PUC Commissioner Shumway to Quit 2 Years Before Term Ends

California Public Utilities Commissioner Norman D. Shumway, a former U.S. Representative, will announce his resignation today, two years before the end of his term.

Shumway has been a chief architect of telephone service deregulation in California, most recently in opening local long-distance toll calls to competition on Jan. 1. That action came after seven years of fierce debate and has left many critics unsatisfied with the result.

While local long-distance charges, such as those from Los Angeles to Riverside, have fallen, basic monthly fees have gone up. Long distance telephone companies complained about the need to dial cumbersome access codes to use their services.

And consumer groups have long complained that the PUC phone deregulation plan had been unduly influenced by close ties with the phone companies, to the detriment of customers.

Development of the commission’s phone deregulation plan was delayed in 1993 after it was learned that a Pacific Bell executive lobbied a Shumway aide the night before the commission was to vote on its plan. Pacific Bell and GTE-California executives were in the commission’s San Francisco offices that night doing complex computations for the commission based on the draft plan--a service to the commissioners considered harmless by most observers.

But the executive’s comments on the plan itself apparently became part of the recommended decision, changing some aspects of the commission’s policy. In the uproar that followed, the commission voted unanimously to reopen debate on the plan.

Shumway admitted at the time that the incident had “an appearance of impropriety.”

Shumway, whose resignation is expected to be effective Feb. 23, could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.

Shumway had also opposed retaining PUC Commissioner Daniel W. Fessler as president, and many utility industry executives around the state had expected Shumway to step down.