Preside or Lead? The Attributes and Actions of Effective Regulators

Our public utilities build and operate the infrastructure that supports modern economies. Lives depend on their performance. Defining and demanding that performance is the job of regulators. By setting standards, compensating the efficient and penalizing the inefficient, regulation aligns private behavior with the public interest. Regulators are real people. Case outcomes are determined not only by facts, law and policy, but also by commissioners' personal attributes—their purposefulness, decisiveness, independence, creativity, ethics and courage. These attributes, or their absence, influence regulators' actions. Some regulators merely "balance" and "preside"; others create vision, inspire performance and lead. Even the most purposeful, educated, decisive, and independent regulators—those who make the tough calls and take the right actions—face obstacles: the forces of self-interest, short-term thinking and political inertia that can undermine regulation’s purpose. By exploring the connections among regulators' attributes, actions, and obstacles, these 60 essays reveal the ingredients for effectiveness.

Scott Hempling has taught public utility law and policy to a generation of regulators and practitioners. As an attorney, he has assisted clients from all industry sectors—regulators, utilities, consumer organizations, independent competitors and environmental organizations. As an expert witness, he has testified numerous times before state commissions and before committees of the United States Congress and the legislatures of Arkansas, California, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. As a teacher and seminar presenter, he has appeared throughout the United States and in Canada, Central America, Germany, India, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico and Nigeria. His articles have appeared in The Electricity Journal, Public Utilities Fortnightly, ElectricityPolicy.com and other professional publications, covering such topics as mergers and acquisitions, the introduction of competition into formerly monopolistic markets, corporate restructuring, ratemaking, utility investments in nonutility businesses, transmission planning, renewable energy and state–federal jurisdictional issues. From 2006 to 2011, he was the Executive Director of the National Regulatory Research Institute. Hempling is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches courses on public utility law and regulatory litigation. The first volume of his legal treatise, Regulating Public Utility Performance: The Law of Market Structure, Pricing and Jurisdiction, will be published by the American Bar Association in fall 2013. This is the first volume of a two-volume treatise, the second of which will address the law of corporate structure, mergers and acquisitions. Hempling received a B.A. cum laude in (1) Economics and Political Science and (2) Music from Yale University, where he was awarded a Continental Grain Fellowship and a Patterson research grant. He received a J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was the recipient of an American Jurisprudence award for Constitutional Law. More detail is available at www.scotthemplinglaw.com.