AUSTIN - As many as 150,000 TXU customers have gone without bills - some for as long as four months - because of continuing problems with electric deregulation in Texas, a top company official said Wednesday.

Another 90,000 Reliant Energy customers have not been billed since January, an official with the Houston company said.

Some Texas customers received huge four-month bills, while others still haven't been billed.

Those delays and errors were outlined Wednesday during a tense meeting of lawmakers overseeing the state's new deregulation law. State Rep. Kim Brimer joined others in hinting that new leadership may soon be needed at the state's electric grid.

"Who here can fire you?" Brimer, R-Fort Worth, asked power grid director Tom Noel.

Noel said, "You probably could." But it wouldn't be quite that simple, because the power grid's board has the authority to fire and hire a chief executive officer.

Known as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the grid coordinates transactions between electric providers and other entities in Texas. ERCOT engineers also manage a multimillion-dollar computer system created specifically for deregulation.

Noel blamed computer glitches, data input errors and miscommunication with power companies for the ongoing problems. But even so, the error rate in switching customers between electric companies has declined over the last four months, even as the organization processes more of those transactions, he said.

He also told lawmakers that ERCOT has an 81 percent success rate in switching customers between companies in a timely manner. "I am doing everything I know to do and my staff is doing everything they know to do to get that accelerated," he said.

But state Rep. Steve Wolens, the Dallas Democrat who heads the oversight committee, said he wanted problems fixed before the end of the year. 'You have to work better, faster," he said.

State Rep. Syvlester Turner, D-Houston, also called for a quick fix to the billing problems. "Excuses don't work anymore: If this is not worked out, someone has to be held accountable," he said.

The deregulation law also drove new political allegations leveled Wednesday by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez. During a news conference just a few blocks away from the oversight committee hearing, Sanchez laid the blame for higher electric bills this summer at the feet of Gov. Rick Perry.

Sanchez noted that a Perry appointee to the Texas Public Utility Commission was a former Enron executive, and that the PUC recently voted to inflate electric rates in a way that indirectly benefits an Enron offshoot company.

Sanchez cited lawsuits by a coalition of Texas cities that said the Perry appointee - former PUC Chairman Max Yzaguirre - should have recused himself from various rate cases that indirectly benefited that offshoot company.

Yzaguirre resigned about a month after the rate decision amid a flurry of conflict-of-interest allegations. He could not be reached to comment Wednesday.

"This summer, Texans will face higher electric bills because Rick Perry thought he could get away with allowing an Enron executive to control the PUC," Sanchez said. "It should have never happened and Texas consumers should not have to pay millions because Rick Perry wants to pay off debts to special-interest contributors."

A spokesman for Perry, who announced earlier this week that the campaign had returned about $85,000 in Enron-related campaign contributions to an Enron employee relief fund, called the charges "misguided and misinformed."

"Max Yzaguirre opposed Enron's wishes while he served as chairman of the Public Utility Commission - and the decision [in the rate case] was contrary to what most big power companies wanted," spokesman Ray Sullivan said.

The hearing came a day after the Star-Telegram reported allegations in lawsuits brought by Fort Worth, Arlington and scores of other Texas cities that electric rates were inflated to the benefit of an Enron offshoot, and suggesting that Yzaguirre and fellow commissioner Brett Perlman should have recused themselves because of their past association with Enron.

On Wednesday, Perlman called those allegations "spurious." Perlman did consulting work for Enron before taking his position at the PUC.

Sanchez called for an independent investigation by the Office of Public Utility Counsel and the attorney general's office into the lawsuits' allegations. He also renewed his call for merging the PUC and the Railroad Commission into one publicly elected body.

Star Telegram

-- Anonymous, May 22, 2002