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STATEMENT OF MARK CRISSON 



Mr. Crisson. Grood morning, Chairman DeFazio and Congress- 

 man LaRocco. My name is Mark Crisson and I am the director of 

 Tacoma Public Utilities, Tacoma, Washington. 



I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the Pub- 

 lic Generating Pool which is an association of eight public utilities 

 in Oregon and Washington, three municipal utilities — ^Tacoma City 

 Light, Seattle City Light, Eugene Water and Electric Board — and 

 five PUDs in the State of Washington. We serve our customers 

 with a combination of purchases from Bonneville and from our own 

 generating facilities. In 1992 the PGP utilities accounted for about 

 15 percent of Bonneville's sales in the Northwest. We are also ex- 

 tensive users of the Bonneville transmission system. And the PGP 

 utilities are also very active in Bonneville's conservation program 

 and implementation. 



I want to focus primarily on the issue of competitiveness and 

 make a few comments on that and then talk a little bit about some 

 of the concerns we have about what we see as a transition from 

 Bonneville today to a more competitive Bonneville in the future. 



As we have heard this morning, Bonneville has come under in- 

 creasing pressure to become more competitive. As you have heard 

 from other witnesses, its customers face these same pressures. We 

 support the efforts of this task force and Bonneville and its cus- 

 tomers to find ways to make Bonneville more efficient and more ef- 

 fective. Many of Bonneville's public utility customers have under- 

 gone similar kinds of efforts that the Administrator discussed ear- 

 lier today or are in the process of doing so. I would like to comment 

 that I believe the Administrator is to be commended for initiating 

 a number of the things he described this morning. I know the 

 Leadership EDGE, for example, which is undertaking to fundamen- 

 tally change the organizational culture, puts a tremendous demand 

 on top manager's time. It is a process that is going to require some 

 time to make any progress. I am very encouraged to see that start. 

 The function-by-function review, which involved a number of Bon- 

 neville's customers, is 'also off* to a good start. I think under the cir- 

 cumstances the Bonneville management team is doing an excellent 

 job and we support the effort. 



Much of the attention to date is emphasized in the need to cut 

 unnecessary costs and programs. We concur that those are impor- 

 tant objectives. Consequently, we do support looking at this option 

 of the government corporation in order to streamline some of the 

 federal procurement and work force management rules that Bonne- 

 ville now has to follow. 



Another important aspect of Bonneville competitiveness is the 

 whole issue of the need for Bonneville to refocus itself on a well- 

 defined set of core services. We propose that BPA rededicate itself 

 to providing basically three types of service to the region by 

 unbundling its current service and that those services be offered at 

 cost, as has been strongly urged by a number of other witnesses 

 today. 



The first service would be that which Congress originally created 

 Bonneville to provide; namely, the marketing of power produced by 

 the federal Columbia and Snake River systems along with other re- 

 sources in the federal base system. PGP believes that Bonneville 



