california power 1 / 19 / 00 1 . legislation passes - short - term measures , very long - term measures as we said yesterday , sb - 7 x passed the california state senate easily . the bill gives the state the immediate authority to purchase power via the department of water and resources until february 2 nd . the department will have $ 400 million available to finance power purchases , but there expectations that these costs could easily rise to $ 1 billion by next week . ab - 1 x has evolved into a longer - term solution and in its current form , would authorize the department of water and resources to enter into long - term contracts ( as opposed to the 15 day contracts in sb - 7 x ) to buy power at a price cap of 5 . 5 cents per kw / h . this legislation is not expected to pass today and will likely be changed considerably during the upcoming two week period covered by sb - 7 x , when negotiations between generators , the utilities , and the state are likely to resume . a second piece of legislation under - - sb 6 x - - has created uncertainty in the markets . this legislation will create a california public power authority with bond issuance authority . the uncertainty concerns whether the new authority will address the problem of the $ 12 billion in outstanding debt owed by the utilities . the current text of the legislation focuses only on longer term measures such as expanding generation capacity and improving efficiency . yet the legislation also says " the authority may issue bonds , exercise power of eminent domain , and enter into joint power agreements and buy , own , and sell land and facilities necessary for the financing of a project . " the general nature of this language leaves open the possibility of either issuing bonds to finance past debts , or using eminent domain or the bond authority to finance the utilities as they enter into a ch . 11 proceeding . 2 . default update 3 . bush as we reported on wednesday , the bush administration continues to demonstrate little interest in getting involved