EMP S3E3: Davante Lewis, newly elected to the Louisiana PSC, talks about his mission to ensure the clean-energy transition is a just transition

Davante Lewis credits grassroots community organizing and coalition building for helping him defeat a long-time incumbent to garner a seat on the five-member Louisiana Public Service Commission. Lewis – who professes he's a regulator and "policy nerd" and not a politician – aspires to assuring the clean-energy transition is also a just transition. He wants to transform his Louisiana district's descriptor from "Cancer Alley" to "Answer Alley" by promoting jobs and jobs training to support rapid growth in renewable energy sources, providing a model for a just clean-energy transition nationally. 

Lewis has a Ratepayer's Bill of Rights that addresses punitive late fees and service cutoffs that disproportionately and adversely affect lower-income communities. He also looks to create a consumer advocate position that represents ratepayer interests in cases before the commission. He wants to bring the community into PSC open meetings along with the more typical crowd of lobbyists, lawyers and other utility industry interests. "I'm going to bring the people back in these rooms."
 
Lewis wants to engage in a dialogue with the natural gas, oil refining and petrochemical industry interests in his district – as well as the utility industry interests he ran against as a candidate – confident that, while they may not agree, they will come to understand one another and work productively together. 

He calls for an all-of-the-above strategy in a  just clean-energy transition, but particularly eyes rooftop solar and battery storage and offshore wind for Louisiana. In developing an all-inclusive strategy, Lewis says "competition and deregulation" will be a key component of discussion over the next three years. "People want competition because they want choices."

But while he sees carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) becoming a priority for some in Baton Rouge, potentially affecting the role of the commission, call Lewis deeply skeptical but open to being persuaded by science showing the proposed technology to be "the safest way to handle environmental and consumer concerns."

Transcript

S3E3: Davante Lewis, Commissioner, Louisiana PSC
(edited for clarity)

EMP: Welcome to the Energy Markets Podcast. Today our guest is Davante Lewis, newly elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission this past December. In that election he unseated a long-term incumbent who was heavily supported by the utilities and the utility industry. Davante, welcome.

DL: Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

EMP: You are an out gay man, a Democrat called a “leftist” in one newspaper article I read, and you ran against the deep-pocketed utilities in deep-red Louisiana. You defeated the utilities’ guy on the PSC, who’d been chairman for 5 years and on the commission for nearly two decades, Lambert Boissiere III. So was that some kind of Louisiana Hoo Doo? How did you pull that off?

DL: Well, I think people always underestimate the great people of the state of Louisiana who are always surprising the nation. But I think what we really did in this campaign was talk about the issues. We knew for so long Louisianians are at the front line of what I like to say is the Just Recovery. When we talk about natural disasters, and particularly hurricanes, which affect Louisiana, we know because of climate change these storms are stronger than they ever have been. But Louisiana is in a very precarious state because as the storms get stronger, we know over the years our coast has been eroding. And anybody who knows hurricanes and knows natural disasters, one of the ways that before they make inland, you slow down a storm and make them less severe is by hitting land. So with our coast eroding, our storms getting stronger, makes our people extremely vulnerable to the ever-changing climate. Which is why it's very important to talk about renewable energy. It's talking about a just transition. It's talking about a utility system that is hardening, but also reliable and resilient, based off of the changes that I just talked about. And I think really hammering those issues. Being someone who has been about community really made a difference and that's how we were able to win this race by nearly 20 points.

EMP: You ran against Entergy, basically, and Entergy’s response to two storms that ravaged the state. Tell us about that because I saw a recent article that the executive in Plaquemine Parish is raising issues about rotten utility poles. Tell me about what prompted you to get involved here based on the response to the storms?

