Today’s announcement that Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and a commissioner since 2003, is stepping down provides President-elect Barack Obama with an opportunity to fix an agency with a history of promoting deregulation and power company profits at the expense of fair energy prices to American families. Under Kelliher’s watch, FERC continued the failed policy of deregulation, resulting in consumers paying billions of dollars more in home energy costs than if markets under FERC control had been properly regulated.
Kelliher, who served as the Energy Department’s liaison to Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamously corporate-biased Energy Task Force prior to becoming FERC commissioner, consistently overlooked the agency’s top statutory mandate: to ensure that all electric rates be “just and reasonable.”As a result, Kelliher’s FERC has undergone ongoing criticism by states and consumer groups for its backward priorities.
At a time when officials such as former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan have concluded that federal deregulation efforts went too far and resulted in abuses, Kelliher continued to claim that the policy of electricity deregulation – pioneered by Enron – has been a success. In this, he is the last man standing, nearly alone in his obstinate insistence that deregulation worked.
