
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 05:41:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: cynthia.sandherr@enron.com
To: james.steffes@enron.com
Subject: Re: Congressional Opinion of Restructuring
Cc:  mary.hain@enron.com, richard.shapiro@enron.com,
steven.kean@enron.com, tom.briggs@enron.com
Bcc:  mary.hain@enron.com, richard.shapiro@enron.com,
steven.kean@enron.com, tom.briggs@enron.com

Jim:  Thanks for your update.   As you recall, Phil attended the April 2000
Congressional staff trip to the Enron building.  Further,  for years we have
negotiated directly with his boss on electricity legislative efforts and we
have gained his support and leadership for Enron's positions.  We continue to
constantly update him and all staffers on our positions.  We will continue to
do so with yearly fact finding trips to Houston, meetings, letters, hearings,
briefings, coalition building, ope-eds, etc.  Fact is, the California issue
climaxed after federal legislation was declared "dead" for this Congress.  As
such, other active legislative vehicles have claimed Congressional
attention.  Thus, Phil was referring to a recent Senate hearing on the
California situation (October 5th) where we supplied questions, information,
etc. that no other member except Senator Gorton attended (i.e. low
interest.)  Having said this, as the cycle ramps up after the elections and
the new Congress convenes in January and February, Congressional interest
will return with "understanding" California being a key focus.  Educating on
the California situation will be amongst our primary objectives although in
the Congressional downtime, we must continue specific efforts with key
targets (i.e. Congressman Barton, Congressman Tauzin, Senator Murkowski,
etc.).  This is why, for instance, I had requested travel approval to attend
the Rippon Society's trip with the Speaker and these members in order to be
able to take advantate of opportunities to educate in informal settings.  We
will continue to find other opportunities and make opportunities to visit
with these Members while they are out of D.C. between now and January.

As for Private Use legislation, Enron developed and led the strategy which
brought EEI to the table with resulting final consensus legislation.  This
consensus came very close to being added to the tax package which may move
Friday but was dropped due to its high price tag.  As for NAERO, there is NOT
consensus.  In fact, we support Senator Gorton's version of the bill but
oppose Congressman Wynn's version.  Since Joe Hartsoe has been the lead with
NAERO, I will defer further comment to him.  As for comprehensive
legislation, the Senate came very close and indeed pass a bill out of
Committee.  The issues that doomed the bill were the two "non-consensus"
issues:   the native load exception and RPS (which indeed a deal was actually
cut.)  In truth,  we also had cut the deal on native load exception but
consensus came too late in the year for EEI and NARUC to formally sign-off.
This is why we have tried to get the EEI process moving now.

Thank you again for your speech and the update.



