A Day at the Iowa Utilities Board
Jon Tack is the Regulatory Analysis Manager at the Iowa Utilities Board.
The PUF team traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, the home of the Iowa Utilities Board, which got its start in 1878 as the Iowa Board of Railroad Commissioners, and later the Iowa State Commerce Commission.
PUF: Tell me what your role at the Board is.
Jon Tack: I've got a team of nine people, and they receive all the regulatory filings related to telecom and energy dockets. That can be anything from the monthly filings on the pass-through costs, like for purchased gas or transmission costs for electric, or the big rate cases when a utility comes in on the energy side.
On the telecom side, we have a variety of eligibility determinations for certain programs and service territory revisions. I review those and work with them to determine schedule allocation and assist as I can.
PUF: Do you determine the schedule when they will be before the Board?
Jon Tack: A lot of them have built-in time frames, like the tariff filings. We share the load and then we're working and communicating with each other, getting those filings processed and trying to set up anew.
I arrived here in February. And it's my first foray into utilities, so I'm learning a lot and trying to look at ways we can do things differently or better and build relationships with the other parts of the agency.