Peevey’s Departure from CPUC Seen Unlikely to Affect Its Stance on Telecom Regulation
California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey’s plans to leave the CPUC in December are unlikely to affect its telecom regulatory policy priorities, industry participants and observers said in interviews Friday. Peevey, who led the CPUC since 2002, said the day before he won’t seek reappointment to the commission when his term expires in December. Peevey’s critics had called for his ouster last week over what they said were unethical back-channel discussions between his office and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) (CD Oct 10). The protests stemmed from the contents of emails that PG&E released last week between the utility and members of Peevey’s staff as part of a federal investigation into the relationship between CPUC and PG&E. The rest of the commission declined to comment.
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No one who follows the CPUC considers Peevey’s announcement to be “earthshaking,” said National Regulatory Research Institute Principal Sherry Lichtenberg. Speculation about Peevey’s intended departure had already been circulating before last week’s protests, so they aren’t necessarily the cause of Peevey’s announcement, Lichtenberg said. “He may have read the handwriting on the wall, but sometimes commissioners leave and move on.” The calls for Peevey’s ouster included a push by state Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat, to have the Legislature fire Peevey if Gov. Jerry Brown reappointed Peevey in December. Brown, a Democrat who political analysts generally favor to win re-election, will choose Peevey’s replacement.
Peevey’s voting record on telecom issues at the CPUC has been “consistently in sympathy to telecom industry interests, although he’s not a leader in that area like he is in the energy industry,” said The Utility Reform Network Executive Director Mark Toney. TURN has been critical of Peevey’s office’s relationship with PG&E. On telecom issues, Peevey’s “more of a follower of what the industry wants,” Toney said. The CPUC voted in 2011 to do a thorough investigation of the now-failed AT&T plan to buy T-Mobile, favoring a proposal by Commissioner Catherine Sandoval over a less-stringent proposal by Peevey, Toney said. Peevey has also been “very consistent” in favoring deregulation of telecom services in the state, Toney said.
Greenlining Institute Policy Director-Energy and Telecom Stephanie Chen said Peevey has built a mixed record on telecom. “He would sometimes be more on the side of industry players rather than consumers, but we also saw him quite a bit working in favor of consumers and relying on the expertise of” commissioners with more of a background in telecom, Chen said. The CPUC under Peevey “has made closing the Digital Divide a top priority and, in doing so, has turned California into a national leader once again in getting people connected to broadband at home and transforming their lives,” emailed a California Emerging Technology Fund spokeswoman.
All CPUC commissioners handle at least some telecom issues, but Peevey has “played a strong role” in assigning major telecom issues “to the experts,” particularly Sandoval, Chen said. Sandoval is co-vice chairwoman of the NARUC Telecommunications Committee and is policy chairwoman of the FCC Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Telecommunications Services. “We've typically seen telecom proceedings get assigned to the commissioner who has a background on those issues,” so they mainly go to Sandoval, Chen said.
The full effect of Peevey’s departure from the CPUC will depend on the person Brown chooses as a replacement, Toney and others said. Brown can choose to appoint one of the four other commissioners as CPUC president or choose someone from outside the commission, Toney said. Brown is likely to choose someone who has an expertise on energy issues rather than someone from the telecom industry simply because Peevey will leave an expertise void in that area, though it’s not clear if that person would be president or a regular commissioner, Lichtenberg said. Discussions about Peevey’s replacement are likely already happening, but the identities of specific candidates haven’t leaked, Toney and Lichtenberg said. “This is something we'll definitely need to watch,” Lichtenberg said.
Sandoval will likely remain the lead commissioner on telecom, so “at this point we're just hoping that whoever [Brown] chooses will have an open mind about what is possible in the telecom world and in California,” Chen said. TURN would prefer that Peevey’s replacement be “someone who will make decisions based upon the evidence presented, someone who would put the public interest in front of the corporate interest,” Toney said. “The CPUC is in extreme management dysfunction and crisis and needs somebody who has the experience to come in and clean house.”