PUC member offers new bill of rights.

Byline: Rick Jurgens

Jan. 26--SAN FRANCISCO -- Public Utilities Commission member Dian Grueneich proposed Wednesday that California reinstate its suspended bill of rights for telephone customers and restore restrictions on unauthorized bill charges and other rules omitted from a rival proposal. "I am hoping that mine will be viewed as a middle ground between a much more onerous" set of rules implemented in 2004 and a looser plan backed by PUC President Mike Peevey, Grueneich said in a news conference.

Grueneich dismissed the Peevey proposal, which was drafted by Susan Kennedy, a former PUC member who is now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, as only "a statement of principles." The PUC has been grappling for six years with the problem of how to oversee a fast-growing telephone industry where new wireless technologies compete with traditional wired telephone networks and where federal law and some state policies seek to displace regulation with competition. Last year Grueneich joined Peevey and Kennedy in a vote that suspended an earlier and tougher version of the bill of rights. Grueneich split with them Wednesday by putting out an alternative version of the plan that would restore some of those suspended rules. She said she sought to "strike the right balance" between the need for consumer protections and a desire to encourage competition and innovation. Grueneich, who faces an uphill battle to gain three votes for her proposal on the five-member PUC, said in an interview that she hoped for a compromise to emerge before a vote that is expected no earlier than March 2. A key consumer advocacy group embraced Grueneich's proposal. "It brings back a lot of the crucial provisions" from the suspended bill of rights, said Christine Mailloux, an analyst for the Utility Reform Network. Several minority rights groups welcomed a proposed requirement that contracts be translated to match sales materials in other languages. That measure was "long overdue, given the changing nature of the California population," including 13 million residents who do not speak English as their primary language, ...