January’s Public Utilities Fortnightly includes 27 pages on our visit to the Maine PUC. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Harry Lanphear, Maine PUC's Director of Electricity and Natural Gas Division:
“The Commission currently has about sixty staff members. We handle three to four hundred cases a year. It’s a total of twenty lawyers and analysts that manage those three to four hundred cases with help from several key support staff. They all work extremely hard. All sixty people have important jobs here and we are fortunate to have an exceptional staff. The commissioners are very busy. They’re focused on making decisions in important cases, understanding the law, reading the documents in the cases and making good decisions.
“I’m also the person who walks around to make sure that days are going well, and our staff is happy. We have staff meetings once a month talking about issues that are topical to the Commission. But I try to inject some humor because some of our work is intense and stressful.
“It’s good to have a break and a little humor. We’ll have potlucks and other staff events. The three commissioners make a meal for the entire staff during the holidays. One has the main course, one desserts, and one had salads and breads.”