Guns and Power

As the California Legislature heads toward a typically tumultuous climax today and Thursday, a few measures deserve special priority and attention. Chief among them is Assemblyman Jack Scott’s (D-Altadena) bill to require Californians to obtain a license before they can buy a handgun. Prospective gun buyers would have to pass a written exam and a firing-range test with live ammunition before the five-year license could be issued. This is a strong safety measure that will save lives. It should become law.

Scott’s measure faces a tough vote in the Assembly and a possible veto by Gov. Gray Davis. The governor has said he wants to give existing gun control bills time to work before adopting more firearms legislation. But Scott’s measure stands alone as an effective safety program and is necessary regardless of how the new measures perform.

Scott is correct when he says, “It’s just common sense that if you license drivers, you should also license gun owners.” Senate opponents scoffed at such rationality. Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside) claimed that a 16-year-old driving a car is more dangerous than a 16-year-old with a gun. He also, even more ridiculously, cited “misused” microwave ovens as more dangerous. The fact is that only guns are designed and made primarily to kill or wound.

Another top legislative priority is relief for homeowners and businesses served by the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. Their electricity bills have more than doubled this spring and summer, and, with their neighbors in southern Orange County, they became front-line casualties of California’s experiment with electric power deregulation. The utility was the first to sell off its power plants and shed a rate freeze that remains in effect throughout most of the rest of California.

On Tuesday, the state Senate passed a new bill that would cap San Diego’s rates at 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, about one-third the current rate. The cut is retroactive to June 1 so ratepayers would get credit on the escalated bills they paid this summer. The measure also gives the Public Utilities Commission authority to adjust the rate, up or down, every six months. To meet a Republican demand, the bill was tied to another measure to streamline power plant licensing. But more work remained to be done on the issue.

The important point was to achieve a rate cap by the end of the session. The question of holding the utility blameless for the excess charges or compensating ratepayers with state funds can be handled, if necessary, in a proposed special session of the Legislature or at the start of the 2001-02 session in January.

Other measures deserving passage and the signature of Davis in the hectic final hours:

* SB 546 by Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente) to increase weekly unemployment compensation payments from the current maximum of $230 to $300 on Jan. 1, $340 in 2002 and $380 in 2003.

* AB 356 by Assemblyman Carl Washington (D-Paramount) to create an enterprise zone in the city of Compton, providing tax and hiring incentives and credits to retain business and attract new enterprises. Similar bills have died in committee or been vetoed in the previous three years. Compton needs this help.

* AB 717 by Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) would impose a two-year moratorium on clear-cutting timber lands in the state pending a report from an independent scientific panel on the effects of clear-cutting on the environment and the economics of clear-cutting as compared to more selective timber harvesting.