State and Future of Power: Kara Fornstrom

Deck: 

State Commission Chairs

Fortnightly Magazine - June 10 2019
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PUF's Liz Stipnieks What is it like to be Chair of a Commission, and describe your typical day?

Chair Fornstrom: No two days are the same. I have a difficult time predicting on any given day how my day's going to go or what's going to be involved. I wear different hats, including administrative hats, just running the agency, personnel issues, and budget issues.

Then there's the day-to-day business of the agency with open meetings and dealing with regular business. We're making sure procedurally that the big cases are getting routed accordingly and appropriately, and that we're doing things in a transparent, public process in a timely manner within the statutory deadlines.

In addition, we have several regional and national forums and issues that we're involved in. The longer you're on a Commission, the more involved in some of those issues you are, the more invitations you receive, and the more things that you want to do on behalf of your state. Trying to balance all of those components of your job can be challenging. 

PUF: Do you set the Commission agenda as Chair?

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