DL: I think my involvement in this race really starts from Hurricane Ida, which was a storm that hit almost all of my district from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. And so Baton Rouge was on the other side of the storm with relatively limited damage but we were out of power. I was personally out of power for four days. And you could drive around the city and not really find any type of effects of a hurricane and would look like just a little bit of a strong wind and rain. But my colleagues, my friends, my constituents now in the eastern side of the district were out of power for weeks. And some of this was our own fault. It was, as you just mentioned, rotten poles. It was the lack of investment in burying lines underground. And we just had a little bit of a rainstorm a week ago and in one of our local school districts were out of school for two days simply because Entergy hadn't kept up its transmission. And even though they had municipal power, when that transformer fell on their line, they had to wait for Entergy to fix it so they can actually put their power back on. And so it is this combination of many factors that aren’t happening. It's really prompted me to say, wait a minute, we need someone who is a consumer advocate thinking about this from the consumer lens. I know oftentimes in utility regulation we get very deep in the weeds of the engineering and the science behind it and about generation and transmission and distribution and those are great things we need to be talking about and we need to be thinking about that. But I think the reason utility commissions were created was (a) as the buck stops here to protect the people. Do people have power? Do people have affordable power? Do people have reliable power? So that is what I really stressed that I was going to be doing if I was elected.

EMP: Yeah, and one of the first votes you undertook when you took your office was to vote against another $1.5 billion for hurricane damage to utilities on top of the previous $3.2 billion allotted, I guess for Ida. Tell us your reasoning there. 

DL: I think part of the reason that I voted no is because I think we have to have a big conversation about damage recovery costs and what it is. It means, I mean, so what we heard as we all know that utilities, investor-owned utilities, are due to make a profit and I don't disagree with that. And they are forbidden under the Stafford Act from recouping federal funds to improve their infrastructure. And I actually agree with the Stafford Act. I don't think an investor-owned utility should be able to tap into federal dollars because I want to make sure that their shareholders are not hiding that money. But the reason I voted no is because prudency for me is a two-prong test. There’s the short-term prudency, were these costs incurred? Absolutely, there's no denying that Entergy incurred these costs, But the second one is the long-term investments. And so I was really particular in asking, what is your annual escrow or approval process in putting aside revenue for storm damages? Are you adding anything above your O&M cost in the securitization note? What have you talked about in long-term recovery? What are you doing? What is your plan on resiliency and hardening? And so for me, I voted no simply because I felt Entergy had failed the second prong of a prudency test, which is they have been negligent, in my opinion, in ensuring that their equipment and our system can withstand hurricanes. And I wasn't just going to pass this buck on to the ratepayers without Entergy coming to the table. And the commission forced them to put up a little bit more. They reduced their $1.7 billion request to $1.5 billion saying they were going to save Louisianians $180 million. And some of my questions were, how did you come up with this $180 million? Why couldn’t this have been in your first proposal? Why is it 180? Why is it not 200, 215, 230? So there was a lot more questions that I think needed to be answered to showcase that we were actually at a level of prudency and not just at a, this is a way that my shareholders don't have to put anything in, we make our bottom line, we still give our amazing parachute salary that we just saw their chairman, Leo Denault, leave this week with $43 million in a bonus and the people of Louisiana are billed to fix poles that you should have been fixing 15 years ago. And so that’s why I just could not support this vote at this time.

EMP: Well, related to that, do you feel as a commissioner you have enough clarity into the utilities’ finances? Is there enough transparency there for you to evaluate these sorts of questions?

DL: I think so. I think one of the challenges that – or one of the beauties of a publicly traded company like Entergy is that we can see in real time those numbers. And we can be able to even if they're not presenting that number to the commission we can as any human being look it up and see it. And so I think this has to be part of the conversation, part of the equation, especially with an investor-owned utility, about what is a fair and reasonable profit. I mean, I think that is the real debate here. And for me, I think there's a harder test that needs to be proven on that. I think for too long we've kind of just let them say, well, look, I've lost money, I need to recoup money. The courts said that I have a (right to a) fair and reasonable profit. This is fair and reasonable. And I think that's very elementary of a test, right? Because I think when you have shareholders and when you have an investor-owned utility there's a lot of different things that go into that equation. And so I think there needs to be a little bit more transparency, probably. I want to see kind of the finances and one of the reasons I voted against this is because what Entergy was saying is that they were going to incur the tax liability. If their income taxes went up, that they would not be able to pass those increases in taxes on the ratepayers through a rate case, or anything like that. And I questioned that saying I don’t think that’s skin in the game because I highly doubt you're paying income taxes as it is now. So if the tax cut and job act disappears and your income bracket goes back up to the pre-2017 levels, I'm not sure that that's a cost you’re eating up because I'm not sure you're paying that 21% percent I think right now in taxation anyway and you're using multiple deductions. So even that type of financing gimmick that was proposed as a compromise to the commission, to me felt like it was woefully short, based off of the financing and the taxation scheme that we know these Fortune 500 companies do.

