Texas Public Service Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker resigns

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The chairwoman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, the agency that regulates the state’s electricity, telecommunications, water and sewage services, resigned on Monday, according to a resignation letter sent to the Texas Tribune.

The commission appointed by Governor Greg Abbott was publicly criticized after the Texas power crisis, which left millions in the dark for days and claimed the lives of dozens.

On Monday, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick asked PUC President DeAnn Walker and Texas Electric Reliability Council CEO Bill Magness to step down.

Walker earned a salary of $ 201,000 on February 1.

PUC is charged with overseeing the Texas Electric Reliability Council, or ERCOT, a nonprofit entity that manages and operates the power grid that covers much of the state.

Lawmakers began asking commissioners to resign on Thursday after hearing Walker’s testimony, who took little responsibility for the crisis during hearings of House and Senate committees on power outages. Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, wrote on Twitter that he has “zero confidence” in her after Thursday’s hearings and that she “must” resign.

Walker was attacked during the interrogation for not doing more to prevent the crisis from occurring. Lawmakers investigated how much information she had on whether the state’s power system could withstand winter storms and questioned why she had not raised concerns about the possibility of outages before.

Walker, during his testimony to lawmakers last week, largely shifted the blame to ERCOT and Magness, who testified in front of state senators the Thursday before Walker.

“You know, there are a lot of things that Bill said about our authority over them that I just disagree with that is how things are really happening in real life,” Walker told lawmakers.

But lawmakers contested that she leads the regulatory agency with oversight of the energy sector: “When you say you have no authority,” said State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, “I consider you a beautiful powerful person. “

Walker said the commission “has not received legal authority from the legislature to demand climate control in the winter,” a major concern after the energy crisis was precipitated by disconnected power plants. Many power generators are not built to withstand the extreme cold temperatures in Texas.

Walker shifted the blame to ERCOT, the entity that his agency oversees, and added about preparing for the winter: “It costs a lot of money.”

In his letter of resignation to Governor Abbott, Walker said he was resigning because he believed it would be in the state’s best interest. She also rejected criticism that she did not take responsibility for the interruptions.

“I testified last Thursday in the Senate and in the House and accepted my role in the situation,” wrote Walker.

She went on to appeal to others, including the Railway Commission, ERCOT, the Legislature, gas companies, electric generators and other industry participants to “introduce themselves” to recognize how their actions contributed to the energy crisis – all of them, she wrote , “I had a responsibility to predict what could have happened and failed to take the necessary steps in the past 10 years to resolve the problems that each of them could have addressed.”

Renae Eze, an Abbott spokesman, said in a statement that the governor thanks Walker for his services to the state.

“Our focus is to continue to work in collaboration with the legislature on reforms to our power system and to hope to come up with lasting and meaningful solutions to ensure that these tragic events never happen again,” Eze said in a statement.

Walker was appointed to the position by Abbott in 2017, for a term that would end in September. Previously, she was a policy advisor to Abbott in regulated sectors and previously worked for CenterPoint Energy, a Houston-based utility company that transports power to much of the Houston region, as an associate general counsel and director of regulatory affairs.

Lawmakers applauded the resignation on Monday. State Representative Rafael Anchía said in a statement that Texans deserved “nothing less” than his resignation and that “Texans are still waiting for their apology”.