SDG&E;’s Page Continues to Defend Plan to Merge

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. Chairman Thomas Page maintained Thursday that merging the San Diego utility with SCEcorp’s Southern California Edison subsidiary is “in the best interests of our customers and the community.”

“Benefits to our customers and the community will become clear, and public support for the merger will increase,” Page wrote in a letter delivered Thursday to San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

Page’s letter responded to concerns that O’Connor raised about the proposed merger in a Dec. 12 letter to the utility’s board of directors. In that letter, O’Connor asked board members to reconsider their vote to accept SCEcorp’s merger offer.

The utility executive’s 3 1/2-page letter was “a public-relations effort,” O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey said Thursday. “We still have the same concerns we had before, and we think that (SDG&E;’s board of directors) should reconsider their vote.”

O’Connor will soon send yet another letter to Page and SDG&E;’s remaining board members to express “our disappointment,” Downey said.

The mayor will now focus her attention on revoking the city’s franchise agreement with SDG&E; and on a feasibility study to help determine whether the San Diego County Water Authority should take over and operate SDG&E.;

Under the franchise agreement, SDG&E; is entitled to a monopoly within the city limits. If that agreement is altered by a change in ownership, the city argues, the city has the right to reject the new ownership.

O’Connor’s expected action comes on the heels of the recent resignations of Charles (Red) Scott and O. Morris Sievert from the SDG&E;’s board of directors in protest of the board’s decision to accept SCEcorp’s merger offer.

Through spokesmen, Scott and Sievert expressed concern that the proposed merger is not in the best interest of San Diego County.

In his letter, Page attempted to defuse the three major arguments that O’Connor made in her Dec. 12 letter:

- Page acknowledged that 1,000 jobs would probably be lost through the proposed merger. However, he wrote, those losses would occur at both Edison and SDG&E.; And, “most of these reductions will result from job attrition . . . as employees retire or leave for positions with other firms.”

- Page repeated his oft-stated stance that rates for San Diegans would not skyrocket because of the proposed merger. The merger “will enable us to maintain lower rates to a greater degree than SDG&E; could do alone,” Page wrote.

- Page denied that San Diegans would have to pay higher electric rates if the state Public Utilities Commission hit SCEcorp with a $124-million penalty for alleged “self-dealing” between two of its subsidiaries. Any penalty would “result in a rate decrease for customers . . . (because) SCEcorp shareholders will be required to pay for that,” Page wrote.

Times staff writer Leonard Bernstein contributed to this story.