128 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. I thank you for that answer. Just a com- 

 ment that, by the way, in my opinion, that's why this country is 

 $4 trillion in debt. We have taken short-term exercises for long- 

 term benefits. Th£ink you. 



Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. It sounded like we started 

 to talk about entitlements there for a moment. I kind of got off on 

 that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when we deal with the 

 Federal budget. 



Just one last observation in terms of the overhead. That report, 

 again, and Ms. Hickey alluded to this, that the number of staff in- 

 volved in negotiations is going to be scoped out. But they did say 

 that the number of staff is roughly 4-10 times the number of staff 

 used by other utilities, even after adjusting for size of program and 

 part-time and fall-time involvement when they're talking about re- 

 source acquisition. 



I'm always careful when we're talking about staff because you're 

 talking about people's Uves and jobs. On the other hand, if we are 

 going to enter tlus new era of competitiveness and reinvention, 

 there are going to have to be some changes here. 



Ms. Hickey. That's a focus area for our function-by-function re- 

 view, which is part of the competitiveness project. We're looking at 

 each of the key functions and identifying opportunity areas where 

 we can become more efficient, both cost- wise and staff- wise. An 

 area that we've targeted for about 50 percent savings is the genera- 

 tion acquisition area, and we think we're well on the road, that 

 we're already very close to there. 



So those numbers reflected our early attempts and we've made 

 radical changes since you received those numbers. 



Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. What 111 do is 111 give one minute for 

 anybody who wants it. This has been a very long panel. Go ahead, 

 Mr. Grace. 



Mr. Grace. I'd just like to make one observation from Ustening 

 here. There almost seems to be the tone here that you have to do 

 your conservation before you get to do your Tenaska. There's a lit- 

 tle of that in the testimony; not in here, but in the testimony I've 

 read. 



The 1991 power plan, we didn't preclude any resource that was 

 cost-effective and we didn't say it had to be done in any one order. 

 We said we need at this time to do all of these things at once in 

 order to meet the power demands of the region. 



This sometimes gets to be ideologically a little bit like if you 

 don't eat your spinach, you don't get your ice cream, and yet, we 

 need both the spinach and the ice cream for nourishment. 



Mr. DeFazio. Spinach ice cream. We've got it down in Eugene. 

 It's good. Anybodv else? Yes, Sue. 



Ms. Hickey. Id just like to make a parting comment on con- 

 servation as a social agenda versus conservation as a resource. 

 Conservation is definitely treated as a resource at Bonneville. It is 

 our highest priority resource. And Angus' point aside, we have 

 come up with multiple-year deals. We're trying to make some more 

 efforts towards that in the future. 



But in every other way, conservation is treated as a resource. 

 That does not at all change the fact that as we move to a more 

 competitive arena, there will be a lot of challenges on the definition 



