Changing advocacy

Maine electric utilities have already begun the process of downsizing to prepare for deregulation in 2000. By then, they will be far smaller transmission and distribution companies, minor players in the competitive world of energy production and marketing. So why is the Legislature considering a 60 percent budget increase for the state office charged with overseeing them?

The Public Advocate’s Office was created in the early 1980s, when the utilities and the Public Utilities Commission were too cozy. They aren’t cozy now. The PUC, in fact, has taken the lead in looking out for residential electricity users while the advocate’s office has formed an alliance with industrial customers. No surprise that the lobbyist for industrial users, a natural combatant to the advocate, actually testified recently before the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee in favor of expanding the advocate’s budget.

The current budget for the office stands at $649,336. The recommendation before the Legislature would increase that by $400,000. Imagine a state department or agency dropping by the State House and asking that its budget be nearly doubled even as the subject of its oversight is diminished. And the Legislature isn’t the only source of the advocate’s money. That office recently drafted a request for $100,000 in federal emergency money — which is supposed to go for aid and relief — to hire experts to look at how well the utilities responded to the ice storm.

There certainly is an important role for a consumer advocate in a deregulated market, but it is not clear that the current office will make sense in the changed atmosphere. With small increases in staff and budget, other state agencies may be able to do the job more effectively, saving taxpayers substantial cost. Such a change would mirror the downsizing undergone by the utilities in the last five or six years.

The advocate’s office was designed to protect the little guy, the residential customer who had no lobbyist, from the monopolistic, regulated utilities. The reason for its creation is now passing into history. Before lawmakers institutionalize a far larger, more expensive office, they should consider whether deregulation applies there, as well.