Taking a closer look at Balderas’ claims

Itake issue with several statements by Attorney General Hector Balderas and his chief counsel, Matthew Baca, in the article (“AG’s performance criticized amid conflict-of-interest allegations,” Aug. 8).

Here are two statements I believe are misleading. Baca reportedly asserted that the attorney general’s position at the Public Regulation Commission has been that “PNM should not be allowed to recover 100% of the capital costs left behind” at the soon-to-be-abandoned San Juan and Four Corners power plants and that the Attorney General’s Office “advised the Legislature during consideration of the [Energy Transition Act] that oversight of those matters belonged with the Public Regulation Commission.”

The first time PNM proposed legislation, in the 2018 legislative session, that would have guaranteed it 100 percent recovery of its remaining capital costs in those coal-fired plants and stripped PRC authority to determine otherwise (Senate Bill 47), neither Balderas nor any of his representatives stood up publicly to oppose those proposals. New Energy Economy and other stakeholders did.

Again, when PNM resurrected cost-recovery proposals as part of the Energy Transition Act at the 2019 session, neither Balderas nor any of his representatives opposed them.

Here’s what happened after the passage of the ETA. An attorney general’s expert witness testified at the PRC that allowing PNM to recover 100 percent of its remaining costs in those coalfired plants after abandonment would not “reasonably balance the interests” of PNM’s ratepayers and shareholders as provided in the New Mexico Public Utility Act. However, she acknowledged the PRC could not protect PNM customers.

Perhaps more distorting are Balderas’ claims that allegations of conflict of interest from New Energy Economy’s Mariel Nanasi were the likely product of “cultural bias.” To put it politely, this is pure baloney. As a past counsel for parties in PRC cases, I do not always agree with Nanasi’s positions, but I can state with total confidence “cultural bias” is not behind any of them.

To the contrary, I know of no attorney who actively participating in PRC cases over the past decade who has advocated more strenuously and consistently than Nanasi for social justice and the interests of minority, low-income and small-business customers of public utilities in New Mexico — the very folks whose interests it is, by statute, the attorney general’s job to represent at that agency.

Playing that sort of cheap race card is intended to simply distract the public from the issues being raised. It is and should be beneath the Office of the Attorney General of this state.

Equally concerning, it appears that Balderas is continuing to attempt to normalize his apparently ongoing practice of paying public funds to members of his former law firm to carry out his official responsibilities. That practice does not inspire public confidence in the Office of the Attorney General, and is hardly a good ethical “look” for New Mexico.

Which brings up another concern. Brian Colón, another former University of New Mexico law school classmate and law partner of Balderas, already has announced his candidacy to succeed him in that office. Perhaps Colón should be asked to state publicly if he intends to continue this practice of feeding his friends if elected. If so, I hope the New Mexico Democratic Party, of which I am a registered member, offers New Mexicans another candidate to consider.

Bruce Throne is an attorney who served as the director of the utilities unit of the Consumer Protection Division in the office of former Attorney General Jeff Bingaman (1980-82). He has practiced regulatory law before the PRC and its predecessor agencies for more than 40 years.