For a certain kind of animal — i.e., the Policy Wonk — this is a gift: Sunset reports on insurance and utility regulators and on the capital city’s transportation authority hit the internet this morning.
Texas Public Utility Commission
Posted in
State Government
Net Neutrality Neutralized
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell on why people who use more bandwith should pay more, what he thinks of the recent court decision preventing restrictions on “information service” providers, and more.
Posted in
Energy
TribBlog: PUC Chairman Won’t Seek ERCOT Job
Smitherman says while it’s probably legal for the state’s top energy regulator to seek the ERCOT chief executive job, “it just doesn’t feel right to go forward.”
Posted in
Energy
Wind in the Wires
Many Texans like wind power. Few want electric transmission lines running through their ranches. Herein lies the problem.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom on her two hours in Juárez, Grissom, Ramshaw and Ramsey on four of the runoffs on Tuesday’s ballot, Ramshaw on the religious experience that is voting for Dallas County’s DA and an energy regulator’s play for a job at the entity he regulates, Mulvaney on the Texas Senate’s biggest spenders, Aguilar on whether — as U.S. officials claim — 90 percent of guns used in Mexican crimes really flow south from Texas, M. Smith on the continuing Texas Forensic Science Commission follies, Stiles on how inmates spend their money behind bars and how counties are responding at Census time, Hamilton on the creative accounting and semantic trickery that allows lawmakers to raise revenue without hiking taxes when there’s a budget shortfall, and Hu on Austin’s first-in-the-nation car-sharing program. The best of our best from April 5 to 9, 2010.
Posted in
Energy
The Applicant
Can an energy regulator who’s on the board of an entity he oversees make a play for the top job there? Industry and government sources say that’s what Barry Smitherman, the chairman of Texas’ influential Public Utility Commission, is doing, though Smitherman won’t say whether he’s in the running.
Posted in
Energy
Don’t Blow It
Texas’ wind power prowess is well known: Turbines have been popping up like weeds, and we now have three times the wind power installed as the next closest state. But other renewable energy sources have lagged here.
Posted in
Energy
Investing in Efficiency
Texans have always been far better at making energy than saving it. But if a proposal before the Public Utility Commission gets approved this year, buildings and appliances would need to become much more energy efficient by 2014. Electric providers across the state would be required to offset 50 percent of their customers’ growth in usage with energy-efficiency measures — well above the current 20 percent requirement set by the Legislature.
