safety 
building has been built in the area, said PG&E spokesman Jon Tremayne. 
PG&E said it started reviewing who was in Block 50 to get ready for the 
likely summer blackouts. However, the changes will do little to reduce the 
overall percentage of customers spared from rolling blackouts. 
In two days of blackouts in Northern and Central California in January, 43 
percent of customers were on Block 50 and had nothing to worry about. The 
latest change drops that to 42 percent. 
By looking at the block number on their bills, customers can tell whether 
they will have to take their turn sitting in the dark for as long as two 
hours during power shortages as the utilities reduce the demand for 
electricity through staged shut-offs. 
For safety'sflow 
Published Monday, March 19, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News 
THE electricity crisis has dimmed the lights at car dealerships and sapped 
the confidence of California consumers. But it's provided a jolt of energy to 
a hardy perennial of politics: parochialism. 
Announcing yet another investigation into electricity prices, several state 
senators condemned ``out-of-state generators.'' Their greed, said one, has 
produced a ``massive transfer of wealth'' out of California. 
Gov. Gray Davis in his state-of-the-state speech intoned: ``Never again can 
we allow out-of-state profiteers to hold California hostage.'' 
In the hysterical high point of this line of argument, Sen. Steve Peace, D-El 
Cajon, one of the architects of electricity restructuring, took to the Senate 
floor to declare that unless California moved into public ownership of power 
it