Cozy PSC-Utility Ties Continue

In a leading candidate for least surprising story of the year, Ellen Nowak took a senior position with the American Transmission Company. 

That was predictable because Nowak is recently gone from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. The cozy relationship between the regulators and the regulated was recounted in a recent story in the Wisconsin State Journal: 

“Former PSC commissioner Robert Garvin was appointed executive vice president of external affairs of WEC Energy Group in 2015. Former commissioner Ave Bie in 2005 joined the Quarles & Brady law firm representing WE Energies and other regulated utilities. Scott Neitzel, who left the PSC in 1996, later spent time as an executive with Madison Gas and Electric. Former commissioner Lauren Azar represents transmission developers and utilities with Azar Law and Eric Callisto, who departed the commission in 2015, is now a partner with firm Michael Best and helps clients with regulatory filings and other issues before the PSC.” 

And that doesn’t count failed attempts. Former PSC Chair Mike Huebsch applied for a job with Dairyland Power shortly after leading the charge to build the massive Cardinal-Hickory Creek power line, which is partly owned by Dairyland. He didn’t get the post, but records show that he was in contact with company officials around the time that the line was being considered by the commission. Huebsch also has a close personal relationship with Garvin, though he claims he didn’t discuss business with him when he was at the PSC. One could question whether that matters. Close friends know what’s in one another’s best interests. 

More of this kind of thing has been teed up by Gov. Tony Evers. Perhaps Evers’ worst appointment to any job was that of PSC Chair Rebecca Valcq. Valcq spent her entire career as a utility regulatory attorney representing WE, the state’s largest utility. She joined Huebsch and Nowak in approving Cardinal-Hickory Creek, an ATC project. WE owns 60% of ATC. Valcq refused to recuse herself and she showed outrage when it was suggested that she had a conflict of interest. 

It’s not just where Valcq came from, it’s where she’s going. Only in her 40s, it’s extremely likely that she will return to representing utilities before the PSC, after a brief mandatory waiting period, when her term on the PSC is up. And she’ll return in an even more valuable position because she’ll have at least six years of experience on the inside. 

And Evers’ other appointments were little better. Tyler Huebner had to recuse himself from any future consideration of Cardinal-Hickory Creek (he wasn’t on the commission for the original approval) because he lobbied for the line when he worked for RENEW, a nonprofit supporting wind and solar projects. RENEW hopes that the line will bring wind energy from the West. Huebner’s background in renewables, a rapidly growing part of the industry, will be very attractive to utilities once he’s done regulating utilities. 

Evers’ most recent appointment, in February, is Summer Strand. Strand was a political appointee in the Scott Walker administration and then went to work for a national engineering firm that works on, among other things, utility projects. Strand, like Valcq and Huebner, is in the middle of her career and will need employment when she leaves the PSC. What do you suppose she might do? 

If Walker or Tommy Thompson had made exactly these same appointments Democrats would have been beside themselves. But in this hyperpartisan world the wagons get circled pretty fast. These may be industry-friendly appointments, but they’re our industry-friendly appointments, gosh darn it. And in Valcq’s case, Evers touted her as the first Latina to serve on the PSC, knowing that identity politics is at the very heart of today’s Democratic Party. 

But this is all so absolutely unnecessary. Evers could have found retired judges, and they could have been women and people of color, to serve on the PSC. Judges are trained to evaluate evidence in light of the law and ideally in an impartial way, exactly what the PSC should be doing. And, one would hope, that after at least six years on the commission, a retired judge wouldn’t have that much incentive to take a job with a utility. The revolving door would likely slow, if not stop altogether. 

Ellen Nowak did just what you would have expected her to do. Don’t be surprised if, in a few years, Evers’ appointments follow her through that same door. 

A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.