Best Practices Exchange
Regina L. Davis is NARUC’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs. She served in a similar role for the Maryland Public Service Commission before joining NARUC in 2015.
Emergency preparedness, energy efficiency, broadband availability, and facility tours were among the highlights of a recent two-day peer to peer initiative that brought a team of mainland U.S. Public Utility Commissioners and Staff to Puerto Rico, February 27 - 28, to work with the Public Service Regulatory Board (PSRB), the Commonwealth's regulatory agency.
That umbrella agency was created in August 2018, when Governor Rosellio signed House Bill 1408 consolidating the Public Service Commission and the Puerto Rico Energy Commission into the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau (PREB). Also consolidated into the PSRB were the Independent Consumer Protection Office, the Transportation and Other Public Services Bureau, and the Telecommunications Regulatory Board.
The delegates engaged in a series of instructional and collaborative sessions coordinated by the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI) to facilitate the goal of developing relationships between the mainland and Puerto Rico Commissions to sustain a long-term information exchange and Staff development. The meetings took place with support from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The kickoff meeting, held at the PSRB headquarters in San Juan, opened with remarks from PSRB and PREB President Edison Avilés-Deliz and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners President Brandon Presley, of the Mississippi PSC.