Q: Why did you give up your position with law firm Holland & Hart to accept this role?
A: Regulation is an area I’m very interested in, have been for many years. I’ve been involved since the early 1970s.
My law practice over time has moved more and more toward public policy. I’ve been interested in being a commissioner for a number of years. Right now, with everything that’s going on in energy and taking care of our resource needs in the future, it’s just an ideal time to be here.
Q: What interests you about regulation?
A: I did not get into regulation because I knew anything about it. I was in the (Colorado) attorney general’s office back in ’72, was representing a variety of agencies and after about a year, the attorney general asked me if I was interested in dropping those agencies and representing the PUC. Once I got to the commission, it just felt very natural. I quickly grabbed onto a lot of the concepts and enjoyed it very much.
Q: What are you more concerned about right now on the energy front — helping to control costs for consumers, especially during the economic slowdown, or addressing environmental issues?
A: Both of them are very high. Energy is much higher on the scale right now than telecommunications. And within energy, there is this issue, especially on the natural-gas side: How do we provide heating for residential customers and for low-income customers at a reasonable, affordable rate?
Then on the electric side, there’s this whole issue of we’re in a fast-growing state, we’re in a fast-growing region — and how are we going to provide resources to accommodate that growth? What are we going to do about conservation and energy efficiency to temper that growth?
Q: On the telecommunications side, what is your stance on Qwest’s ongoing efforts to reduce regulations over its phone service, contending that there is enough competition from other companies such as Comcast?
A: I think that it certainly is a very valid question. . . . We have regulation on a state level of some services. We have regulation on a federal level through the FCC on certain aspects of telecommunications. And we have certain aspects that are not subject to any regulation.
It’s a question of what’s the appropriate combination of federal versus state versus no regulation.
Q: How do you get your voice across as the lone Republican on the commission
A: (Chairman) Ron Binz and I see eye to eye, in a lot of ways, about things that need to be done. I’ve talked to (newly appointed commissioner) Matt Baker in the past. I think Matt Baker also appreciates what the major issues are. We’re going to have differences of emphasis. . . . I’m not sure any of us, at the moment, should be tagged as the minority. I don’t think of this as having a Republican agenda. … We’re all trying to work to the same goal of resource needs.
Q: Are there other issues that you have your eye on?
A: One of the issues that I see is this idea of having the commission be more active with regard to dockets that get filed here. . . . What I’m interested in very much is moving the commissioners’ involvement up earlier in the process.
Q: What was it like working as a special agent for the FBI (from 1968 to 1972) and why did you leave that job?
A: It was very enjoyable. It’s actually the main reason why I wound up coming back to Colorado. We had just gotten married and my first office assignment was Denver, and I’m from New York City, so we came out here and thought this was fine, and we knew the FBI eventually was going to transfer me back to New York. If you’re from New York why would you want to live anywhere else?
Eventually I got transferred back to New York, with the long commute and the weather and humidity and a variety of things, and we thought, ‘Boy, Denver is such a great place, why don’t we just go on back out?’ So we decided to leave the FBI and came out here and interviewed with the attorney general’s office and moved down here with our children and have never looked back.
Edited for length and clarity by staff writer Andy Vuong.