EMP: One of the things that caught my attention after you joined the commission was it seemed one of the first things you did on the commission was to forge a bipartisan alliance in selecting a new chairman. You know, this is 2023 and no one is bipartisan these days, right? Tell us about that. The two other Republicans on the PSC had other ideas for chairman, correct?

DL: Well, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that we have been talking about in this commission is that utility regulation really isn't a partisan issue. When we break it down, this is an issue about risk. Who shares the risk, right? A utility company or our consumers and we're balancing that between consumer need and a utility need and a profit margin versus consumer protection. And so this is all kind of a risk game for us. Here in Louisiana, our chairman doesn't actually have what I like to say is substantial power. They do not select representation on committees or control the agenda. They pretty much run the agenda because the other four can put anything on the agenda that we each choose. Their own real power is the supplemental agenda. After the agenda is published, if something comes late and we want to add it to an agenda item, the chair has that that power. And so for us, we felt like we needed to end the partisanship that we have seen over the past few years with electing a chair. So when we elected Chairman (Foster) Campbell as the chair of the commission, he's been on the commission for 22 years. He's only been chairman once. He represents the northern part of the state, actually, almost all of northern Louisiana is represented by him. And so for us, we said, let's end this toxic nature, let's give him a shot to be chair. And then what we also did is that, you know what, we need to take this partisanship away because the chair is just the guiding post for the meetings, not some political appointee who is like the Speaker of the House, for example. So we decided to put it on a rotating basis. So now our chairman, Foster (Campbell), represents the fifth district and Vice Chairman (Mike) Francis represents the fourth district. And so what we're going to do is we're now going to have our chair and vice chair be in descending order. So next year Vice Chair Francis would become the chair and then I will become the vice chair and so forth and so on. To just take this toxic nature away. And this is the way the Louisiana Public Service Commission used to be run until some conservative partisanship kind of seeped its way into our commission.

EMP: The overarching theme of this podcast is climate change is real, as you acknowledged and, you know, it's on the news every night. Your state has been hammered by it. So we have to act; we have to act quickly. So what are the best policies that we can adopt to effectuate the clean-energy transition, the clean-economy transition, at least cost to consumers. Do you have any thoughts on that?

DL: Absolutely. I mean, I think I've been talking about this for a while, which is what I call the Just Transition. Because for me and especially here in Louisiana in the district that I represent, this is not only about just a clean, green environment, right? It is about workforce because so many of the people in my sector have been industrial plant workers who are going to need retraining to have the massive amount of jobs that will be created when we invest in wind, battery and solar. This is about the health. I represent a place called Cancer Alley, nicknamed Cancer Alley. And I like to say that the reason I'm fighting so hard is because what we're going to do is we're going to showcase that Cancer Alley becomes the Answer Alley to America's Climate Change and America's climate future and how we make a just transition. And so what we're talking about down here is the incredible investments in renewable energy that our Governor, John Bel Edwards, initiated a climate taskforce that has us on a path to try to be 100% renewable energy by 2030. They just did their update and progress report two days ago. And so one of the things that I'm going to be working on is looking at how the Public Service Commission which has a lot of the regulatory authority on that, enacts some of these policies. This is this is creating a renewable portfolio standard in the state of Louisiana. So we can have those discussions about what is the direction that we need to go to a just transition? What are those penalties for compliance, what are those penalties for noncompliance? It has also been very stringent and hard on our utilities’ and our co-ops’ resource planning. How are you planning from ten years from now to use more wind and solar we know we are talking about some significant investments here in Louisiana in offshore wind. We don't have a lot of main land. We're not in Kansas and in Montana, potentially, who could put on a lot of onshore wind. But we have a great opportunity outside on the Gulf of Mexico in some of our shallow waters coming into the bayou region up to heavily invest in offshore wind, and so we are accelerating those conversations. So I think it is a commitment and a holistic approach of multiple different things that we have to do. And then we have to encourage our households so that is bringing back net metering. I was very disappointed in 2017 the Commission changed our net metering rules for rooftop solar to incentivizing Louisiana and household and using all of the amazing resources that we're going to have on the Inflation Reduction Act in the Infrastructure Act and investments in energy efficiency and weatherization to really start to tackle how to gather and make this just transition. So it's an all-of-the-above equation for me and I've been working tooth-and-nail in the past 31 days on every type of item, even from the smallest to the biggest, because we know every little bit of progress isn't going to make our economy cleaner, and our people healthier and our future more sustainable.

