Schwarzenegger pressed to give details of Ken Lay meeting

California-based lobby group, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR), has asked Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s governor-elect, to explain the substance of his private May 2001 meeting with Enron chief, Ken Lay. FTCR, a non-profit education and advocacy organisation, was the state's most vocal critic of Governor Davis' handling of the 2001 energy crisis.

The FTCR says that if Schwarzenegger does not recount the meeting by the time of his inauguration, the group will press lawmakers to subpoena the governor-elect and other attendees in order to reveal his knowledge of the details "surrounding the biggest financial rip-off in state history and Enron's efforts to continue that crime"."In attending that meeting, you were privy to information inaccessible to the federal government, as Ken Lay has 'taken the fifth' during investigations into his role in the crisis, including any information that might further the state's efforts to return billions of dollars that taxpayers and consumers overpaid for electricity during the 2001 energy crisis," the FTCR wrote in a letter to Schwarzenegger.

In addition to calling on Schwarzenegger to come clean about the meeting with Lay, the group highlighted key aspects of the governor-elect's energy programme that reflect what it believes to be an "Enron-perspective on energy policy". The FTCR has asked Schwarzenegger to rewrite his energy policy and remove his push for further energy deregulation.

“While California faced blackouts and rate hikes...you were secretly meeting with Enron's Ken Lay, who had come to be widely reviled by Californians as the progenitor of deregulation and the head of the gang stealing billions from our businesses, consumers and taxpayers,” the FTCR told Schwarzenegger. “It was his firm, you will recall, that developed the market manipulation strategies known by such names as Get Shorty, Death Star and Fat Boy.”

FTCR also said Californians deserve to know the extent of Ken Lay's influence over Schwarzenegger’s energy policy. “Your proposal to revisit the deregulation experiment that exploded into California's single worst financial and public policy disaster directly contradicts the public interest in ending deregulation once and for all. Californians cannot afford another deregulation nightmare,” the FTCR added.

“Californians elected you to be different,” the FTCR continued. “Coming clean about your meeting with Ken Lay is a first step, and rewriting your energy policy would be the next.”