Members of the Conference’s Electric Utility Restructuring Task Force met June 9th to review the status of pending Congressional action on restructuring legislation and to consider aligning the Conference with a broad coalition of interests, known as the "Electricity Restructuring Stakeholders."

Convened by the Task Force Chair and North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays, panel members engaged in a dialogue with Mark Schwartz, Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Energy, on pending Congressional legislative action. Schwartz said that Congress was working on an expedited schedule to move electric restructuring legislation forward, noting that House and Senate Committees were tentatively scheduled to act the following week.

Schwartz talked about the many challenges before the Congress and the Administration in crafting a consensus package, emphasizing how reliability issues had moved up on the agenda. Schwartz also pointed out how there were concerns about reliability problems this summer in the Northeast and Southwest. He indicated observers now expect Congress to act on a reliability package this year, with a bigger bill moving next year in the new Congress.

Task Force members then discussed aligning the Conference with a new coalition, called the "Electricity Restructuring Stakeholders," which has developed a set of principles to guide Congressional action on utility restructuring legislation. More than 30 national organizations, alliances, smaller coalitions, individual public and private utilities have already signed on with the "Stakeholders" coalition.

This coalition effort, it was noted, is intended to prompt Congress to seek broader consensus on a legislative package. After discussion, it was agreed that the Conference would align itself with the "Stakeholders" position, with an agreement to work to further develop the coalition’s position pertaining to federal authority over bundled transmission services.    

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