Gov. Paul LePage often threatens lawmakers who don’t back his policies. This week, he called a Republican state senator who disagreed with him “ my enemy.” So it’s refreshing to see the governor pick someone who is analytical and not in lockstep with his thinking to serve on the Public Utilities Commission.
Not a lot is known about Bruce Williamson here in Maine. PUC Chairman Mark Vannoy met him in February when both were judges for the American Council of Engineering Companies’ annual Engineering Excellence Awards and later recommended Williamson to the governor.
Williamson has a varied background in energy, economics and telecommunications that could be an asset to the PUC. If confirmed by the Senate, he would replace David Littell, a lawyer and former Department of Environmental Protection commissioner appointed by former Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat. Littell has increasingly become a dissenting voice on the three-member commission, which also includes Vannoy, an engineer, and Carlisle McLean, LePage’s former legal counsel who joined the commission earlier this year.
Williamson would join a commission that has been at the center of controversy in recent months.
In March, commissioners unexpectedly voted 2-1 to cap the amount of money to be collected for energy efficiency work based on a drafting error in a state law. Despite lawmakers and PUC staff saying a missing “and” shouldn’t change legislative intent and gut funding for Efficiency Maine, the PUC didn’t budge. Lawmakers in the House voted 138-1 Wednesday for a bill to restore the missing “and.”
The month before, in a similar 2-1 vote, the commission also reopened two long-term wind contracts that were a year in the making and nearing completion. In a Feb. 6 order directing Central Maine Power and Emera to enter the contracts, Vannoy and Littell wrote that savings to ratepayers from the two contracts could have been up to $73 million. The vote to reconsider the contracts came despite dozens of comments warning that reopening them would show the state doesn’t negotiate in good faith, putting future business investments at risk.
And this week, Vannoy and McLean rejected a motion by Littell to make public the forecasts the PUC uses to evaluate long-term contracts for wind and natural gas-generated contracts. Littell argued that the public should be able to see the projections on which the PUC bases its decisions. Vannoy said the commission uses the forecasts to negotiate the best prices, work that could be undercut if the projections were shared with bidders.
The PUC also found itself in a heated controversy two years ago when the Legislature — at the behest of LePage, who long opposed the project — passed a law that forced the PUC to reopen consideration of an offshore wind project proposed by Statoil, a Norwegian energy company. In October 2013, Statoil announced it was abandoning the $120 million project, citing regulatory uncertainty. Its investment went to Scotland instead.
In an interview with the BDN reporter Darren Fishell on Monday, Williamson stressed the importance of independence for the PUC. “I value a commission that is independent and objective, and I’m looking at the economics of the choices and are they cost-effective and what’s the impact on the economy and the effect on ratepayers.”
In conversations about Williamson, people who worked with him often used the words “independent” and “intelligent,” said LePage’s energy adviser, Patrick Woodcock.
Woodcock also said that Williamson’s expressed “skepticism” toward some of the governor’s energy proposals is a good thing because it means he will carefully analyze them.
For example, the PUC is considering whether it should put a fee on electricity ratepayers totaling up to $75 million a year to expand natural gas capacity and eventually reduce power prices.
Williamson said he still has to examine the details of this proposal, but the idea of building a subsidy for natural gas capacity into electricity rates “just sounds risky and is something that has to be really carefully thought out.”
Still, there is a lot that we don’t know about Williamson, which the energy committee and Senate must ferret out during the confirmation process. But his background and emphasis on independence and critical thinking are promising attributes.
