At Press Conference, Shumlin Clarifies Position on Utility Merger — Kind Of

1. One thing is perfectly obvious, that nothing in this merger is perfectly obvious!  As John Greenberg here and plenty of others have suggested, it’s high time for a time out:  instead of the futile debate over the insignificant $21 million, the legislature should mandate a 12 month moratorium on the PSB process.  

   During this time, the real political issues could be debated:1.  Do we want foreign ownership of Vermont’s distribution AND transmission network?2.  Is it proper and fair to allow a utility to finance a merger such as this from savings that result from job losses?3.  Is it proper for the state’s public advocate to participate in a case where she stands to benefit financially from her own actions? 4.  Whether CVPS repays in cash or efficiency investments, is it proper for a utility to make such a payment and then turn around recover by being granted higher rates?

   Stop.  Think.  Act.  

2.  

   Like the author of the article, Guy, you’re missing the
   point: the question is not whether or not one “believes in” the PSB.  

   As I noted previously, the legislature that wrote Act 160
   clearly believed that the issue of continuing operations at Vermont Yankee
   merited two independent kinds of consideration.  The first, by the legislature, was to be broad
   both in scope and in terms of the voices to be heard; the second, by the Board,
   was to be far narrower in both regards, even though the legislature DID demand
   that the Board broaden its usual limitations in specific ways (more public
   access, de novo consideration of certain issues rather than reliance on
   testimony from earlier dockets).  

    

   Specifically, you ask what the governor could have done, and
   yes, he certainly COULD have undermined the Act 160 process in the way you
   suggest, effectively rendering the legislative vote meaningless.  Rather than providing the kind of deliberation
   that the Act 160 legislature specifically envisioned, the 2010 legislature
   COULD have simply said, in effect, this is the Board’s decision to make, not
   ours.

    

   But if your question is whether the legislature SHOULD have
   done this, my answer is quite clear: NO. 
   I think the Act 160 process was sensible.  It left to politicians the kinds of issues
   which they are best positioned to deliberate and resolve: namely, the place of
   nuclear power in the broadest view of the energy policy of the State.  Unlike the Board, which is bound by its own
   precedent, the legislature is completely free to question its own premises and
   earlier conclusions especially in the light of changing times and values, and
   to do so with the widest possible public input.  I believe this was precisely the right thing
   to do as energy policy in our larger society has changed mightily since the
   1960s, so, in my opinion, the legislative decision you’re asking for – namely,
   NOT to grapple with these issues – would have been a major policy mistake.

    

   As the merger issue unfolds, I am increasingly beginning to
   think that it too would have benefited from precisely the same kind of scrutiny
   BEFORE the PSB took up the detailed, technical case.  While many of the arguments raised on both
   sides strike me as unconvincing, I think there are basic questions which really
   fall outside of the Board’s usual realm of decision-making, but which still
   merit public debate. The largest of these is the fundamental question of
   whether foreign ownership of our largest utilities is acceptable to Vermonters,
   which many clearly find objectionable.  

    

   This and much more could – and perhaps should – have been
   hashed out in the legislature BEFORE the merger moved to the Board.  But that opportunity is now lost – unless the
   legislature decides to simply HALT the current PSB process while it debates the
   issue.  As far as I know, however, no one
   has suggested that.

    

   In the meantime, I have spoken out against what I see as bad
   policy and bad precedent: namely, an intervention by the legislature on one
   specific piece of a complex issue with many moving parts, WHILE the case is
   being heard and testimony being considered by the Board.  THAT, in my estimation, would significantly
   undermine the Board’s independence and its credibility.

    

   Additionally, there is little evidence in the legislative
   and public discussion so far that the debaters have grappled with the CVPS
   payback question as one small part of a much larger whole, but that is crucial
   here.  So I oppose the proposed legislative
   intervention for reasons both of process and of substance.

   Finally, your questions were phrased in terms of what Peter
   Shumlin could or should have done.  Please
   keep in mind that I speak for myself, not for him or anyone else.

3. But John…..

   If the Gov really believes in PSB over legislative involvement, why couldn’t he have just said in the Senate “we vote to send it to the PSB?” That would have been an affirmative vote, right?

   But instead it was “we can’t let the PSB decide on this, we’re voting no.” Do you know something I don’t, or can you admit that, yeah, they could have just handed it without comment to the PSB?

   Can’t have it both ways, John.

4. Paul
    
   Good blow by blow reportage. I was at that press conference but you obviously take better notes than I do! I was struck by the governor seeming to explain the Senate vote on VY with “the law made me do it”. In fact the Senate could have very, very easily just said two years “we vote affirmatively to let the Public Service Board handle this.” In fact that is what the Vermont Energy Partnership and other groups were publicly urging the Senate to do. This would have satisfied the requirement of the law (the Legislature must vote) and allowed the PSB to rule on the proposed Certificate of Public Good. In the terms Gov. Shumlin is using now, what could be simpler?
    
