Last week Life of the Land filed our discovery questions to HECO regarding the HECO-Imperium Biofuels Contract. We also filed 10 copies with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
In that filing we noted that the PUC has a serious problem with sunshine.
Each month the PUC opens between 20 and 50 new regulatory proceedings a.k.a. dockets on transportation, water, electricity, gas, sewerage, and telecommunications.
The public has 20 days to file a Motion to Intervene from the date that the docket is opened.
The public can find out about new dockets in two ways:
(1) Visiting the website of the Office of the Consumer Advocate (Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): the last new docket posted by the CA was for a filing dated in March 2007.
(2) By visiting the PUC office and looking in their binders. The last new docket posted was for March 31, 2007.
New docket are never posted on the PUC website.
Well after the Intervention Window has passed, one can find out after the fact that a docket was opened. The PUC publishes copies of its Decision and Orders which establish who was admitted into a docket. May 2008 Decision and Orders are avilable at the PUC Office, except the 15 of them are ''missing''. There is a 15 docket gap ! In the interest of open government, we should know who decides what gets left out and why.
It is now Tuesday, May 20, 2008. Still no posting of April new dockets. Eight days after we apprised them of the problem. The public has no way to determine what was opened, and no time left to intervene.
This problem is not new. The HECO-Imperium docket was opened on October 18, 2007. The 20-day window ended on Novermber 7, 2007. The PUC first made this information available on November 8, 2007.
The PUC established the timeline in this docket, informing us on April 26, 2008 that our discovery questions were due that day.
The PUC has accepted HECO's Application and approved HECO's request to submit no Testimony in support of their Application. The PUC approved HECO's request that Life of the Land, as a full intervenor, must present our case first and then HECO will seek to rebut it.
Ironically, the newest PUC Commission is the former Director of the Office of Information Practices (OIP) -- the agency responsible for enforcing the open records law.
Is this anyway to run an agency. Or, can we say, transparency.
Audits of the PUC in 1961, 1975, 1989 and 2003 have all said the same thing. They all said that the PUC is reactive not proactive and is not consumer friendly. The first audit was done by the University of Hawaii, the last three by the Legislative Reference Bureau. An audit without follow thru is meaningless.
Perhaps the 2009 Legislature can get around to solving the half century old problem of sunshine at the PUC.
As the Governor said in her A New Beginning for Hawai`i (page 4): ''Restoring integrity to government requires us to share information openly with the public so that the people of Hawai`i will know thw true condition of the state government, the programs it operates and the results of its efforts.''
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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