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SACRAMENTO — California and federal energy regulators took turns blaming each other for the state’s power crisis Tuesday during the first of three days of a House subcommittee’s hearings. 

They were joined by the panel’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento, who defended the Bush administration’s attempts to fight California’s rising energy prices. 

Ose also blamed state officials and the Clinton administration, all Democrats, for not doing enough to combat the state’s power woes when they first surfaced last year. 

Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and other California officials have said the Bush administration and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must quickly rein in power prices before this summer. 

Ose, who chairs the Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, said the FERC acted quickly since President Bush took office Jan. 20 to order generators to justify their high electricity prices. 

PUC Chairwoman Loretta Lynch, who testified Tuesday, said her agency did act last year when it allowed utilities to enter into long-term contracts. However, those companies elected not to do that, she said. 

Kevin Madden, the FERC’s general counsel, said he estimated that long-term contracts could have saved California utilities $520 million in May 2000 alone. San Diego Gas & Electric, he said, could have saved $5 billion over a one-year period if it had entered a long-term contract with one generating company. 

“Had they done this, this is how much the consumers would ultimately save,” Madden said. 

Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who chairs the Government Reform Committee, said “everybody is pointing the finger at everybody else. I think there’s enough blame to go around.” 

Burton then blamed the FERC for not quickly forcing power generators to justify spiraling prices and said California’s grid operator, the Independent System Operator, should have explored using generators at prisons, hospitals and other facilities as stopgap measures for the summer. 

The ISO has said power generators have overcharged utilities billions of dollars more than the $124 million in sales questioned by the FERC so far. 

“The evidence is clear,” Lynch said of the alleged overcharges. “The problem is that the federal market cops aren’t doing their job.” 

ISO President and CEO Terry Winter and Lynch, along with Madden, testified Tuesday. They were joined by Central Valley farmers and food processors who said they have been devastated by high electricity prices and the uncertainties of rolling blackouts. Another witness, Lawrence Makovich of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said California fell into the energy crisis because of slow action by state regulators and the 1996 law that deregulated California’s utility industry. 

“Nobody did anything, year after year,” Makovich said. 

Ose said the hearings will likely result in federal legislation aimed at boosting supply, cutting demand and encouraging the rapid building of new power plants. He said 90 percent of the solution must come from state officials, not the federal government. 

All three House members who attended Tuesday’s hearing were Republicans – Ose, Burton, and Stephen Horn of Long Beach. 

FERC Chairman Curt Hebert is slated to testify Wednesday, when the hearings move from Sacramento to San Jose. Other witnesses at that hearing include representatives of Pacific Gas and Electric, which filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, and Southern California Edison, which agreed Monday to sell its power transmission lines to the state. 

Also Tuesday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali granted PG&E’s utility’s request to refund as much as $5.3 million in security deposits to business and residential customers. 

State regulators also gave the PG&E until April 26 to file accounting changes with the PUC, changes the utility says could prevent it from escaping a rate freeze that has been in effect since the state’s deregulation law took effect in 1998. 

Davis administration officials also continued their negotiations with San Diego Gas and Electric over the purchase of that utility’s transmission lines. 

Representatives of generators, which state officials have accused of price gouging, are scheduled for Thursday’s hearing in San Diego, along with FERC officials and representatives of SDG&E. 

While Davis and the governors of Oregon and Washington have blamed FERC for what call a regional problem requiring regional price controls, they were in the minority Tuesday in a meeting of state representatives and FERC commissioners. 

Eight of the 11 governors who sent representatives to the meeting in Boise, Idaho, have said caps would hinder expansion of energy supplies. 

California Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, called the Tuesday FERC meeting “surprisingly good.” 

The state’s delegation asked the FERC to implement cost-based pricing for 18 months. 

That, Hertzberg said, would give the measures enacted by the state time to take hold. Those measures include streamlining power plant construction, rate increases and $1 billion in energy conservation programs that Davis is expected to sign this week. 

Meanwhile Tuesday, the consumer group CAUSE, Campaign Against Utility Service Exploitation, filed a complaint with the state Audit Bureau accusing the PUC of violating the 1996 deregulation law by raising Edison and PG&E rates. 

WHAT’S HAPPENED 

• The state is under no power alerts in the early morning as reserves stay above 7 percent. 

• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission holds a conference in Boise, Idaho, on Western energy issues. 

• The first of three House Government Reform Committee hearings begin in Sacramento. 

• The consumer group Campaign Against Utility Service Exploitation, or CAUSE, plans to file a complaint with the state Audit Bureau accusing state regulators of improperly raising Edison and PG&E rates while a rate freeze called for under the state’s 1996 utility deregulation law was in effect. 

THE PROBLEM: 

High demand, high wholesale energy costs, transmission glitches and a tight supply worsened by scarce hydroelectric power in the Northwest and maintenance at aging California power plants are all factors in California’s electricity crisis. 

Edison and PG&E say they’ve lost nearly $14 billion since June to high wholesale prices that the state’s electricity deregulation law bars them from passing onto ratepayers. PG&E, saying it hasn’t received the help it needs from regulators or state lawmakers, filed for federal bankruptcy protection April 6. 

The Public Utilities Commission has raised rates up to 46 percent to help finance the state’s multibillion-dollar power-buying. 

Even before those increases, California residents paid some of the highest prices in the nation for electricity. Federal statistics from October show residential customers in California paid an average of 10.7 cents per kilowatt hour, or 26 percent more than the nationwide average of 8.5 cents. Only customers in New England, New York, Alaska and Hawaii paid more. 

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On the Net: 

California ISO: www.caiso.com 

FERC: www.ferc.gov 

House subcommittee: http://www.house.gov/reform/reg/