GOP Launches Final Drive to Block Freeman as Power Czar Choice

As time runs short on S. David Freeman as chief of the new state public power authority, Senate Republicans on Thursday launched a final campaign to derail his confirmation to the $220,000-a-year position.

Republicans have suggested that under Freeman, the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water last year charged excessive prices and may have manipulated the market when it sold surplus electricity to the state during the energy crisis.

In a legislative deposition last week, Freeman, who volunteered to testify and insisted that the session be public, said that if traders in the Los Angeles department engaged in improper sales practices, they occurred without his knowledge and against his orders.

Gov. Gray Davis appointed Freeman chairman of the California Consumer Power and Conservation Authority one year ago after he had served as an advisor to the governor during the electricity crisis. Unless Freeman is confirmed by the Senate on Monday, he will be turned out of the post Tuesday.

But minority Senate Republicans indicated Thursday that Freeman’s answers did not satisfy them.

Senior GOP Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine said Republicans still have questions about Freeman’s record.

He urged senators to read the transcript of Freeman’s eight-hour deposition during the weekend.

He did not indicate what the transcript would reveal but warned his colleagues against “putting yourself in the position of casting a vote potentially ... in ignorance of the background and problems of this nominee.”

In a brief interview, Freeman later said he told all during the deposition taken by Sen. William Morrow (R-Oceanside), a member of a special Senate committee investigating alleged price gouging by generators during the energy crunch.

“We went at it for eight hours. I answered every question not only under oath but fully. There aren’t any questions left,” Freeman said.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) said he believed that Freeman will receive enough votes from majority Democrats to win confirmation Monday.

To do so, Freeman needs 21 votes in the 40-member Senate.

But one potentially pivotal member, Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove), the Senate’s expert on energy price gouging by generators, said he had not decided how he will vote.

Other Democrats said Dunn’s vote would help influence their decision.

Dunn, chairman of the energy crisis investigating committee, said he intended to read the transcript during the weekend.

In a separate action, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Davis’ appointment of financier Haim Saban of Los Angeles and business magnate Richard Blum, both generous Democratic campaign contributors, as regents of the University of California.

Blum is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

In February, Saban donated a record $7 million to the Democratic National Committee.