A Day at North Carolina UC
Public Staff Chief Counsel David Drooz, Director-Accounting Mike Maness, Director-Economic Research Bob Hinton, Director-Electric James McLawhorn, Director-Natural Gas Jan Larsen, Director-Transportation Rates Krishna Rajeev, Director-Water and Sewer Dave Furr, Director-Consumer Services Vickie Debnam, and Electric Division’s Jay Lucas serve the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
The PUF team made its way to the North Carolina Utilities Commission in mid-February. They received a warm welcome not only from the Commission but also from the independent and large Public Staff, which intervenes on behalf of the using and consuming public.
Public Staff photo, from left: David Furr, Vickie Debnam, Mike Maness, David Drooz, Chris Ayers, Jan Larsen, Jay Lucas, Krishna Rajeev, Bob Hinton and James McLawhorn.
PUF: What is your role, and what do you do here at Public Staff NCUC?
David Drooz: My position is Chief Counsel and we have over a dozen attorneys. We represent the using and consuming public. That's our statutory mission. That includes all types of consumers.
We appear in matters just for the Utilities Commission, so we don't go to court, and we don't do outside cases. We are statutorily independent of the Commission because we act as an advocate, and they're the judge. In North Carolina, by law, those roles are separated. We do our own hiring, firing and budget.
We have a Staff of approximately eighty people, and that includes the different subject matter divisions that are represented here today. Those include accounting, economic research, gas, electric, transportation, telecommunications, water/sewer, and consumer services.