EMP: Well, one thing I didn't hear you mention was competition. That's been a large topic of this podcast. And wouldn't it make sense if the utilities aren't investing enough in renewable energy to open up the market and allow third parties to come in and make those investments?

DL: Yeah, I mean, I think competition and deregulation is a key component of discussion in these next three years. I mean, I know some people get very paranoid about what we saw in Texas after the winter storm. And I think there are some lessons to be learned about how to deregulate and bring in competition in a way that also protects consumers and you're not seeing kind of off-the-market prices that will then of course, skyrocket people's bills which is not what they want. People want competition because they want choices. And they want choices because they want to try to see if they can get their utility bills lower. And so I'm really interested in this conversation. I mean, I am in favor a lot of times with municipalization. I think local governments can handle some of this utility deregulation to make sure that their consumers in their jurisdiction in their part of the state are affordable and attainable. But we are really looking at how so many different things happen. And I think we are seeing that especially in terms of generation, and I think that's going to be the key market for Louisiana right now. Between a lot of our co-ops. What are we doing with generation, because Entergy has been kind of the generator of most of the power and now that you're seeing companies like NextEra and some others trying to play, I think that is the first dabble that Louisiana will see into the market especially with the co-ops. But going further down about maybe potentially even breaking up into Entergy in Louisiana into smaller subsidiaries. I mean, you know, we have introduced Louisiana, we have Entergy New Orleans, maybe it is time to also have a little bit more of that. And so I mean, I think all questions are on the table we have right now an open docket in Louisiana on a consumer choice options (R-35462) that we are looking at this and I'm rapidly getting caught up with the docket that was opened in 2020. So a lot of comments have been made and I'm trying to still come through a lot of the intervenors and the positions on the CCO docket, but I'm really interested in seeing what we can do and how competition can be part of the equation of consumer protection and consumer advocacy.

EMP: You mentioned that your district encompasses a good bit of what's called Cancer Alley. Congressman Casten on a previous episode talked about Cancer Alley. I kind of cringed but I guess that's a common reference. But anyway, you referred to Cancer Alley. How big a thing is environmental equity for you as a commissioner?

