Commissioner
Jay Balasbas is a commissioner for the Washington State's Utilities and Transportation Commission.
There is much going on at Washington's Utilities and Transportation Commission. Including implementation of the shiny new Clean Energy Transformation Act or CETA, requiring that state's electric utilities to transition to one hundred percent clean power by 2045. Signed into law last year, the devil is in the details, as here you hear Commission Staff grapple with the intricacies.
PUF: Talk about your background and how you came to the Commission.
Commissioner Balasbas: I never thought I would be here. I was born and raised in Hawaii, coming to Seattle for school in 1996. After graduating in 2000, I had three options if I moved back to Hawaii.
I either had to have a job in tourism, the military, or Democratic Party politics. I didn't want to go into tourism. I'm not in the military and I'm a Republican. Since none of those options were available, I ended up staying in Washington and getting a job in politics here.