Budget Watch Nevada

Over the past few decades, liberal activists have successfully weaseled their way into all aspects of state government. Two major venues for their success are with state attorneys general (AGs) and in utility regulation, where the environmental, energy conservation and consumerist interests sometimes overlap. Over time, volunteer activist groups such as “Citizen Utility Boards” have sought funding and institutionalization as state agencies anywhere the bureaucracy would house them, and ambitious statist AGs, governors and state legislators have been complicit in their schemes. Once these erstwhile citizen groups get institutionalized within the bureaucracy, they tap public funding via utility ratepayers to pay for their activist crusades without having a shred of real public control over them or meaningful accountability.

While Democrats, our true statist and simple-minded party animals, have led the way in such excesses, some shallow unprincipled Republicans, grubbing for votes, headlines and acceptance by the equally shallow press and activist communities, have also gotten on the bandwagon. So it is in Nevada, where State Senator Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, became the proud father of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) housed within the state AG’s office. While the BCP has various activities, the one of interest here is its standing as a party in all Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) proceedings.

The PUC is supposed to make decisions based on the public interests in any matter on which it rules, such as setting utility rates, approving new energy facilities, etc. It has a staff of various professionals who are charged to provide testimony and assistance to the PUC, illuminating what the public interest requires or allows in each matter. So, if taxpayers must also pay for the BCP to be a party, then we are either paying twice for a single service and getting contradictory or misleading information, or we are paying the political activists at BCP for advocacy not in the public interest and therefore contrary to it. As it turns out, it is mostly the latter, but in any event, the whole enterprise is a complete waste of tax dollars and is undermining the public interest.

What ultimately needs to be done is obvious: repeal the statute giving the BCP any role at the PUC. Without even waiting for the Legislature to take such action, the AG, Catherine Cortez-Masto, should fire the lawyers, administrators, other bureaucrats, and outside contractors, and cut other expenses related to BCP’s activism before the PUC. Quit wasting public resources in that area and mucking up utility regulation.

A rough estimate of the annual savings that might be achieved by doing so is $1,000,000. However, the benefits of ending this boondoggle would be much greater than simply ending a drain on taxpayer dollars, because BCP’s ideologues are not meaningfully accountable for their actions, but instead spend their time and taxpayers’ dollars pursuing their personal ideological agendas that are often contrary to the public interest. BCP’s analyses, testimony and recommendations are almost always incompetent, misleading or at least contrary to the public interest, to the point that the PUC has noted such problems in some of its decisions. There’s no reasonable consistency in its positions from one case to the next, and in fact BCP tends to pick one outside consultant or staff member to argue a viewpoint convenient in one proceeding and then switch to another person for the next case to argue a contradictory point. BCP makes no meaningful contributions over time, except to delay and mislead PUC proceedings and run up all other parties’ costs while getting paid by taxpayers to fleece them by furthering its statist agendas.

Jeff Wright, Reno activist and guest contributor to Budget Watch Nevada.