Editor’s note: This oped is by Greg Marchildon, state director of AARP Vermont.
Last May, AARP Vermont filed a petition under a new state law to create an electric “lifeline” program with the two largest, investor-owned utilities in Vermont, Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service. The program, which every state in the Northeast already have in place, would help our poorest citizens obtain access to electricity – an essential modern day necessity — at a discounted monthly rate.
The Department of Public Service is litigating against AARP to stop the Public Service Board from even considering the merits of the petition. In its effort to kill AARP’s petition, the department’s public advocate used verbatim the utility lawyer’s legal research as if it was the department’s own. This was not a simple matter of “cutting and pasting” standard legal arguments. The AARP petition was filed under a new law that has never before been considered by the Public Service Board.
But just for a second, forget about whether or not this is ethical or amounts to plagiarism because there is a much more important issue at hand – do Vermonters really have an independent voice in the ratemaking process?
The Department of Public Service has an integral role in regulating Vermont’s utilities. AARP believes that taking the legal work product of a utility attorney and using it as the department’s own when representing the public is indicative of the Department’s too-cozy relationship with the utility companies. Can they provide a fair and independent evaluation of AARP’s low-income rate petition? The Department has seven attorneys and numerous experts on staff to do just that. The Department’s director of public advocacy took the utility lawyer’s brief and filed it as the department’s own because, presumably, the department thought it would have more weight before the Public Service Board if it came from them. Do utilities really need a helping hand from the state’s public advocate?
Don Kreis, a Vermont Law School professor and associate director of the law school’s Institute for Energy and the Environment recently said that the Department’s “ ‘client’ is not technically the public but, rather, the political appointee whose job includes developing a policy agenda that, in his judgment (and presumably that of his boss, the governor) is in the best interests of the utility-using public.” If that is the case, then the Department’s director of public advocacy represents the political ideology of whoever sits in the Governor’s office. Is that really what the Vermont legislature intended when it created the law governing the role of the department’s director of public advocacy?
Vermont law says, in part, “In cases requiring hearings by the board, the department, through the director for public advocacy shall represent the interests of the people of the state…”
The law is clear in that the director of public advocacy must “represent the interests of the people of the state.” But maybe Vermont’s current law does not go far enough in protecting Vermonters from either the cozy relationships between regulators and the regulated or the political ideology of whoever happens to be Governor?
AARP believes that utility services are essential to both the health and safety of Vermonters, particularly our most vulnerable. Vermonters deserve a public advocate who can be independent and impartial. It’s clearly time for Vermont’s policy leaders to rethink the role of our public advocate.
