There's nothing like a loss of local control to agitate San Diegans. That was the threat in the late 1980s when Los Angeles-based Southern California Edison tried to gobble up San Diego Gas & Electric, bringing together Mayor Maureen O'Connor and the San Diego Chamber of Commerce in a united, successful fight against their own utility, which had approved the proposed merger. To its credit, the Chamber lost its biggest member.

Passionately, some San Diegans will fight for the right to beat on their own representatives. But do we then exercise the right? Most often not. When was the last time you called Steve Baum, Rich Collato, Dan Derbes, Robert Goldsmith, William Jones, Ralph Ocampo or Tom Stickel, the San Diegans on the Sempra Energy board? If O'Connor hadn't saved SDG&E for San Diegans, they wouldn't be on the Sempra board today.

So we fought for the right to have them on our own board, but who queried them when they supported the so-called deregulation within Senate Bill 1890 in 1996, the legislation championed by Sen. Steve Peace?

When was the last time you gave the headline-grabbing Peace a piece of your mind? Hey, if you like what Peace did for San Diego’s electricity rates, you'll love his affair with RITA, the Regional I’ll Tell-you-how-to-run-San Diego-and-you'll-like-it Act, his proposed new government that sensitively balances the needs of Fallbrook and Imperial Beach. This from an El Cajon guy who's lived in Sacramento since the 1970s? Perhaps he's not as smart as he claims. Perhaps he's mostly aggressive. Perhaps he’ll shout you down at the hint of disagreement. Cheryle Besemer and Dick Cloward are way too light on him on Page 55.

And why did UCAN's Michael Shames back off his opposition to the so-called deregulation? He claims he's mad at himself now for backing off four years ago. So UCAN't count on Shames to do the right thing for consumers?

Now everyone's mad at someone. So, yes, you can be angry at Mayor Susan Golding for kowtowing to O'Connor at a joint press conference. Why not? You probably voted for her for not being O'Connor.

In declaring states of emergency a few days ago, the San Diego City Council and Board of Supervisors have sent a fine message to the rest of the world, including those who had considered corporate and job relocations to San Diego. You think there's an emergency today? It’s nothing compared to the San Diego of 2005, when the job-creation pipeline has dried up. Or maybe you didn’t hear that both of San Diego’s mayoral candidates, Ron Roberts and Dick Murphy, declared they would de-emphasize (i.e., reduce funding) to the Economic Development Corp., which had been charged with recruiting business and jobs to the region. You do realize that the alternative to creating new jobs at a fast clip is to create unemployment at a fast clip? Demographers say those living here will continue growing families like rabbits, regardless of mayoral inaction. Do the candidates really believe if they close the spigot of job creation that immigrants and our children automatically will go elsewhere?

Do you remember the double-digit unemployment rates during O'Connor's mayoral term, while the population continued to grow?

Just when San Diegans thought they could bask through a summer of the best economy they'd ever seen — peacetime unemployment at 3.whocares percent, the Padres ballpark funded until October, a new central library safely assured in the new century — the cost hits the fan.

Here we have Attachment I to Sempra CEO Baum's letter to Gov. Davis, in which our chairman-to-be, who we saved from SCE's clutches, advocates the "Level Payment Plan" to help ameliorate San Diego’s suddenly high electricity rates. And on the very bottom, following three footnotes in six-point type, comes the fourth footnote: "****Levelized bills will provide lower bills in the summer and higher bills in the winter months..." Well, dang, SDG&E's best temporary solution will only postpone the problem for a few months.

We are much more fond of Baum's Attachment II to the governor, especially under Long Term Initiatives: "Exercise the governor's emergency power to accelerate the licensing process for new generation and electric and gas transmission facilities in California to increase the state's energy infrastructure, as recommended by Senators Peace and Brulte. This will bring supply of electricity more in line with demand and exert downward pressure on commodity prices. (And) speed construction of a new high voltage electric transmission line — the Valley-Rainbow line — which will add another electrical grid connection in the northern part of SDG&E's service territory..."

Now you’re talkin'. We saw how Pete Wilson tickled those freeways and bridges back to full erection after every earthquake with simple declarations of emergency. No time-burning EIRs are needed when the public's environment gets nasty enough. Just get in there and do the job before the urgency goes limp.

And now we’re getting closer to the crux of the problem, insufficient construction of power plants to meet a fast-growing population. PG&E's proposed Otay Mesa power plant should be approved and built immediately. But it’s a shame it’s not SDG&E's power plant. Who's going to beat on PG&E's directors 500 miles away?

The 1996 legislation championed by Peace was, at best, mistakenly sold as "deregulation." It was in fact re-regulation of what remains the most regulated industry in California, a restructuring that allowed SDG&E to sell its local power plants, prevented it from building new ones at home, while encouraging Sempra to invest in a new plant far afield in — give us a break — Henderson, Nev. Now re-regulation is necessary again, this time, we expect, with an agitated public paying better attention to consumer protection and local control.

How agitated? The politicians and the press have done a fine job in recent weeks of reflecting the dire circumstances of poor people who cannot afford to pay doubled electric bills. An old lady fixed on $400 a month can’t very well survive power bills jumping from $40 to $80. We ask you, too, to consider the plight of small business people like Al Kazzazi, who runs B.B.'s Deli on Fifth Avenue and Big Top Pizza in Golden Hill. B.B.'s power bill grew from $460 in June to $822 in July; Big Top's from $400 to $650. "I’m trying to absorb the cost," says Kazzazi. "I went from a little profit to no profit. There's no choice but to pass the rate hikes onto the consumer." San Diego’s inflation rate, always led by real estate, is about to accelerate.

And just think. Al Kazzazi won’t need Ron Roberts' or Dick Murphy's help to refrain from adding any employees.

Whew, have to go now. No joking; the landlord shut off the air conditioner two hours ago and there is no fan.