By Margaret Hopper
Ben Hall of Ruidoso, newly elected to the New Mexico Public Regulations Commission, was the guest speaker at the Republican Party meeting Wednesday night. Hall admitted he had learned a lot about the PRC since joining that group in January. As Commissioner for District 5, he represents 11 counties in Southern New Mexico, including Grant County.
He said he knew the five commissioners were there to regulate nine divisions, with insurance rates and utilities being major ones, but he soon learned that the commissioners were not running the PRC, the staff was. The staff of 260 employees, 32 of them lawyers, came and went as they pleased and did as they pleased. They said they worked on a ‘flex schedule'. If they don't like what they are doing today, they'd change it and say they would do it tomorrow. "We have a $17 million payroll, and we let them come and go as they pleased!"
"Last week I put the process in place to stop it," said Hall. "We are in the process of changing things, and hopefully by January 1, we will have everybody coming in at 8 a.m. and quitting by 5 p.m." He noted that these employees were paid with taxpayers' money and taxpayers should be getting something for that. Another process being put into place is to check each division to see if all these people are really needed. If not, some can be transferred to other positions in the state, and PRC would have fewer employees, all of them doing a day's work for a day's pay. This review of personnel has begun and is being studied by directors, the chief-of-staff and commissioners.
Another thing the PRC did, on the first day they convened in January, was cut the salaries of all employees making over $90,000 annually. That is the salary of a commissioner, and it looked like a lot of employees were making more. The chief of staff was making $135,000; some were making $110,000, $127,000 and other amounts, more than commissioners made. The chief-of-staff immediately quit. Hall said he could do that; they hired another one at $90,000. One actuary, making $127,000 and whom commissioners felt they needed to keep, kept that salary, but he won't be there after the first of the year. All others were cut to $90,000 immediately if they were over that amount. They could choose to stay or leave. Many stayed and continued working.
The corporations division had a lot of problems; Hall said they put in a whole new computer system, and some of the staff said they didn't want to work with it. They were told they could work or leave, but if they wanted to be paid, they would work. In other areas, there were too many regulations. If a man wanted to haul something across Albuquerque and he had to go through '15 lawyers to do it', those rules needed to be changed and that work goes on.
"The PRC is a lawyer's paradise," said Hall. He knew of 29 lawyers on PRC pay and thought there might be three more, but it was hard to know. Because there were general counsel lawyers, hearing lawyers and other groups, he said some would tell him: "I'm not your lawyer." He said he managed to explain to some that if he was a commissioner and they worked for the PRC, he expected and would be getting answers; they did work for him. He said, "They didn't know they had a boss. I'm teaching them that they do."
One of his campaign promises was that he would attend PRC meetings as much as possible. (Past commissioners were notorious for their absences, and Jerome Block, who recently resigned, hadn't been to a meeting in over two months, except to drop by for his paycheck.) Hall said he hadn't missed a single meeting in his 10 months, and he would be in place at his office the next morning; he had come from Ruidoso and would continue on "to Santa Fe after this meeting."
Regarding Block, Hall said they learned the man had been misusing his credit card from the time he became a commissioner three years ago. The governor would soon replace him as she had 87 or more to choose from, and was narrowing the field down quickly. Of his colleagues, he said there were two Democrats and two Republicans, (without Block) and they had never, ever, resorted to party lines to make policy. They were working together and for all the people of the state. He enjoyed serving and seeing that the PRC employees served, too.
Various groups have tried to destroy the PRC; the commissioners have had to justify their efforts by improved results, and they asked the Legislature to give them a chance to prove their value. In one instance, Hall says he was able to show critics that removing or restructuring the PRC wouldn't remove the bureaucrats; the work had to go on and these people would be working somewhere. It was more productive to let them continue working where they were, and not go through the time and expense of creating a whole new scene for the same work. And the offices where the critics wanted to send them didn't want them there; they didn't have space for them.
He described the Santa Fe-based group, Think New Mexico, as another well-funded critic with a number of "experts" who were former PRC people who had failed in their duties, some of whom had resigned after outrageous actions, but who now wanted to determine the future of the PRC. They had few real solutions to offer, but that didn‘t seem to matter to them. They could still create a fight and would likely do it again in the next Legislature.
One thrust was to claim that lack of education, thus, lack of qualifications, was a good reason to change the commission and commissioners. They named Block, Carol Sloan and others, blaming their failures on too little education. Hall said it was easy to name Manny Aragon and ask if his three degrees prevented him from being a bad commissioner. Aragon is presently serving time "in the federal pen." Degrees and certificates might not cure commissioners' troubles. The lawyer sitting now on the commission couldn't do any more than he, himself, could, to make the commission better. He didn't think more degrees necessarily made commissioners better ones.
He and the present commissioners were working long and hard to clean up the PRC, and it took time to undo what had been done by others before them. He knew he was committed to making the PRC serve people of the state the way it was intended to. They were turning things around and getting results.
During the questioning period, he was asked about solar energy. He said the state legislature had mandated energy requirements and turned them over to the PRC, which was tied to these requirements and had to enforce them. Solar cost three times what wind did, and wind also cost twice what coal did. Solar was very expensive but being mandated by agencies over the PRC. PRC was able to get away with more wind than solar and it helped reduce the costs to citizens. Consumers must pay the bill, but the PRC was allowing more wind than solar to keep the costs from being even higher. When legislators mandate that PNM spend money on repairs, consumers not only repay their costs, consumers pay for their profit, too. No utility, PNM included, cares how expensive energy becomes; consumers must pay whatever the rates are.
Another question asked was "Why the PRC voted 5-0 to prevent PNM from buying Renewable Energy Credits for more wind energy generation. Can you tell why this decision was made?"
Hall answered that, by statute, these RECs are legal. But they are nothing but a piece of paper. They don't have one solar panel, one wind generator, one anything. The RECs PNM wanted to buy were five years old. The law said the company must furnish so much solar, so much wind, so must of other energy sources. It also has to prove it is cleaning up the atmosphere. It needs to GENERATE its own renewable energy here in the state. "We don't want to depend on out-of state companies to do it for us. PNM and other utility companies want to buy the RECs and not do any generating. If companies in other states wanted to cut us off, we'd have nothing but a handful of RECs. We made them generate the electricity here in the state. If the out-of-state utilities want to raise the rates, there's nothing you can do about it. We need generation in our own state. The RECs are legal, but the law doesn't say we have to go that way. We need to be generating to protect our own interests. That's why it was done."
Although other questions were asked, these reflected the nature of PRC work best. After the session with Hall, the agenda turned to the monthly business, and Hall continued on to Santa Fe where work awaited him.