Utility links color Florida Public Service Commission picks

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Charlie Crist is expected to announce his replacements for his two ousted appointees to the state utility-regulation board on Wednesday, and will choose from a list of eight applicants that includes many with deep ties to utility companies.

Crist interviewed the candidates last week to fill two positions on the Public Service Commission and told The Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times that he wants to select a commissioner who is willing to offer an independent, pro-consumer point of view, and that ``some more than others'' fit that criterion.

The appointments will fill two positions on the PSC that were vacated when the Florida Senate rejected David Klement and Benjamin ``Steve'' Stevens for confirmation in April.

Crist's list was put together by the PSC Nominating Council, a 12-member board with a chairman and six members who are legislators. Sen. Mike Bennett, a Sarasota Republican and chairman of the council, called the list of applicants ``one of the most qualified'' the panel had ever seen.

The same council last month rejected the reappointment of two sitting PSC commissioners, Nancy Argenziano and Nathan Skop. Some council members said the commissioners had not been cooperative, and the council wanted to ``start over'' on the board.

Argenziano has urged Crist to reject the lists of names because she believes the council is unduly influenced by the utility companies.

Crist is expected to choose two names from the following:

• Rep. Ron Brise, a Democrat from Miami whose former telecom company, IPIP Telecommunications, used to share contracts with a company now under indictment for bribing Haitian officials. Brise says he joined the company after the questionable behavior, left it in January 2009, and was never involved. ``During my tenure there I can attest that everything that was done at IPIP was very much aboveboard,'' he said.

• Connie Murray, a former three-term Republican state legislator from Springfield, Mo., who was appointed to two terms on Missouri's PSC by two Democratic governors.

After leaving the panel, Murray took on a $30,000 consulting job with Ameren UE, a St. Louis-based utility that is the largest in the state. She was once publicly reprimanded by a state legislator for allowing a gas company to get a 44 percent rate increase without a public hearing. She defends that decision, saying the increase was a temporary hike required by law when fuel prices spiked.

• Charles Ranson, a consultant who has worked in economic development in Kansas and Florida and is the former executive director of the Florida TaxWatch Center for a Competitive Florida. He formerly represented telecommunication clients before the Legislature, and his former law partner represented clients before the PSC.

• Mary Bane, the retired former executive director of the PSC, who served on the commission for more than 40 years, including the last year in which the agency came under fire for allowing staff members to exchange text messages and socialize with the utility officials they regulate.

In the past year, Bane was criticized for not acting quickly enough after the PSC's lead lobbyist, Ryder Rudd, admitted he attended a Kentucky Derby party at the home of an FPL executive when the company had a rate-increase request before the PSC. Bane personally approved a 10 percent salary increase for Rudd a month after the event.

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