DL: It's extremely important and it is cringeworthy that a place in America is called Cancer Alley. I mean my district makes up the entirety of Cancer Alley as we know. And that that's why I said we are talking about equity because we know if we can answer Cancer Alley and turn into Answer Alley that we set the bar for the nation. I mean, let's just talk the reality. My district is 60% African American in our river parishes which makes up the vast majority of them. Black Louisianians are 7 to 21 more times likely to be faced with air pollution. When we talked about COVID-19 at one point in time, my district was the highest place per capita in the world, with people getting COVID-19 based off of their respiratory issues from the toxins and air pollution. So for me this equity is not just a personal goal, it is a dire goal for so many of the people that live within my district because we are at the forefront of what it means when industrial plants when we are talking about all of the industrial plants that are still using coal, who are still using natural gas, who are not kind of using renewable power and renewable energy as a way to produce. I have some of the most industrial users of electricity probably in one concentrated area than any other place in the world. And so these are all conversations that I'm having with industry, because I think if we want to force the utility company to be more renewable, we're going to have to make sure that our industrial partners are sometimes part of that conversation and leading that drum. And we need to be hard on consumers like Walmart and in some of our plants, because if we are telling them you must be renewable because you are killing our people, you are not helping our economy and you're harming our environment, that pressure from them on to Entergy is just as great as our pressure on them together. So for me, this is an extremely important issue. Extremely. Part of the reason why I ran is because we are watching Louisianians die because of our inaction on environmental justice. When we talk about economics and everyone wants to talk about, oh, Louisiana is the poorest state in the nation. My district has some of the poorest areas in our state, which are not rural which I think throws many people off course here in this state is right around LSU football stadium, a part of the district that I represent. And these individuals here and this is a fun fact for you. Brian Kelly, the new LSU football coach, and everybody talks about his expensive contract. I just want to put it in context of how impoverished parts of my district are. The communities that live right next to Tiger Stadium will make $200 less a year than Brian Kelly makes in a day. And that, for me, is why we talk about environmental justice because these are communities, these are people who can't afford to pick up and move to the suburbs. These are people when a storm comes don't have the disposable income to get a game plan and evacuate to higher land. And so when we talk about rapid change in climate, utility investment, they are directly connected to economic policy. And so I say you can't talk about environmental costs without talking about an economic policy. And you cannot solve our economic crisis if you do not solve the environmental injustices that we have seen, especially the black and brown people here in Louisiana but across this nation. And so that is why it's important to me, because I'm thinking about the system as a whole, not the just one-offs, oh, if you just give everybody job training everything will be great. No, our toxic level of toxins that they are breathing, they're going to become sicker. When they become sicker, they can't work. When they can't work. They can't afford to go to the doctor and when they can't go to the doctor, they die. And so this is a very much interconnected issue that I think we have to talk about more often.

EMP: As you noted, economics is a big part of the environmental equity issue and jobs. When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, we’d drive past the coke plant and I'd complain about the smell of the emissions. My father would say, it smells like money. And so are you prepared for the counter offensive that you'll receive, in terms of, you’re jeopardizing jobs, you're jeopardizing the industry, etc.?

DL: This is why in my platform, the fourth pillar was about creating new union jobs. I talked about the new clean economy. We have to be very convinced in knowing that Louisiana is a natural gas state. A state that was heavily in refining and production – that ecosystem is rapidly changing. And when we talk about a just transition, we are not only talking about moving from natural gas to renewable energy, we are talking about building a sustainable workforce. We know there are multiple thousands of jobs that are available in solar distribution and development and offshore wind. And so part of the equation for me is we just can't talk about why going to renewable energy is healthier and cleaner for our environment. We also talk about how groups good-paying, union, high-quality jobs to the people of Louisiana who are struggling. We have about 1.1 million working-age adults in Louisiana who do not have any post-secondary education. They've either started but haven't gotten a credential or certificate or associate's degree or bachelor's degree. When we make the investments in all of the money that we're seeing on renewable energy, those are jobs. Those are jobs right there that are being developed. And right now we don't have a workforce that is trained for them. And so part of my equation and talking point is that people are going to lose their jobs. And we need to be making the investments right now because where we know jobs are coming are in the renewable sector. And so that's why I talk so much about new green jobs. Part of this platform is to showcase to people this is not about laying off a bunch of people that work at the oil refinery. This is about reskilling them and retraining them because we know when those coal power plants disappear, as they are, we’ve only got two now in Louisiana, those people need somewhere to go. And we know we can retrain them and reskill them in renewable energy which will now give them a sustainable future. And so it's not only about the sustainability of our planet, it’s the sustainability of our workforce. And so I'm ready to engage in that conversation about how we address the workforce in this conversation and just transition as well.

