Sylvia Siegel, Activist on Utility Rates

SYLVIA SIEGEL, ACTIVIST ON UTILITY RATES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Cay Johnston]
Sylvia Siegel, who brought a customer’s perspective to the regulation of California utilities and spent 1.6 years fighting against rates and rules that she maintained were unfair to consumers, died Saturday in Mill Valley, Calif. She was 89. Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, said that “in the ’70s and ’80s Sylvia was the most visible and outspoken utility advocate in the country, and to this day the organization she created has been the most effective advocate” in the nation for consumers in utility cases. In 1973, at her kitchen table, Mrs. Siegel, a mother of two children, started what is now known as the Utility Reform Network to represent consumers before the California Public Utility Commission. She said she believed that the commission, which meets in San Francisco, was more concerned with the welfare of California’s electric, gas, telephone and water utilities and its in-state airlines, trucking and bus companies, than with the interests of the customers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/business/22siegel.html?ref=todayspaper
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