Governor Greg Abbott resurfaced in Texas on Sunday after traveling overseas for a week when he vowed to have the Public Utility Commission investigate CenterPoint Energy for power outages that crippled the Houston area since Hurricane Beryl crashed into the Gulf Coast the day after he left.
But Abbott didn't say whether the PUC should also be investigated for possible failures in its role as the state agency that has the job of regulating the electricity industry in Texas. The disaster that the Republican governor is confronting belatedly at the outset of its second week could have been avoided presumably if the state regulators hadn't been asleep at the wheel for the start of the hurricane season here.
Abbott failed to note at a press conference at Gallery Furniture in Houston that the PUC has the task of doing everything it can to be confident that the major electric utilities are sufficiently equipped for potentially destructive weather that's common in states on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
The agency that Abbott controls in the executive branch appeared to be equally unprepared for the deceptively destructive storm Beryl, which the governor grossly underestimated as well when he decided to go forward with a sales trip to Asia. Neither Abbott or his three appointees on the PUC have acknowledged their own culpability for power outages that still had 300,000 CenterPoint customers in the dark on Monday.
The governor has sought to pin the blame exclusively on CenterPoint up to now. But the state probe is all but certain to wind back to the three-member PUC if it simply isn't designed as window dressing for appearance sake. The Abbott investigation into the Houston utility appears to be a new verse in the same basic song and dance that the state followed in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
The worst freeze by far in Texas history caught GOP leaders and lawmakers here by complete surprise after allowing private firms to run the state's independent power grid with only token oversight from the PUC. Abbott tried to blame wind power for the grid collapse that left hundreds of his constituents dead when they had no electricity or heat for nearly a week in many cases.
But the investigation into the grid failure essentially ended at the PUC, where Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick spearheaded a massive housecleaning that culminated in resignations under heavy pressure by Abbott's three commissioners without a word in public from the governor on the unprecedented encroachment by the legislative branch on his turf.
As the acting governor all last week in Abbott's absence, Patrick could seize the lead again on the CenterPoint probe if he decides that the agency's governing board needs another overhaul for apparent lack of oversight before and during the catastrophe that Beryl triggered. Patrick launched the investigation late last week as the substitute governor - and he indicated that the Texas Senate that he leads would be involved.
The massive electric utility may have known the probe was coming in light of the fact that Jason Ryan - the CenterPoint executive vice president for regulatory services and government affairs - accompanied Abbott on the trip that bounced from Taiwan to South Korea to Tokyo.
An investigation that's more than just for show could seek to determine if the company official for regulatory affairs could have made a difference if he'd stayed home for the storm. The same question could be posed to the governor as well.
Patrick sought to demonstrate that Texas storm victims were a higher priority for him than politics when he cancelled a trip to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week. But Abbott appears to be going to the RNC where he's in the lineup of speakers like the lieutenant governor here had been himself.
more to come ...
