> Wilson admitted publicly that defects in the deregulation...
For anyone who may be less familiar with 90s CA politics, this refers to then governor Pete Wilson (R) who was responsible for the utility deregulation which then became an albatross around his successors' necks.
Indeed, the establishment of the Democratic party was very in on the deregulation fever at the time, as were many rank and file voters. It was a trope of the time. This was a case of bipartisan unity on what was in retrospect terrible legislation.
"Deregulation" is a term that doesn't convey much information. In Australia we 'deregulated' the power industry. That means that we swapped shareholders in for government collecting the profit and removed some of the regulations.
The problem is that the remaining regulations created a hugely complicated market and still involved a lot of price controls for arbitrary things. Eg, "network charges component of retail electricity prices is set ... by the Australian Energy Regulator ... based on ...operational and maintenance expenditure" [0]. So we have an unregulated market where the cost of electricity goes crazy because wholesalers overspend on grid maintenance and get no-risk profit.
I don't know how California tried to do it, but in Australia deregulation didn't mean 'try and set prices using a market'. That was too hard and they didn't manage to set up a system that worked. It meant 'try and redirect profit from government to private enterprise'. Not surprisingly, the whole system is a disaster and worse than if they hadn't ever tried. I still think an actual free-market system would have worked but the design might be too delicate to run the political gauntlet and get legislated.
"According to a 2007 study of Department of Energy data by Power in the Public Interest, retail electricity prices rose much more from 1999 to 2007 in states that adopted deregulation than in those that did not.[23]"
> Wilson admitted publicly that defects in the deregulation...
For anyone who may be less familiar with 90s CA politics, this refers to then governor Pete Wilson (R) who was responsible for the utility deregulation which then became an albatross around his successors' necks.