BUSH NEGLECTS CALIFORNIA

Sacramento Bee: Nearly three months into his term, President Bush has yet to visit California, the nation's largest and most economically dynamic state and, unfortunately, epicenter of an energy earthquake that's rippling across the West. The other day, a high-ranking White House official told the New York Times that Bush's absence reflects an attitude of "benign neglect" toward California.
Some speculate that Bush's inattention to the state reflects the fact that California voters backed his opponent in the November election. But so did a plurality of the voters nationally. No one suggests that it would be prudent for Bush to ignore the country as a whole. It would make no more sense to let California's vote determine whether the president will do his job in the state.
The other theory is that the administration is reluctant to get tied up in the state's electricity mess. But that can't be right either.
Wholesale power costs: The administration can't avoid getting involved because the federal government, namely the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is already a big piece of the problem. The financial side of the crisis is driven in large part by the huge run-up over the last year in wholesale power costs. That owes much to the failure of federal regulators to stop the manipulation of the market and put in place controls that keep electricity producers from exploiting the shortage of power in the West. The question is not whether Bush is involved, but whether he will be seen as helping or hurting.
Californians don't pine for a presidential visit. If the White House has decided, in the words of one adviser, not to practice "photo op politics" in the state, that's well and good. California doesn't need the president to be seen here; what it needs from the administration is realistic governing and attention to real problems.
And that must start with the president setting his new appointees to FERC on a more sensible course. Federal law requires the wholesale electricity prices over which FERC has jurisdiction to be just and reasonable. No one can believe that the prices in the current market come close to meeting that standard.
California alone faces a tenfold increase in its total electricity costs this year, to an estimated $70 billion, unless FERC steps in to rein in the market, and the economic damage is spreading to neighboring states. Unless the federal government steps in to do its job and restore sanity to the market, there's a risk of state and/or voter action that will only make matters worse.
Energy economists in California have proposed ways that FERC can regulate the excesses of the market while keeping in place the price signals needed to encourage both conservation and new generating capacity. What California needs is some action from the White House. Unless it comes soon, come summer, "benign neglect" is going to look a lot more like malignant neglect, not just in California, but across the West.