The effort AARP is waging to get a utility rate break for a low income Vermont resident has yielded another interesting insight. The last dust-up in was over the ill advised legal track explored by CVPS lawyers with an argument that They [low-income residents] would only spend the savings on cigarettes. This resulted in an apology from the head of CVPS for insensitivity.
Today it is reported one top lawyer at the Vermont Public Service Board has taken word for word language from a utility industry lawyer and used it in a Department legal brief.
In a filing last month before the Public Service Board by Sarah Hofmann, the department’s director for public advocacy, more than two of six pages are word-for-word identical to a filing made in January by David Mullett, a lawyer for the Vermont Electric Cooperative and municipal electric departments.
The PSB lawyer,(correction:Hoffman is the Department of Public Service [DPS] attorney) the Director of Public Advocacy is cozily using legal language supplied by lawyers for the utility her department regulates. This could illustrate what forces keep that revolving door spinning speedily between regulated industries and regulators, our erstwhile public advocates.
Just another successful game of capture the regulator Douglas /Dubie style.
The PSB deputy commissioner sees no problem with this: Wark called the complaints about Hofmann an attempt “to divert attention away from the facts to an unseemly innuendo”
“The department did use some of Mr. Mullett’s legal analysis, with his permission, because it is solid work that shows that the concept of this cross-subsidy is bad for consumers,” he said. “The department did nothing wrong.”
And needs to be cleaned out, wholesale. Utilities, telecom and cable are the lifeblood of Vermont’s future, and right now the foxes are guarding the hen house.
We need our next governor to get regulatory appointees to sign legal agreements not to work for or be paid by the industry they are regulating for at least 5 years after they’re done serving (I volunteer right now). They also should be paid equivalently to the industry they’re regulating so that there are no incentives driving people away from regulatory service (which is hard and often un-noticed, except when things blow up).
Will any of our candidates step up and announce that they’ll require such an agreement from their appointees? Or will our democrats just keep the same revolving door system that Governor Douglas has so smoothly established?