New PSC chairman pledges changes
By MARGARET NEWKIRK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/14/06
New Georgia Public Service Commission Chairman Stan Wise is already making it clear that there’s a new sheriff in town.
Wise replaced self-described “people’s commissioner” Angela Speir early this month.
And by this week, he’d already engaged Gov. Sonny Perdue’s office in a campaign that could dull the teeth of the utility regulatory body.
The 11-year commission veteran and Cobb County Republican announced Thursday that he planned to launch a review — and potentially an overhaul — of the commission’s staff.
He called it an “efficiency” review but suggested that he was specifically concerned about the role the staff plays in opposing utility requests for rate increases.
The PSC’s so-called adversary staff has been too aggressive, Wise said.
Under the current system, the adversary staff conducts independent reviews — without input or interference from commissioners — when utilities like Atlanta Gas Light and Georgia Power come in asking for more money from consumers.
Though the independent review could find that the utilities’ requests are fully deserved, the adversary staff typically argues that utilities should get less.
The commission votes after hearing arguments from adversary staff, the utility and other intervenors, like industry reps, and after getting a recommendation from a second, “advisory” staff, which often splits the difference.
Wise said the system is flawed.
“Being elected statewide, I have to rely on professional staff and make sure we have an independent assessment” in rate cases. “I’m not sure I’m getting the independent assessment I need,” he said, adding that adversary staff had been taking “extreme litigation positions” instead.
“There has to be a better way to conduct business,” he said as he made his announcement at a PSC committee meeting Thursday. “I don’t think anybody can ever become complacent.”
Wise’s usual opponents on the sharply divided five-member commission, fellow Republicans Speir and Robert Baker, both looked on, visibly surprised.
Baker later said Wise did “not discuss this proposal with anyone else on the commission or staff prior to going to the governor’s office.”
Utility lobbyists in the audience, meanwhile, betrayed no reaction — although AGL complained about the PSC staff in its most recent rate case last year.
Georgia Power spokesman John Sell later said the state’s largest utility had no opinion: “Georgia Power has an excellent working relationship with the PSC staff and we will work with whatever staff structure the commission asks us to work with.”
A ‘light, steady’ hand
The PSC chairmanship rotates every year.
And lately, it’s been rotating not just between commissioners but between commission factions.
The departing Speir, along with Baker, represents the more pro-consumer faction, which usually loses. Wise is on the other, and majority, side.
While the chairmanship itself carries little formal weight, it does set a tone.
Wise, a former Cobb County commissioner elected to the PSC for the first time in 1994, said his tendencies are well known, after 11 years and two terms on the commission: Wise is running for his third six-year term this November.
This year’s chairman believes in regulation, as shown by his response to a proposed AGL legislative proposal that would curtail the PSC’s ability to regulate the gas pipeline company: “If we don’t have oversight, who does it? … Somebody’s got to do it. If not the commission, who?”
But Wise also believes in regulating “with a light, steady, predictable hand,” as he said in one of his many position papers. “My mantra is less government interference,” Wise said this week.
Wise says commissioners need to protect utility financial stability and that heavy-handed regulation could end up costing consumers in the long run.
His votes in rate and other cases at the commission reliably line up with what utilities want. He was in the majority that approved a settlement in a 2004 Georgia Power rate boost, for instance, and that reversed a rate decision last spring that was unfavorable to AGL.
Wise has been known to berate his commission opposition for “playing populist consumerist” instead of being leaders and has called Baker “a socialist in a business suit.”
He has also publicly upbraided the commission staff and the consultants they hire to take on utility requests, calling both extremist. Last spring, after the initially unfavorable AGL vote, he decried “a punitive decision that puts the company at risk,” blamed “flawed analysis by consultants hired based on the lowest bid,” and implied that opposing commissioners had made up their minds before the evidence was in.
It was a harbinger of his current move to review the staff itself.
Wise isn’t known for an impeccable PSC attendance record: For more than a year during his current term, for instance, he was president of the National Association of Utility Regulatory Commissions, or NARUC, which kept him active around the country.
Though no longer the organization’s president, Wise said he continues to represent Georgia energy policy interests nationally.
He says he considers it a key part of his job: “My involvement at the federal level is closely related to Georgia. If I’m not advocating energy policy — for nukes, for clean coal — then maybe I’m not doing my job representing Georgia.
“Because we have a five-member commission, I can be freed to make a case for Georgia.”
His list of top issues includes larger energy policies not likely to come before state regulators soon. They include investment in liquid natural gas facilities and clean coal technology.
He also favors a return of nuclear power, including removing roadblocks to a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Wise has a pro-nuke bumper sticker on the front of his PSC office desk: “It irritates some people,” he said, smiling.
Recently, Wise has been mentioned as a candidate for a seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where two seats are now open and a third is about to be. Wise concedes his name has been out there, but said he’s heard nothing back and doesn’t now anticipate a FERC appointment
.
Light ‘06 agenda
Wise is taking the chairman’s gavel in what promises to be a light year, particularly compared with last year.
Starting in late 2004, and continuing all the way through 2005, the PSC deliberated rate cases for Georgia Power, Savannah Electric, AGL and Atmos Energy, two fuel charge increases for Savannah Electric and one huge one for Georgia Power.
“It was a tough year last year,” Wise said.
The coming year’s docket will include no rate cases. The PSC will rule on a proposed merger between Georgia Power and Savannah Electric, which Wise described as sad but probably inevitable.
The commission will also rule on another large fuel charge increase for Georgia Power this year, and on a host of smaller issues.
Within that relatively slow season, Wise proposes reviewing the PSC staff.
In an interview, he said he wants to hold the commission to the same efficiency standards the commission sets for utilities: “One of the things we haven’t done is look at how efficient we are ourselves.”
The first salvo in the staff war actually came last month, at the last commission meeting of 2005 and the last under Speir. Commissioner Doug Everett lobbed it, accusing the commission adversary staff of “doing the job of the consumer utility counsel,” which represents consumers on behalf of the governor’s consumer affairs office.
Wise said this week that he found Everett’s comments intriguing.
“Maybe it’s time we look at how we operate,” he said. “We need to look at some of these extremist consultants we now seem to always get.”
