Californians Dissatisfied With Government Response To Energy Crisis (KFWB) --

Californians are developing increasingly negative feelings toward state and federal officials who are involved in the power crisis. Of those questioned in the May Field Institute poll, 52 percent gave the Public Utilities Commission a poor rating in its handling of power problems. That's up from 42 percent in a January poll.

The state legislature was rated poor by 41 percent of respondents -- up from 36 percent in January. Governor Gray Davis got a 38 percent poor rating, up from 22 percent.

The federal government faced worse numbers. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission got a poor rating from 52 percent of respondents. The January poll showed a 40 percent poor rating.

The poll also found growing negativity toward private electric utilities. Fifty seven percent gave utilities a poor rating -- up from 40 percent of respondents in January.

Out-of-state energy providers fared the same -- 57 percent rated their performance as poor. In January, that number was 44 percent.

The poll surveyed 1,015 adults in the state between May 11 and 20. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), May 24, 2001

Answers

Here's a great example of the worthlessness of polls. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that 80% of the people of California do not even know who F.E.R.C. is So, how could 52% have any opinion at all on their role?

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), May 24, 2001.