Utilities/Other

The Dallas Morning News 01/11/03

AUSTIN - In search of ways to dig out of a fiscal mess, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said Friday that Texas should join a multistate lottery, trim health costs, make state workers pay more to see a doctor and consolidate energy regulators.

Mrs. Strayhorn said her proposals were carefully weighed with a goal of "making our state government leaner, but not meaner."

Among them: merging the state Railroad Commission and Public Utility Commission; eliminating the state's aircraft pool and hiring a private charter service for officials' in-state travel; and consolidating a host of health-and-welfare agencies into five.

A leading consumer advocate said her group supports merging the two agencies, so commissioners view "the big picture as far as energy goes." But Janee Briesemeister with Consumers Union in Austin objected to electing the commissioners. Companies regulated by the Railroad Commission have been among the biggest contributors to its members, she said.

"Without some significant campaign finance reform, we see that you get a regulatory agency by and for the regulated industry," she said.

Cost of telephone services rising
Austin American Statesman 01/04/03

Deregulation is usually touted as good for the consumer's pocketbook.
But try telling that to customers of the two biggest local phone companies in Texas, Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. and Verizon Communications Inc. Each company has raised prices for so-called custom calling services such as caller ID since a 1999 state law allowed them to charge whatever they wanted.

Consumer activists say the charges for custom services show that there isn't enough competition for residential customers.

"The phone companies are raising prices because they can," said Janee Briesemeister, senior policy analyst for Consumers Union's southwest regional office in Austin. "There is no regulatory check and no competitive check, and so consumers are stuck paying more money."

Not every custom calling service offered by Southwestern Bell and Verizon went up, but Briesemeister said many of the most popular services did. Under an agreement with the Legislature, the charge for one custom service, call waiting, remains unchanged from 1999 at $2.80 a month.

Briesemeister says Consumers Union will use the phone companies' record on custom calling services to fight what it expects will be further deregulation efforts in the session.

Comptroller's savings plan: 'leaner ... not meaner' budget Multistate lottery pushed

The powers that be
Fort Worth Star Telegram 12/30/02

Some deregulation critics worry that the financial troubles of the utilities and merchant generators such as Calpine of San Jose, Calif., and Mirant of Atlanta bode ill for future needed expansion of Texas' generating capacity. Generating plants are expensive, and the financial markets appear to be spooked by difficulties in the utility industry.

Texas may have a surplus of electricity generation now, but we worry about five or seven years out when we need more generation and it won't be there because the marketplace won't allocate capital for new generators," says Janee Briesemeister of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

Mobile home complaints will go to public
San Antonio Express-News 12/21/02

Consumers soon will be able to see for themselves which mobile home manufacturers have received the most complaints, once the state begins publicizing its quality lists.

The Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy group, had asked the state to release information to the public after it ranked manufacturers by the number of complaints received between June 1998 and July 2002.

Kevin Jewell, the Consumers Union policy associate who prepared the report, said it made the complaint ratio to show the state agency it could be compiled easily. Consumers Union also made numerous recommendations about responding to complaints that the agency since has announced it will do.

"Once consumers are able to make decisions based on problems consumers have had, it will give manufacturers incentive to work with consumers," he said. "And it will make them satisfied so they don't want to complain. Consumers don't go through a formal process unless they're pretty upset."

Prepaid phone card PROVIDERS
San Antonio Express-News 12/18/02

In contrast to the rest of the beleaguered telecommunications industry, the prepaid phone card market is ringing up serious growth.

Prepaid cards, especially popular with immigrants looking for the best rates when calling home, have blossomed into a $3.6 billion-a-year business, from about $750 million in 1995.

What's more, they're increasingly popular with mainstream consumers as a thrifty option for long-distance calling.

While the cards - sold in denominations of $5, $10 and $20 everywhere from gas stations to shopping clubs - can offer good bargains, consumer advocates and some in the industry warn that confusing charges, deceptive advertising and outright scams also abound. Some prepaid cards promise low per-minute rates but are laden with high surcharges and connection fees that quickly add up. Others list customer-service numbers that ring unanswered.

"Some of these cards are very good deals, especially for people calling overseas," said Janee Briesemeister, senior policy analyst for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. "But you need to be careful because there may be surcharges and minimum charges."

FORT WORTH--SBC will continue to delay upgrading some Tarrant County neighborhoods for high-speed Internet access unless some government regulations are lifted, executives told Fort Worth business and political leaders at a luncheon Tuesday.

The San Antonio-based company said regulations that require SBC to provide networks to its competitors at a discount are inhibiting its investment in digital subscriber line (DSL) technology.

But consumer advocacy groups disagree that legislation will give consumers more high-speed Internet choices.

"This is all about protecting SBC," said Janee Briesemeister, a senior policy analyst at Consumers Union. "The only thing that these telephone giants hate more than regulation is competition."

Briesemeister said local telephone companies were overexuberant in the late 1990s on spending projections and have had to pull back because of the slow economy. But the companies are blaming regulatory policy for their financial problems, she said.