EMP: Louisiana continues to rank as the unhealthiest state in the nation and I understand the statistic actually worsened for the state from 2021 to 2022. And it also ranks dead last in renewable energy. So do you feel like you can address both of those at the same time, it sounds like?

DL: Absolutely. I mean, I think it goes hand-in-hand with each other. We have been so invested in natural gas and oil and refinery petrochemical work that we have sometimes that’s a deterrent to the health of our people. And we're seeing like, for instance, the amazing work that Miss Sharon Lavigne is doing with Rise St. James, which is a portion of my district. I’m talking about (unintelligible) plants. I’m talking about why we need to be making sure that they're cleaner because of the health of their people. I'm not sure I think this is this is a conversation that goes hand in hand and it's also about our overall infrastructure. I'm a budget nerd. My background in my day job when I'm not playing commissioner is working on the Louisiana Budget Project. And I tell this to people, oil revenue used to make up 43% of our state budget in 1982. Today it is 3.75%. So when we are talking about these investments and we talk about the importance of our economy, our state government is not even producing, right now, sales tax and personal income tax. Self-generated fees, for instance, that are being paid when you become a fisherman or a hunter, or you go renew your driver's license, makes up a bigger share of our state budget than oil refining does. And so this is why this conversation is important, because it's not also about the health of our people, the health of our workforce, it's about the health of our state government as a whole. Because this industry is not going to be there in 15 years to support the state in the way we need to make the investments that are going to be needed in our roads, our schools, our bridges, our hospitals. And so this is why I talked about a just transition because everything is interconnected and we cannot do what we've been doing in the past and siloing these issues. Because the lack of investments in renewable energy is going to eventually come back around and hurt the overall state of our state, putting us in a precarious spot because we’re going to be cutting education and childcare simply because we haven't invested in renewable energy. So that's why it’s important to talk about a just transition because all of these are in play for me.

EMP: Tell us about your proposed Bill of Rights for ratepayers. What do you hope to accomplish with that?

DL: The Bill of Rights for me is really about bringing back consumer protection. And so some of the ideas that we are floating and looking at right now is a more stringent moratorium on utility cutoffs. Right now, the Public Service Commission has a rule that if it is more than 105 degrees on a day or cooler than 18 degrees, I want to say is the number, your services can’t be cut off. I think that's just way too extreme. I personally believe power is a right, a human right. And so we're going to be looking at those. Right now, Louisiana doesn’t even collect data on utility service cutoffs. And so, we're going to be very keen on making sure that we are looking at how often are shut offs in our utility systems? What is that average debt for someone whose utility services are cut off? Are we talking about $150 or are we talking about someone with $700, $800. I think that is a different question. Secondly, we're going to be looking at excessive late fees. I think this is a topic that we have not talked about apart when we talk about the late fees that are assessed on utility bills. The national average for utility company per customer is around $5.30. The average late fee per customer Louisiana is around $16. That is astronomical for the most impoverished state in the nation. So we're going to be looking at that. We're also going to be looking at rates for our seniors and individuals with disabilities. We know most of them are living off of a disability check or social security, and the fluctuation with fuel cost and all these other items that your utility bills see can really push someone who is living with a disability or someone who is elderly without having food on their table. Right. Nine days after I was elected, a 79-year-old a woman burned to death in her house in New Orleans because she had no electricity and she was using a household heater that tipped over, fell and she could not get out of her burglar bars fast enough and burned to death because she did not have power. That should never happen to anyone. And so that's why I'm talking about these protections and I'm also looking at bringing the idea about having someone on our commission staff who is a consumer advocate, their entire job is not to not to negotiate and look into the fine details with an IOU, but to solely be looking at the proposal from the eye of the person who will pay the bill at the end of the day. And so these are some of the ideas that we are working on and starting to talk about in the Ratepayer’s Bill of Rights.

EMP: Let's talk about regulatory capture. You unseated Boissiere who received significant funding from utilities and utility associations. You on the other hand, apparently prevailed with half a million dollars from Keep the Lights on PAC, which I guess is an arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group. And you also I guess, had help from the Victory Institute which provided both money and boots on the ground for you. How big of an issue is regulatory capture?

