SACRAMENTO, CA - Gray Davis is a desperate man. Through his inaction, procrastination, and bad policy choices, Davis has turned what should have been a very solvable electricity problem into probably the worst disaster that has ever hit California. And Davis knows it, which explains his increasingly bizarre behavior. Indeed, the governor appears to be melting down before our eyes.

Take, for example, Davis’s recent tantrum in front of the State Senate’s Republican Caucus. Davis wanted the Republican senators to support his plan to have the state purchase Southern California Edison’s transmission lines. Davis claims that state ownership of Edison’s part of the transmission grid is necessary in order to infuse necessary cash into Edison so that the company can stave off bankruptcy and to upgrade and expand the grid to meet increased consumer demand for electricity. There are, however, huge problems with Davis’s proposal.

First, government ownership of the transmission lines does not create any new supply of electricity, nor does it reduce demand. Also, state purchase of the transmission lines would require federal approval because they are part of an interstate network. That approval process could take as much as two years. The state would not be able to sell any bonds to finance the purchase until the deal receives that federal approval.

Although Davis has struck a deal with Edison, PG&E’s bankruptcy filing most likely takes that company’s lines off the bargaining table. Yet, in February, Davis himself said that it made little sense for the state to buy only Edison’s share of the grid. That’s because without PG&E’s lines, the state wouldn’t be able to make key upgrades of the lines since many of the worst transmission bottlenecks are in PG&E territory.

Davis wants legislators to forget his earlier words and approve the Edison deal. The Republican senators, however, weren’t buying it. In response to their opposition, Davis went berserk. According to Senator Tom McClintock, Davis “completely lost control of himself at one point in the caucus meeting” and launched into an obscenity-laced tirade. McClintock said that, “The panic was very clear in his demeanor.” Senator Bill Morrow observed that, “The f-word was prominent and repeated.”

But why was Davis so upset? Was it because of his concern for the welfare of the people of California? No, it was concern for his own political future that evidently motivated the gubernatorial flip-out. Senator Morrow noted that the governor was most concerned about being blamed for the electricity debacle: “He said, ‘I am not taking the fall for this.’”

Davis may not find much more support for his scheme among his fellow Democrats. Democrat Assemblyman Dean Florez says that, “It was a tough sell to begin with, and I think if you are going to only buy part, it becomes a tougher sell.”

It’s obvious that Gray Davis has totally lost control over the electricity crisis. He’s behaving like a train engineer who realizes that there’s another train heading right for him on the same track. The crash is inevitable, and while he may have been able to divert his train miles back, he can’t do anything to stop the pile-up now. The trouble is, we Californians are passengers on Gray Davis’s train.

- Lance T. Izumi