According to Bob Anthony, it’s not that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission can’t do something to reign in energy companies, it’s that they don’t want to.
“The contagion of self-diagnosed impotence at the Corporation Commission is more than just a disservice to Oklahoma ratepayers; it is a dereliction of this agency’s constitutional and statutory duties,” he wrote in an April filing. “The impotence of my fellow commissioners is entirely psychosomatic; they have either been misinformed about the authority and jurisdiction of the Corporation Commission, or they simply do not want to investigate possible wrongdoing by some of this state’s leading corporate citizens and so deceive themselves into paralysis.”
Well, that’s not what the rubber-stampers playing Santa Claus to public utilities paying dividends to private shareholders have in mind.
In this state, what corporations want from the Corporation Commission they usually get, as evidenced by the seemingly never ending price hikes as well as the hidden fees and charges all us non-shareholding, paying customers have received due to entities like Oklahoma Natural Gas failing to secure a supply of energy before the 2021 winter snap that our collective wallets will now feel for decades.
“Conducting a full, open and thorough investigation of the costs incurred by Oklahoma’s regulated public utilities and passed on to Oklahoma’s ratepayers is a legal obligation each of us Corporation Commissioners assumed when he or she raised their right hand and took the oath to perform the duties of this office to the best of our ability,” Anthony wrote.
But unless Anthony is willing to take a stand and take these words off the page and into action, he’s just as impotent as his fellow commissioners.
