U.S. Rep Blasts FirstEnergy
Originally published in Newsday
U.S. Rep Blasts FirstEnergy
Says power company failed
By Tomoeh Murakami Tse
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
August 21, 2003
Lakewood, Ohio - Pressure mounted yesterday against FirstEnergy, an Akron-based company under scrutiny as the potential trigger of last week's blackout, with an Ohio congressman petitioning to revoke the utility's operating license.
"There's no more time for waiting for something else to happen," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
A longtime critic of FirstEnergy, Kucinich blasted the company for its failure to "furnish adequate facilities to meet the reasonable needs of consumers ... properly maintain its transmission system and to maintain the alarm/warning system."
A FirstEnergy spokesman called Kucinich's moves "politically motivated."
"Jumping to conclusions about the cause of the blackout is simply irresponsible at this point," said Todd Schneider.
Also yesterday, a report surfaced that ranks FirstEnergy dead last in many ethical, organizational and workforce effectiveness measures among the nation's leading power companies. "Industry executives perceive it as having weak management, poor regulatory relationships and an inability to adapt to changes in markets appropriately," according to a report released earlier this year by Rating Research LLC, a New Jersey-based reputation-rating firm founded in part by former Moody's Investor Services executives two years ago.
Schneider said he had not seen the study and could not comment on it.
In the survey, 365 senior executives in the industry and 55 financial analysts were asked how they felt about, for example, a utility company's marketing, financial stability, environmental focus and global capabilities. Executives ranked FirstEnergy last in most of these categories, including whether the company attracted and retained high-quality employees, was led by a highly-talented management team and invested to keep its workforce up to date.
Executives also ranked FirstEnergy last in the organizational culture and ethics category, which asked whether the company adheres to ethical business practices, is trustworthy, and is honest and open to the public.
In their first face-to-face talks since the blackout, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and his Canadian counterpart, Herb Dhaliwal, vowed yesterday to determine the cause of the outage and prevent it from happening again.
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