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ministrator, with some form of legislative oversight, not increased 

 power from the Power Planning Council, however. 



Mr. Kreidler. Mr. Johnson? 



Mr. Johnson. I think that the process we have now has a review 

 for both budgetary and rate-making matters. The budgetary, the 

 congressional appropriations process which would continue for Bon- 

 neville, is a way for the Congress to have some direct oversight of 

 that process. I know it is not perfect and so forth. But to put some 

 organization in between there, I think it begins to get us back to 

 some of the problems we are trying to solve rather than address. 



Rates are reviewed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commis- 

 sion, so there is a body that does review them. So creating a board 

 or some such mechanism in between there is something that at the 

 moment I don't favor. 



Mr. Kreidler. I have always been under the impression that 

 FERC's responsibilities were to make sure that adequate money 

 was coming in to fund operations as opposed to whether the rates 

 are appropriate or whether the rates would spread the burden ap- 

 propriately. I am always nervous about the concept that you could 

 rely on Congress to be sitting in a position to make those judgment 

 calls when it has a national perspective as opposed to a regional 

 view. 



Mr. DeFazio. You mean you don't want to set rates? 



Mr. Johnson. The good news in that is that when it is an impor- 

 tant matter, Congress does decide to get involved, and that is sort 

 of the guarantee. And that if it is not an important matter 



Mr. Kreidler. But we are talking about an annual process, we 

 are not necessarily talking about once-a-decade type interventions 

 here. 



Mr. Cavanagh. You are talking about the Bonneville budget, and 

 I would submit, the last time I looked at the rate-paying customers, 

 it was the 9-plus million citizens of the region, and I would submit 

 that although it is not perfect, there is one body that has been set 

 up that broadly represents all of us behind this table, and it is the 

 Power Planning Council. If you are going to set up a Bonneville 

 corporation with significantly greater fiscal independence, possibly 

 a FERC, possibly some of the other controls, I think we all view 

 that as rather burdensome and unproductive. The one thing you 

 ought to look at is whether that board of directors that you have 

 already got, that represents all of us, might have more of a role. 

 I think that is a legitimate question and I hope that gets raised in 

 the discussions. 



Mr. Kreidler. That is certainly one of the concepts that has 

 been floated. 



Mr. Drummond. I guess in response, a couple of things. One, I 

 would urge you to take a look at the draft National Academy re- 

 port. Although in fact I will admit I did meet with the people, I 

 would urge you to meet with the National Academy people, and I 

 would urge Ralph and Laurie 



Mr. Cavanagh. They didn't ask. Bill. 



Mr. Drummond. I understand, but frankly they did more in a 

 two-hour meeting with them where mainly we just asked them 

 questions. We didn't actually provide as much information. We 

 asked what it was like to set up a government corporation, what 