   The governor also said one reason to support the merger is that it will reduce costs, which will reduce consumer power rates, which will create jobs. I believe the actual quote was “competitive power rates mean job creation in Vermont.” And HE’S RIGHT in principle – so why then is Montpelier so eager to pass renewable power legislation that will require utilities to pay literally 10 times the market rate of power (30 cents kwh for solar, compared to three cents on today’s open market)? Because if low rates are a jobs creator, then high rates must be a jobs killer, right?

5. Great story! 

6. Mr. Heinz appears mystified by what seems to me to be a very clear distinction, made not just by the governor, but also by 2 former chairs of the Vermont Public Service Board (but gosh, what would they know?), the Speaker of the House and others.

   These folks argue, as does the governor, that the legislature should not intervene when there is a PENDING
   docket open at the Board. There was no open docket in 2006 when the legislature
   decided to insert itself into the VY relicensing issue. No petition had been filed;
   no parties admitted; no testimony taken.

   More importantly, the legislative intervention in Act 160 did far more than
   simply insert a legislative vote into an otherwise stable and established
   process. In fact, the clear purpose of the law was to ESTABLISH a process, well before
   it got underway.

   To that end, the law called for specific studies to be conducted by the
   Department of Public Service and presented to both the Board and the legislature
   prior to any decision. Not only was the subject matter of the studies specified,
   but so too was the public process which the Department was to follow in
   conducting them. Similarly, the law specified, in detail, the public process the
   Board was to follow, and required that the Board look at the evidence in the
   broadest possible context.

   In other words, the legislature did not attempt to replace the Board’s
   evidentiary proceeding with its own process. Quite to the contrary, that’s
   PRECISELY why a legislative vote was inserted in the first place. The
   legislature recognized that its own process — inherently far more open and far
   more subject to the whims of public opinion — is inherently different from the
   Board’s far more technical, far more admissible-evidence-driven process, and
   decided that, given the public policy importance of the VY issue, the legislature decided that BOTH were
   needed before an affirmative decision could be reached.

   In sum, the core purpose of Act 160 was to widen both the content and the
   process involved in making the decision about VY specifically to enable far
   greater public input, and to treat the decision as a wide public policy issue
   rather than a purely technical proceeding based solely on evidence, existing
   law, and precedent. 

   One can argue about whether or not Act 160 was a wise direction to have followed, but
   it is clearly distinct from the one in question today.

   By contrast to Act 160, if the legislature inserts itself into the
   reimbursement question now, it would be mandating that the Board rule in a
   particular way on a particular point, regardless of the evidence presented to it
   by the parties, in an open docket with an ongoing proceeding. It would
   effectively simply override both the law, the evidence, and the precedents
   generally used by the Board IN THE MIDDLE OF A CASE.

   Shumlin’s note of caution is therefore, I think, quite wise: it’s
   highly questionable whether the legislature SHOULD intervene in ANY case with
   this kind of specificity, especially on an issue as technical as the one causing
   all the difficulty here: namely, the form which reimbursements of particular
   Board mandates should take.

   Legislators should think carefully about whether they want to have a Board to
   sort out these complex issues, or whether they really want to substitute
   political judgement for legal-technical judgement. It’s not unreasonable to
   raise the question — it is, after all, a fundamental question of public policy
   which is what legislatures exist to resolve — but it should be seen for what it
   really is, and treated with far greater respect for its total policy context in
   our legal and regulatory structure.

   Otherwise, as Speaker Smith suggests, this looks very much like legislators
   instructing a supposedly independent Board on how to decide a specific case, and
   that seems like a highly dubious precedent to be setting.

   Finally, it is worth noting that even in the 2010 Senate vote, the
   legislature inserted itself in the Board’s process by restricting
   the Board from a ruling, rather than by instructing the Board HOW to rule.  The Board process simply remained
   “on hold,” and now 2 years later, thanks to the Federal Court
   decision, the docket has now been re-started. (The Board’s first
   decision, with the assent of ALL parties to the case, was to begin a new
   docket rather than re-opening the existing one, for a variety of legal
   and evidentiary reasons). 

   Assuming the reporter has quoted him fairly, Shumlin may be contradicting himself by asserting both that ratepayers are better off with the merger and that he would prefer an independent CVPS, but there is no contradiction at all between his VY stance and his merger stance.

7. When it comes to crony-capitalism, Shumlin’s all in.

8. He’s the Democrats’ very own Mitt Romney.

9. This man is a pathological liar. 

10. He sounds dumber than George Bush!!!!! He wants to have his pie his way. King Shumlin!!!

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