I first met David Owens in the mid-eighties. At the time, I was surprised the Edison Electric Institute had an intellect like David on staff. Expected an industry association to be a lobbying group, mainly, with member services mixed in. I had a lot to learn.
During my four decades in the industry, EEI has been a vigorous debater in the many scrums about utility regulation and policy. It has sponsored thorough research and offered detailed recommendations. Depending upon where you sit, you might have agreed or disagreed with its positions. But you likely found the work rigorous and well-considered. And you likely observed that David was the driver for the work and its eloquent spokesman.
Indeed, David has been the industry’s debater-in-chief. This month, uncharacteristically, he’s decided to put down the mic for good [retiring at the month’s end].
You also likely observed that David exuded passion for helping people and the public, through his intellectual prowess. All while he practiced compassion, religiously, with both proponents and opponents of his positions.
There are hundreds, nay, thousands, who would tell you a story about how David took the time (when he seemed to have little), touched them with his caring, and made a difference in their careers, in their lives. Did he touch your career and life too?
One always hears how tireless David has been. How he constantly travelled to talk, to listen, to persuade, to be persuaded. Though I believe that David was everywhere – from NARUC conferences to board rooms – because he wanted to be everywhere. Because he wanted to learn all he could learn about utility regulation and policy, and to teach all he could teach.
The Public Utilities Fortnightly team considered how we could honor David. We do so by selecting him as the first recipient of PUF's Owen Young Award, for devoting his powerful intellect to the public interest.
Owen Young was general counsel of General Electric, GE, when he founded our company Public Utilities Reports in 1914.
Young was working with the National Civic Federation to develop, and submit to Congress, model legislation on utility regulation. The often-drastic inconsistency from state to state troubled both utility leaders and regulators.
The initiative, to have Congress enact national model legislation on utility regulation, ultimately failed. Public Utilities Reports was thus founded. After a few years had passed, the first Public Utilities Fortnightly was published. Young’s college roommate, Clifford Spurr, was made its first editor-in-chief, my first predecessor.
Soon after, Young led both the electricity and telecommunications industries as chairman of GE and of the Radio Corporation of America, RCA. He later, at the request of the president of the United States, engineered the settlement of Germany's World War I reparations.
The magazine for commentary, opinion and debate on utility regulation and policy since 1928, Public Utilities Fortnightly. “In PUF, Impact the Debate.”
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
