PUC leader, criticized by legislators over storm response, resigns
The state’s top utility regulator resigned Monday under increasing pressure from lawmakers in the wake of last month’s deadly power outages.
In her resignation letter, Public Utility Commission Chairwoman Deann Walker sounded indignant, saying she had “worked endless hours over the past two and a half weeks to re turn electric power to the grid” and that others contributed to the lapse.
“The gas companies, the Railroad Commission, the electric generators, the transmission and distribution utilities, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and finally the Legislature all had responsibility to foresee what could have happened and failed to take the necessary steps for the past 10 years to address issues that each of them could have addressed,” Walker wrote.
She added, “I know that I acted with the best of intentions and used my best judgment on how to respond once the crisis was upon us, as well as the days that led to the crisis.”
Pressure for Walker to resign over the outages hit a new level earlier Monday when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick became the most influential lawmaker yet to demand the resignations of Walker and Bill Magness, the CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT.
Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, said after a series of hearings last week that it is clear there were critical communication failures in the runup to the winter storm by Walker and Magness.
“The lack of adequate preparation by both the ERCOT CEO and the PUC chair before the storm, their failure to plan for the worst-case scenario and their failure to communicate in a timely manner dictates they are not the ones to oversee the reforms needed,” Patrick said in a statement released to the media Monday morning.
Walker was pelted last week in legislative hearings for not using her role as chair of the PUC to do
more. Walker insisted she doesn’t have the authority to do as much as some have suggested, but lawmakers were highly critical of her answers.
“I would contend you are choosing not to leverage the authority we have given you,” said Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-conroe.
Walker’s departure was welcomed by Rep. Rafael Anchía, Ddallas, who was among those who aggressively questioned her last week.
“The people of Texas deserved nothing less than Commissioner Walker’s immediate resignation following the complete failure by her agency and ERCOT,” he said in a statement, adding, “Texans still await her apology.”
The PUC has oversight of ERCOT, which is a nongovernmental public entity that is supposed to manage the state’s electricity grid. Seven of ERCOT’S 15 board members resigned last week.
Magness was grilled for nearly five hours during last week’s hearings on how the state ended up within minutes of the entire electrical grid failing, which would have damaged power facilities and transmission lines for months.
Magness said that to protect the grid, ERCOT ordered utility companies to institute rolling outages but that because of a series of failures, those outages lasted days and left millions of Texans without power during the frigid temperatures. He said that ultimately the rolling outages were the right call.
When pressed, Magness said there was nothing he would have done differently but that he understood the consequences of the outages.
“The ERCOT CEO and the PUC chair did acknowledge their poor communication prior to the storm, but they did not seem to understand what a critical point that was,” Patrick said
Monday. “As one example, ERCOT didn’t make a public call for Texans to conserve energy until the storm was upon us on February 14.”
“I do not make this call for the resignation of the PUC chair and the ERCOT CEO lightly,” he added. “These are two good people who have worked very hard.”
Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Walker to the PUC on Sept. 20, 2017. Her term is set to expire in September. While Abbott appoints the utility commission chair, the Texas Senate must confirm the appointment.
Magness has been president and CEO of ERCOT since January 2016.
Patrick took issue with some of the testimony he heard last week from Walker and Magness. At one point, Patrick said they told senators that they had “informed state leadership, including me, about the seriousness of the winter storm.”
But Patrick said they did not provide him with information regarding the potential “catastrophic grid-threatening danger” of the storm before the morning of Feb. 15.
Other Texas lawmakers have been calling for Walker and Magness to resign. Last week, a bipartisan group of Texas House members called for them to step aside, including state Reps. Jeff Leach, R-plano, and Armando Walle, D-houston.
Nearly two weeks ago, having shivered their way through the first round of the winter blast, residents of Leander braved the cold and flocked to the local H-E-B to purchase supplies for the week ahead. Then the power went out.
Confronted with dozens of anxious shoppers and no way to collect payment, store employees simply said, “Go ahead,” and let their patrons leave, baskets of food in hand.
Texans helping Texans. Amid our first truly statewide disaster in decades, press reports and social media feeds immediately filled with stories reflecting Texans’ remarkable humanity and generosity. Those fortunate enough to have power, heat and water took in less fortunate neighbors; community members organized mutual aid efforts and impromptu food and water distributions; and donations flowed to food banks and other critical nonprofits.
As proud as we should be of the goodness of individual Texans, however, many of us are equally enraged by the collapse of a system intended and expected to keep our residents safe.
Make no mistake: This was a man-made disaster. As we mourn the senseless loss of dozens of lives and offer our heartfelt condolences to grieving families and
loved ones, we also must seek accountability from the institutions that utterly failed all of us before and during the storm.
Let’s start with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the entity charged with the integrity of our independent electric grid — with a name that would be comical were it not for the magnitude of its failure. The council’s sole focus is keeping the lights on, which includes ensuring our infrastructure is weatherized. After our last major winter storm in 2011, federal officials and national industry representatives recommended ERCOT implement mandatory weatherization protocols for power generators. It failed to do
so, with deadly consequences.
What’s more, as ERCOT mandated load sheds and supposedly rolling outages to stabilize the grid, it failed to communicate effectively about the situation. Its demands resulted in blackouts that, in many cases, lasted days and caused irreparable harm.
As frustration set in, ERCOT’S leaders removed information about its board members — onethird of whom, before mass resignations Thursday, were not Texan — from its website, confusing an anxious public desperate for information. Its inactions failed to live up to the public trust, warranting due consideration about ERCOT’S structure, governance and independence.
Of course, ERCOT doesn’t act alone. It is overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, an agency charged with regulating the state’s electric power generators, distributors and providers. Reports indicate it bears equal responsibility by allowing utility companies to ignore weatherization practices commonplace elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. The absence of those protocols left generators of all kinds unable to produce power and millions of Texans in the cold.
House and Senate investigatory committees convened last week, and in time what the energy regulators and providers did, could have done or failed to do will come to light. Count me among the legislators who want to get to the bottom of this and ensure it does not happen again.
Ultimately, however, much of the responsibility lies with the Texas Legislature. For decades we have debated “big” versus “small” government. No matter its size, Texans — the H-E-B employees in Leander, the good Samaritans taking care of their neighbors — deserve a government that is responsive and responsible, and it is my hope we will act accordingly.
The Legislature undoubtedly will pass reforms, ask difficult questions and help resolve spiking energy bills in the coming weeks, but real change will take time, introspection and bipartisan collaboration. That must begin with reconsidering the orthodoxy that brought us to this point.
Regarding the energy market, that means questioning the merits of hands-off oversight and an independent grid, but this year’s cascading crises warrant a broader view: Is less government really the path to human flourishing, or can we find a middle ground between bare-bones minimalism and bloated bureaucracy?
I believe we can, and we must. Texans have demonstrated repeatedly their unmatched compassion, kindness and resiliency this year. Our government must too.