If the right sort of person with the right sort of views neglects his job for the pleasures of hobnobbing on the conference circuit, rest assured it won’t seriously hurt his career. He may compromise his role as guardian of the public interest and yet still land another post with “prestige” written all over it.
Take Ron Binz, chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission until early last year and longtime advocate of green energy. He has resurfaced at Colorado State University’s Center for the New Energy Economy as “senior policy advisor,” hired by the same man — former Gov. Bill Ritter — who appointed him to the PUC.
Ritter also hired the former director of his energy office, Tom Plant, as a senior policy adviser. In fact, Binz and Plant represent half of the center’s “thought leaders” listed in a brochure describing what the center is all about. And Ritter himself of course is one of the remaining two.
So what’s wrong with that?
Nothing where Plant is concerned. If you buy the notion of universities sponsoring advocacy centers to promote green energy — as if the renewable industries and environmental groups weren’t up to the job — then Plant is your man, even if he hardly comes cheap at $70,000 for a part-time job. He has a long record of pushing government schemes to promote and subsidize alternative energy.
But the Binz appointment — also part time, at what Ritter told me is a base retainer of $4,000 a month — is a bit galling. Just weeks ago, the state auditor issued a report on the PUC that pretty much confirms what critics like me had claimed — namely, that Binz functioned as if various rules and regulations didn’t always apply to him. Meanwhile, he seemed nearly as interested in globe-trotting as in his duties.
The audit doesn’t single out commissioners by name, so we don’t know for sure whether Binz is the commissioner whose “travel schedule made it difficult for division staff to meet with him and ensure his preparedness for meetings and hearings.” What we do know, however, is there were only three commissioners and Binz traveled a lot.
As I once pointed out, from June 2007 through November 2010 alone, Binz took more than 50 out-of-state trips, “including two overseas, and spent about 200 days on the road … . In short, Binz spent the equivalent of at least one in four workdays at conferences, jetting to Greece, Jordan, Santa Monica, San Diego, Santa Fe, Whitefish (Mont.), Las Vegas, Hawaii, San Francisco, Amelia Island (Fla.), Park City, Seattle, Austin, Los Angeles, and numerous other hardship outposts.”
The audit also found that “during calendar years 2008 through 2011,” at least one commissioner was absent from 30 percent of the weekly meetings, often for “business-related travel.”
Meanwhile, numerous trips by commissioners “did not comply with one or more of the state fiscal rules for travel,” while 27 trips “paid for, at least in part, by third parties” may not have complied with Amendment 41.
Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission previously found Binz violated the state constitution on one of those trips, when he accepted a free journey to Houston by a private energy company.
I don’t have space to recount how Binz abandoned his role as impartial guardian of the public interest when he helped write an important piece of energy legislation, or explain why a judge last year described a PUC telephone service rate hike as an “abuse of power.” But they too are among the reasons why his sinecure sends the wrong signal to the public.
CSU’s Center for the New Energy Economy may be privately funded, but it’s still part of a state research university.
If there’s an upside, at least the center is limiting his work to part-time — sort of like his last public-sector post, as it turns out.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter
