Being on PSC means never having to say you're sordid
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published April 25, 2004
Birds gotta sing. Bees gotta buzz. I gotta keep talkin' about the Florida Public Service Commission.
A few days ago, our reporter Louis Hau wrote an article that highlighted the PSC's ridiculously lax rules. It turns out that Verizon Communications ghost-wrote, word for word, a lengthy position argued by Commissioner Rudy Bradley in a meeting.
Here's the funny part: Verizon then turned around and "quoted" Bradley's wise words in a subsequent court case to back up its claim!
Of course, Bradley says he had no idea. The material came through ... his aide.
His aide!
This nonsense keeps coming up about utilities slipping whatever they want to the aides of PSC members. The other day I got an e-mail from PSC member Charles M. Davidson for my mention of him in a previous case.
"Your editorial is factually incorrect as it pertains to me," he wrote. "I never received briefing papers, privately or otherwise, from Progress Energy Florida.
"My aide did receive materials re the issues and arguments being made. I did not."
His AIDE received the materials! Not him!
Well, smack my bee-hind. I am soooooo sorry to get that mixed up. Not.
Incredibly, Davidson went on to admit that, yes indeedy, his aide gets such stuff and then "briefs" him on the case.
"Does she tell me that person X said this and person Y said that? No," he wrote. "Does she brief me on all sides of an issue? Yes. And she will continue to do so."
But, by gum, he doesn't receive anything.
You know, it occurs to me that being a member of the PSC provides you with a built-in excuse for just about everything.
Let's say that you forget an important date. "I never RECEIVED your invitation," you can say. "My aide only BRIEFED me on it."
And the PSC secretaries must be specially trained to start all correspondence like this: "I am not in receipt of your letter of the 25th ..."
You know, you would think that because this five-member board has so much power, the rules would be incredibly strict.
But it turns out that being a utility regulator is a gray area. It's not like being, say, a trial judge, who is supposed to be strictly impartial and totally unapproachable outside court.
When you're a utility regulator, for example, you can go hang out with utility folks at conferences and retreats and whatnot, as long as you pretend not to talk about pending cases. But what really matters is that you are hanging out together, being buddies.
Heck, in the 1990s one commissioner even got introduced by his utility pals to a female telephone employee. He ended up marrying her. Yet for months he insisted on presiding over that company's cases. (He finally resigned in an unrelated scandal.)
Lastly, once your stint on the PSC is up, after a two-year wait, you can have a big, fat utility job. More than one former commissioner now enjoys his post-government reward.
From observing the PSC for more than 20 years, I believe the culture at the top level (not among the junior staff) is too empathetic with the regulated companies. There's a "Stockholm syndrome" - a shared mindset that develops between regulator and regulated. Both consider the public to be somewhat of an ignorant nuisance.
Notice that when the PSC is criticized, the utilities rush to defend it. (See the president of Verizon's letter to the editor praising the PSC's fairness, published last Thursday.)
Have you ever heard of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street outfit? Last June, Lehman ranked the 50 state utility commissions according to how "shareholder oriented" they are - how good they are for utility profits.
Florida ranked in the top six pro-utility states. Of course, if you're a poopy old naysayer like me, you read the chart from the other direction, and see that Florida's PSC is one of the six worst for consumers.
Here is what would be good.
PSC members and their aides should be barred by law from having any contact with utility representatives outside of a public meeting. Period. If the utility has something to say, it should say it in a public filing. Period.
Oh, and it would be nice if the president of Verizon, once in a while, had to complain about what a lousy PSC we had.