DL: I think it's a big issue. And I think this is part of the debate right now in the governor's Climate Action Task Force and his Climate Action plan. It’s a lot about carbon sequestration. I think there is some unproven science on whether or not this is the safest way to handle environmental and consumer concerns. But this is the kind of the talking point that a lot of industry is talking about, right, a lot of our industrial users are talking about carbon sequestration. And I think we have to be very careful not to lose sight in the debate that CCS will do and solve all of our problems. Right? Could it be a component of a just transition? I think the science is out there. I personally still think it's a little bit risky. I don't know if it's in the best interest of our people in that form or fashion. But I'm very skeptical and really trying to pause the brake that this is end-all and be-all solution. And that's what we're starting hear in Louisiana. But it's a growing topic. We just heard that in our legislative session coming up in April, that a lot of legislators are filing bills around this. This is not right now in the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commission. This would actually fall to the legislative branch unless they, in their in their bill passage, provide that oversight to us, which I think may happen is a part of the conversation that I'm going to ask to be happening if we are going to have an agency or a commission or board look at CCS and it be us we're looking at the totality of the issue. And I think this is going to be a raging topic in Louisiana because we have seen it calm. Everyone's like, Kumbaya moment and I'm not sure it is that Kumbaya moment.

EMP: The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners has their annual winter meeting in Washington in a few days. Do you think you're going to have a good reception there?

DL: I'm interested. I'm really, I'm kind of like a kid entering the toy store for the first time. So I don't know if I'm going to like it or if I'm going to say I want to get something else. But I'm interested to engage in conversations with commissioners across the nation. Hear what industry has to say but also have a very clear vision of what I am here to do and what I think should be done. And so we are really interested, but we're also talking to other partners and other groups. I've been in mass conversations with the Regulatory Assistance Project, which looks at I think, very different ways of doing business. I mean, I think the challenge is, not all commissioners are elected like I am. I'm one of – Louisiana is one of 11 states that actually elect their commissioners and so that appointment process in some form or fashion, sometimes it's good, right? Because you take the politics out, and you may actually get people who care about the issue. But sometimes there's appointments processes are really bad, right? Because it becomes about industry favors, who were big donors. And so I'm hopeful that my election showcases that there is a yearning in this nation for something different. As you mentioned in the beginning, Louisiana is a pretty red state. Now granted, my district is also 60% Democrat. But what we saw across the district is we won massive numbers not only in my most liberal precincts, outside of the French Quarter in New Orleans, but I won some of the most conservative precincts in my district. Precincts that voted 98% for Donald Trump voted 77% for me. So that tells you there is a yearning that this issue is not as partisan and that people really want to see something different. And I think we are on an arc bending in our regulatory process, and I think what we saw here in Louisiana is that first big punch in that glass ceiling to doing that.

EMP: Well, do you think the alliance that you had, that the help you had from the Keep the Lights on PAC, is this maybe a formula that can be replicated in other states with elected commissioners?

DL: Absolutely. The Keep the Lights on PAC was a PAC that I couldn't coordinate with and did their own thing that we had so many grassroot departments who said we have to care about this so the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance, for example, which knows that our lack of investments in a just transition is making our home-affordability crisis even greater, because Louisiana has so many old homes that have not been weatherized. People's utility bills are higher. So they joined the coalition and fought with us. Voice of the Experienced, an organization made of formerly incarcerated individuals were at the forefront of this and working hard. We joined forces with Sunrise Movement in New Orleans, and Democratic Socialists of America in that region of New Orleans, the Sierra Club, the Alliance for Good Government, and we built a coalition of partners who all said, this is important and we need to talk about it. So for me, I don't want to just be just lumped with the PAC. That PAC was there and helped. But there was so much on the ground, boots on the ground up, just campaign work. We had student volunteers who care so much about our climate at our higher education institutions in the district make over 15,000 phone calls alone. So I think the message and the assumption here is build a diverse coalition and look at other partners. We had housing partners, we had workforce partners. I said we had environmental partners. We had workers, worker groups, together with the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Sierra Club and environmental groups, all joining forces because we know that this touches all of our issues, and it's important that we work collaboratively and collectively. So I tell people, look at Louisiana's model. This is the same model that we've been doing criminal justice work when we passed our unanimous juries laws and we've been fighting for criminal justice reforms with the election of the DA, the District Attorney in New Orleans, and the new sheriff in New Orleans. So we mimic that model of organizing. And I think when we organize people about utility regulation and about a just transition, people really respond. And so I think it's a model we should replicate.

