Harold McLean, who was an associate public counsel from 1990 to2000, is appointed for one year.
By LOUIS HAU
Published November 22, 2003
For at least the next year, Harold McLean will be the person defending the interests of Florida consumers when utilities seek rate hikes, address service complaints or lay out construction projects before the state's Public Service Commission.
McLean, 58, was selected Friday by the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee for a one-year appointment, effective immediately, as public counsel. He succeeds Jack Shreve, who retired in June after 25 years in the post.
Two others who were finalists for the job are James R. Kelly, director of the division of consumer services in the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and Donald Rubottom, policy coordinator on civil and criminal justice issues for House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City.
It will be McLean's second stint at the public counsel's office, where he was an associate public counsel from 1990 to 2000. He retired as PSC general counsel last month after almost three years on the job.
McLean's appointment was welcomed by consumer representatives, who said he was the only finalist to have significant experience in utility law.
"I'm very optimistic that this is going to work out," Bill Newton, executive director of Florida Consumer Action Network in Tampa, said.
"It was an excellent decision and I commend ... the committee for making such an excellent choice," said Mike Twomey, a Tallahassee lawyer who heads the consumer advocacy group Florida Utility Watch and is a longtime friend of McLean.
In the first round of voting Friday, seven members of the 10-member Joint Legislative Auditing Committee voted for McLean, while Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, voted for Rubottom. At the request of Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Fort Walton Beach, the committee voted again, this time unanimously for McLean. Committee members Sen. Mandy Dawson, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Sen. Anthony C. Hill Sr., D-Jacksonville, were absent.
McLean's appointment caps off a selection process dogged by controversy. On Oct. 9, a subcommittee of the auditing committee outraged consumer groups when it chose five finalists from a list of 18 applicants but failed to include deputy public counsel and Shreve protege Charlie Beck.
Two weeks later, finalist and Jacksonville lawyer Ava L. Parker withdrew from consideration after news reports questioned why she hadn't disclosed her past work as a telecom lobbyist or that she was being paid by BellSouth to promote the state's Lifeline phone-service discount program for low-income households. A second finalist, William Bilenky, general counsel for the Southwest Florida Water Management District in Brooksville, withdrew earlier this month because of a family health matter.
McLean was also caught up in a controversial battle earlier this year between the public counsel's office and Progress Energy Florida over the size of a rate refund that the St. Petersburg utility owed its customers.
In a draft recommendation, the PSC staff was prepared to advise the commission to side with public counsel's call for a larger refund. But in the midst of the dispute, PSC commissioners Rudy Bradley and Charles Davidson expressed to McLean their desire to water down the original recommendation with other alternatives. McLean agreed with their position and asked the staff to amend its recommendation. The PSC eventually voted unanimously in favor of the public counsel and ordered Progress to pay a larger refund.
McLean is currently the subject of a complaint filed with the Florida Bar Association in October by consumer activist Peggy Arvanitas of Seminole. Arvanitas alleged in her complaint that McLean had perjured himself during a deposition about the Progress rate refund. McLean denied the allegation and said he plans to respond to the "ill-informed" complaint by Wednesday.
With its first post-Shreve appointment, the public counsel's office faces an important test of its independence, observers said. Shreve's popularity, stemming from his ability over the years to extract significant rate cuts from phone companies and electric utilities, had made his reappointment every year mostly a formality.
But without that same public stature, the annual reappointment process was bound to loom larger for whomever succeeded Shreve and could possibly even constrain the aggressiveness of the public counsel's office, observers say. Such concerns haven't been eased by Beck's failure to become a finalist for the job and the fact that nine of the auditing committee's 10 members voted in favor of dramatically eased phone-rate regulations formulated and backed by the phone industry.
But McLean insisted he will have to be aggressive in pursuing consumer interests if he is to keep his job. "I'm going to have to get off my butt if I'm going to fill Jack's shoes," he said. "I feel a very strong impetus to get moving and represent consumer cases."
Twomey said McLean's appointment also ensures continuity at the public counsel's office as it is challenging applications from Verizon, Sprint and BellSouth to sharply increase their local basic rates in exchange for cutting instate access fees they charge long-distance carriers.
"The beauty of this is that Harold just left his job at the PSC," he said. "It's not like he has to get up to speed."
McLean said he supports the approach pursued by Beck, who will remain deputy public counsel. He said he has called on the PSC to reject the phone companies' applications because he believes they fail to demonstrate that their proposed rate hikes will benefit residential customers and enhance competition.
"Charlie will be the attorney assigned to the case and I will honor his judgment," McLean said.
- Louis Hau can be reached at hau@sptimes.com or 813226-3404.
