JEFFERSON CITY — Robert Kenney didn’t last long in the attorney general’s office.
The St. Louis attorney who had been named earlier this year as chief of staff by Attorney General Chris Koster will be leaving that office to take a position on the powerful Public Service Commission just in time to hear a rate hike case brought by Ameren UE.
Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Kenney to the position today. He will need to be confirmed by the Senate to continue in the position past the legislative session that begins in January.
“Robert Kenney earned his credentials in the courtroom in protecting Missouri consumers as an important part of my consumer protection division and the No Call team,” Gov. Nixon said. “As the Public Service Commission works to ensure a reliable energy supply at the lowest possible cost to consumers, Commissioner Kenney’s experience will be a valuable asset for this agency.”
Kenney also worked in the AG’s office under Nixon. Before going to work for Koster, he was a partner in the St. Louis firm Polsinelli Shughart PC.
Kenney, a Democrat, will replace Connie Murray on the PSC. Nixon had previously appointed another former employee, Joe Bindbeutel, to the PSC, but he was never confirmed by the Senate and his appointment was withdrawn. Bindbeutel has been in the news lately for his role in withholding a report about high bacteria levels in the Lake of the Ozarks.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon will soon, possibly as early as today, make one of his most important appointments since taking office in January: He will try, for the second time, to fill the fifth seat on the Missouri Public Service Commission.
The PSC regulates the state’s investor-owned utility companies; the new commissioner will have a key vote on such matters as AmerenUE’s request last week for an 18 percent rate increase. At stake in those hearings will be controversial provisions of a 2005 law that allows utilities to pass on environmental costs to customers without extensive PSC review.
The appointment is all the more critical because the commission currently is deadlocked 2-2 between those who generally side with utilities’ interests and those who are more attuned to consumers’ interests.
In 16 years as state attorney general, Mr. Nixon, a Democrat, built a strong pro-consumer record. But the PSC appointee must be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
In April, Mr. Nixon appointed Joseph Bindbeutel, a former aide who had been an assistant attorney general in charge of environmental issues, to the PSC seat. But the Senate, strongly pro-utility in recent years, let the nomination die when it adjourned in May.
Thus the PSC nomination has become a sort of minor-league version of the president’s Supreme Court nominations: The governor has to appoint someone who will please his own constituents but not antagonize pro-utility senators on the other side of the issue.
One key difference: Republicans also don’t want to antagonize big industrial electricity customers, whose executives often are major political contributors. Big corporations and small consumers often are on the same side in rate hearings.
A spokesman for the governor said Mr. Nixon will appoint a commissioner who has “no predetermined agenda” and who will have ample time to demonstrate his or her independence before the Senate reconvenes in January.
That should be about the time when AmerenUE’s rate hike request is making its way through the hearings process; a decision is due in June 2010.
The $402 million hike would be AmerenUE’s largest in 20 years, but its third in three years; just last January, the PSC approved an increase of $162.6 million. AmerenUE says its new request would raise monthly bills for the average household (one using about 1,100 kilowatt hours of power each month) by about $15.
Slightly more than half of the money would go to paying higher fuel costs, primarily for coal, and to offset lower returns on electricity sold outside AmerenUE’s service area. About $175 million would help pay for burying power lines and other improvements to ensure reliable service and to offset the higher cost of borrowed money.
The rate case will establish future procedures for allowing AmerenUE to pass along higher fuel and environmental costs without going through a full-blown rate case. A bill approved by the Legislature in 2005 allowed these pass-throughs; the current rate case is the only time the procedure is likely to get the full attention it deserves.
AmerenUE is entitled to a fair return. Whether 11.5 percent (the return the utility is seeking) for a monopoly operation is fair, given that the Legislature has removed a lot of the risk, deserves the active scrutiny of a full, and fully engaged, board of regulators.
The Consumer Federation of America has produced a video asking consumers to contact Congress in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The video can be viewed at:
