PUC Chief Says Legislators Share Blame
with Resignation as Sacrificial Offering

Patrick Calls for Electric Regulator Head

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
March 1, 2021

The state's top electric regulator bowed to demands for her resignation on Monday as the most convenient scapegoat in the winter power crash that she blamed in part on the Texas Legislature's neglect for an entire decade.

Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker stepped down after a scathing appraisal from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on her performance during the crisis. Patrick called for Walker to quit the post while saying that Electric Reliability Council of Texas CEO Bill Magness should resign as the top official for the state grid manager.

Governor Greg Abbott appointed Walker as the PUC chief more than three years ago. The governor thanked Walker for her service without mentioning the connection with the embattled bureaucrat.

But Walker suggested that she was being singled out when every major segment of the Texas power system had failed in the February freeze that left more than half the state without heat or electricity with a death toll in the dozens.

"I believe others should come forward in dignity and courage and acknowledge how their actions or inactions contributed to the situation," Walker said in a letter of resignation.

"The gas companies, the Railroad Commission, the electric generators, the transmission and distribution utilities, the electric cooperatives, the municipally-owned utilities, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and finally the Legislature all had a responsibility to foresee what could have happened and failed to take the necessary steps for the past 10 years to address issues that each of them could have addressed," Walker added.

Walker ran into a buzz saw in the Texas Senate last week where she had no explanation for the break down in communications at the agency she'd been leading. Walker appeared surprinsingly unprepared for the grilling she received at a Business & Commerce Committee hearing on the grid collapse.

Texas Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick had received a much warmer reception in legislative committee hearings as an elected statewide official who portrayed her agency and the energy industry that it regulates as the only links in the chain that didn't break during the crisis. While Craddick admitted to communications lapses at the RRC, she contended that the agendy and gas producers in its jurisdiction had performed to expectations and that she saw no need for more stringent regulations in the aftermath of the freeze. Legislative investigatigatiors appeared to dismiss the RRC as a major suspect after Craddick's testimony was cogent and eloquent compared to her PUC counterpart.

The separate House and Senate investigations into the disaster both exposed how the state's entire independent power system had broken down at every point during the freeze. But Walker's calling out of the Legislature is legitimate in light of its lack of interest in sunset recommendations in 2011 and 2013 that warned of potential disaster without sufficient improvements to the power system that would have had a high cost.

Republican leaders and lawmakers rejected attempts by Democrats to force ERCOT to maintain sufficient reserves for unexpected events. Abbott and the Republicans who control the House and Senate have ignored warnings on climate change in line with oil and gas industry allies who have the most to lose in a transition to cleaner energy sources.

Now they will be hoping that the PUC chair's sacrifical gesture will have a chilling effect on the public and political uproars over the storm.

"I know that I acted with the best of intentions and used my best judgment on how to respond once the crisis was upon us, as well as to the days that led to the crisis," Walker said. "With devoted faith, I know that God will take care of me during these difficult times."