday's hearing was not even listed in the Assembly's daily file, thus giving non-lobbyists little opportunity to digest the bill's contents. Reyes entertained a few minutes of pro and con testimony before committee members began revealing their unwillingness to vote on such short notice on a complex measure whose ramifications could not be calculated.

California does need a new energy-utility policy structure to replace the mishmash that has evolved since the 1996 deregulation scheme collapsed, but it doesn't need another hastily written opus containing buzzwords whose meaning no one understands.