Despite their financial woes, California's two biggest investor-owned utilities and their parent companies spent more than $2.3 million last year on political campaigns.
A third, more financially stable utility giant, Sempra Energy, put nearly $500,000 into campaign coffers, according to reports available Thursday.
Gov. Gray Davis and legislative leaders were among the utilities' biggest recipients. Lawmakers and the governor are struggling with legislation to keep the two biggest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison, solvent.
A bill allowing the state to buy power for PG&E and Southern California Edison customers was signed by Davis on Thursday. Lawmakers and Davis are still working on a bill that would allow the state to issue revenue bonds to help the utilities to pay off their debts.
One of the utilities' most outspoken critics, consumer advocate Harvey Rosenfield, said the contributions "seem to be the ultimate insult to voters."
"We have been told we have to conserve, that there are power outages, that utility companies are near bankruptcy. Now we find out that the utilities are paying the politicians hand over fist," he said.
He contended the donations were designed to "grease the bailout" for the struggling utility companies.
An Edison spokesman, Tommy Ross, denied that the company had tried to "grease the way for anything."
Since December, he said, Edison has turned down requests for more than $250,000 in campaign donations because of its financial problems.
"We made a very conscious decision toward the latter part of last year that we could no longer afford this," he said.
Davis has raised more than $703,000 from the three utilities over his nearly 20 years in California politics, but his chief political adviser, Garry South, said that amounts to an "infinitesimal percentage" of all of his donations.
Davis spent $35.3 million in his campaign for governor and has raised more than $27 million since taking office.<
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