Countywide : Groups Want Latino Appointee on PUC

Latinos from various businesses, grass-roots groups and human rights organizations vowed Friday to work toward getting a Latino appointed to the state’s Public Utilities Commission so that the telecommunications needs of their population can be better addressed.

“If we are not there at the Public Utilities Commission, how can they be aware of what our concerns are?” asked Edith Adame of Latino Issues Forum, which sponsored a seminar at the Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana to address how the telecommunications industry serves the Latino population.

“These are not the voices usually heard in powerful arenas,” Adame said, adding that she and others are concerned about whether low-income and non-English-speaking segments of their population are getting the level of service that they are entitled to.

“For a very long time, the telephone companies did not even feel that there was a need for bilingual services,” Adame said.

She said Latinos who do not speak English are more likely to be victims of marketing fraud from telephone companies and often end up paying for extra services they didn’t know they signed up for or are not made aware of special services available to low-income people.

Such issues as technology and policy were addressed at the seminar by a panel consisting of telecommunications experts and industry representatives.

Among the speakers was Cruz Reynoso, the former California Supreme Court Justice and current chairman of the Latino Issues Forum, a consortium of leaders from major Latino organizations.

“Telecommunications affects all Americans regardless of the language spoken by that American, and we all need to understand its role in our lives and how it affects us,” Reynoso said during brief comments to the group.

Many in the audience said they plan to aggressively lobby Gov. Pete Wilson to appoint a Latino to the five-member PUC, which now consists of four men and one woman, all of them Anglos.

Two positions on the commission will become vacant within the next 18 months, said Sheila Otteson, a spokeswoman for the PUC.

The seminar was one of four similar events held throughout the state this year. It was funded by the $16.5-million Telecommunications Education Trust, which sponsors educational programs. The PUC required Pacific Bell to create the fund in 1987 as a penalty for abusive marketing of telephone services.