McCoy elected chair of key energy supply, conservation panel

Snohomish County lawmaker assumes another leadership role

March 8, 2008 

OLYMPIA – State Rep. John McCoy has been elected to head up a legislative committee charged with finding strategies to stretch Washington’s energy dollar.          

McCoy, D-Tulalip, will chair the Joint Committee on Energy Supply and Energy Conservation. The panel was created several years ago “to put the lessons of wise energy-usage to work at all levels of government.”

He was elected chair by his fellow lawmakers from both the House of Representatives and the Senate who serve on the committee.

McCoy said the panel “works toward establishing genuine energy-conservation savings, not to mention maintenance and cost savings for state and local governments, as well as cost savings for the state economy.”

Already serving as chair of the House Technology, Energy & Communications Committee, McCoy explained that “our economy depends to a huge extent on a reliable, affordable supply of electricity to recruit and retain good jobs for our citizens."

McCoy was originally appointed to the committee by Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, who said the Snohomish County lawmaker “understands the complex energy-supply and conservation issues that come before his joint committee.

“Representative McCoy will very capably lead the committee in its ongoing investigation of issues related to our state and regional energy supply,” Chopp said.

McCoy has won support this session for a bill he says will help telecommunications-service providers gain “fair and reasonable access to potential customers by using poles, ducts, conduits, or rights-of-way that someone else actually owns.”

He said that the legislation (House Bill 2533) provides “a reasonable solution to this issue of utility poles.

“Yes, pole-owners should certainly be able to recover their costs,” McCoy said. “But we also have a responsibility to ratepayers to keep their rates as low as reasonably possible.”

In these pole-attachment cases, providers seek to hook up their utility devices to existing utility poles that are owned either by a competitor, by another type of utility-service provider, or by a government entity.

Representatives from providers seeking pole-attachments have testified in McCoy’s House committee that rates sought for the potential attachment are sometimes unfair.

“In examining this contentious issue, we have long sought to find the reasonable solution that is contained in this bill,” he said. “It makes good public-policy sense to extend the pole-attachment formula that already applies in existing state law to the investor-owned utilities.

“Future disputes could be avoided by having a consistent pole-attachment formula for the parties to follow,” McCoy stated.

McCoy’s legislation directs that locally regulated utilities, such as the Snohomish County PUD, “must establish pole-attachment rates that are just and reasonable, and that use a consistent, cost-based formula.”

He said the rates will be set in a two-part formula incorporating existing rate-setting prescribed by the Federal Communications Commission, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, and the American Public Power Association. In the future, says the bill, utilities can use rate-setting methodologies as set by the Federal Communications Commission.

A locally regulated utility can only deny a request to attach to a pole where there is insufficient capacity, or for reasons of safety, reliability, or an engineering concern.          

The House vote on the bill back in mid-February was 94-1, and the Senate vote on it was 46-3. The bill is on its way to the governor’s desk.