PSC chairman a no-show
Overhaul: Few have anything to say at final public session to discuss proposed
changes in utility oversight panel’s staff.
Margaret Newkirk – AJC Staff
Friday, March 17, 2006
A final public hearing on the wisdom of changing the state Public Service Commission’s staff structure came and went with barely a whimper Thursday.
Even Commission Chairman Stan Wise, who requested the hearing, didn’t show up.
It was Wise who launched a staff review in January, after circulating a document suggesting that the PSC’s adversary staff — which represents the public in utility rate battles — had become too extreme. There was no immediate explanation of Wise’s absence; he was out of town earlier this week. His office did not return phone calls Thursday.
At the hearing, Common Cause, AARP and the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs all endorsed recommendations of a staff report suggesting only minor tweaks to the staff’s structure.
Utility and industry representatives at the meeting said nothing.
Commissioner Angela Speir, who wants to add restrictions on private conversations and gifts for PSC members to any reform, was mum, too.
The commission will take up staff reforms officially on Tuesday.
The ideas likely to be on the table include the modest changes proposed by the staff itself, a revised proposal by Wise, and Speir’s restrictions on private conversations and gifts.
Wise’s new proposal would keep the adversary staff intact but dispense with a second staff role — the advisory role — now used at the end of utility rate cases.
Advisory staff make final recommendations to the commission.
Wise has suggested that each commissioner get a personal adviser instead, and that the new positions be funded by an assessment on utilities.
Speir proposes that private conversations about commission business be banned beginning 90 days before a case begins, unless all parties in a case are invited to participate and the public is notified. Only Georgia and Louisiana don’t restrict those conversations at all, according to an informal Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey last month of utility regulators across the country.
Speir is also calling for a ban against most gifts to commissioners — including nonworking meals and tickets to sporting events — from those with an interest in commission business. Those gifts are legal now, but lobbyists are required to disclose them.
Some industry officials have said limits on conversation could chill their ability to inform commissioners about complex issues, but a number of consumer advocates welcomed the idea.
“Any effort to implement ex parte rules or gift rules would certainly be applauded,” Will Phillips, associate state director for advocacy of AARP, said at the hearing Thursday.
