The State : Lower Phone Rates Urged

Saying that Pacific Bell wasted large sums while modernizing switches and lines, the staff of the state Public Utilities Commission has recommended that the company’s rates be reduced by $700 million, which would reduce the telephone bills of most Californians and Nevadans by 10% for a year. The commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates made the recommendation after an independent audit of some of the company’s projects from 1984 through 1986 found that 65% of the decisions on those projects “were so deficient and unacceptable . . . that they represented unsound business practices plus either definite waste or a high risk of wasteful expenditures,” a PUC spokesman said. A Pac Bell spokesman predicted that the PUC would find the company’s modernization program to be efficient and would reject the reduction.