After Five Years Brown Appoints New Consumer Advocacy Director at the CPUC

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Elizabeth Echols on Wednesday to direct the California Public Utilities Commission's Office of Ratepayer Advocates. The division is dedicated to protecting consumers and has been without a permanent director for more than five years. Interim director Joe Como retired in December.

Echols, a 55-year-old Berkeley resident, lost the race for an East Bay state Assembly seat to Tony Thurmond in 2014. From 2010 to 2013 she directed the Small Business Administration for the Western region, appointed by President Barack Obama. She also directed the U.S. Green Building Council, was a member of the Obama-Biden transition team and was a director of policy at Google. She earned a law degree from Stanford University.

The state Senate needs to confirm the appointment.

The CPUC oversees privately owned electric, gas, transportation and telecommunication companies. Recently, the commission has been under fire for a series of scandals, including the Porter Ranch gas leak, San Onofre shutdown deal and deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion. Thousands of released emails show that top commission staff often had close relationships with executives at the utilities they oversee.

Recently, three lawmakers proposed letting voters decide whether to strip the agency's constitutional authority and allow the Legislature to redistribute its power to other state agencies.

The Office of Ratepayer Advocates is the only state agency solely dedicated to looking out for utility customers. In California, utility bills are determined through a quasi-legal process. Companies argue for higher utility rates to an administrative law judge. Unions, consumer groups and others can intervene in these cases with their own lawyers. In 1984, the Legislature decided utility customers needed their voice heard in such proceedings and created the CPUC branch known today as the Office of Ratepayer Advocates. Consumers pay for the ORA through their utility bills.

ORA analysts frequently testify in these hearings about whether a utility's proposal is fair. They also check to make sure that utilities are actually spending the revenue they've been granted. For instance, this winter PG&E ratepayers will receive a refund for $400 million that the utility was supposed to spend on safety upgrades.

But in recent years staff members say the division has been hollowed out. Currently, the ORA doesn’t have a chief counsel, and it’s often forced to use lawyers who work for other branches of the CPUC — attorneys who may have interests that don’t coincide with the ORA’s mission. About one in seven funded positions are vacant.