EMP: Your Wikipedia listing labels you as a politician. You have for several years been a member of the Democratic State Central Committee. You represent District 3, which is an area larger than congressional districts in the state. Is the PSC job just a steppingstone in your political career? Do you consider yourself a politician or a regulator?

DL: I consider myself a regulator. I'm a policy nerd. I tell people, look, I have come up and I've been for the last seven years at – or excuse me, for the last five years at the Louisiana Budget Project. We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit policy think tank that works on issues that affect low- and moderate-income families. We are connected with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a D.C. think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, and we have 42 sister organizations in states, Puerto Rico and D.C. I ran for this job to serve. I know it often gets thought because this district is so large, I am now the highest-ranking black elected official in the state of Louisiana that everyone's talking about. Are you the next candidate for governor or the next candidate United States Senate? Will you run for Congress? But I'm going to do the job that I was elected to do. And then for me it is about service of people and where can you best fit? I've run for office before but like I tell people I wasn't just a consistent runner. I ran for my first political office at 18 right out of high school because I was extremely upset with our school board who was making decisions that were defunding black schools, was not investing in education and were also challenging the (integration) consent decree. I waited another 10 years before I ran for office again, which is what I ran for city council in Baton Rouge because I saw the lack of investments city infrastructure was making in COVID and how they could have been on the frontline of making sure people were protected and COVID-19 with certain investments that the city government wasn't making. And then when I ran for PSC I ran because as we talked about earlier, it was after Hurricane Ida, it was when people's bills were higher and I said no one is talking about the people. And so for me this is public service. I say passion without action is a wasted emotion. So I'm only going to make a move I'm passionate about. This is not about a steppingstone and I'm not in this race to make political bricks. As you saw in the campaign, I did not take a single check from a utility company because I said this is not about me winning. This is about me being independent and a regulator for the people who need it and to showcase that you can't buy me off and I'm not going to try to win favors and curry favors from you. And so I'm very active in our society because I believe everything is political and politics is the solution to policy. But at the end of the day, I'm a policy person more than I am just a partisan player in this game.

EMP: Well, this has been a great conversation. We've covered just about everything I have in my notes. I’ll turn it over to you if there's anything you want to bring up that we haven't discussed you think is good for the record here. 

DL: I mean, I think what you're going to see over these next five and 11 months now for me left to go on my first term is a real look at what are we doing. I mean, I think there's some low hanging fruit. One of the other places that I had that we touched on that I didn't get into much was about diversity, equity and inclusion. You look at utility regulation, this is a very heavily white industry. But it has disproportionate effects on black and brown people. It's a very male-dominated industry. And so I'm really going to be looking at how do we build a pipeline of engineers, of regulators, of advocates in this space because I think one of the things we have to do is look towards the future. And know this. And so we're going to be very aggressive down here. If you could see my desk you could see that I've delved into every topic, reading case law reading former directives and orders and dockets. But we're really committed to hopefully turning the tide in Louisiana. And when we turn the tide here in Louisiana, we hopefully turn the tide in America, because like I said, I may represent Cancer Alley, but I want to make this Answer Alley for America’s just transition.

EMP: So you’ve got a six-year term to put in place a lot of these things you're talking about. You're going to have a big target on your back. You’ve gored, some powerful moneyed interests, in terms of the utility industry and, and your views on climate aren’t going to go well with the industries in Cancer Alley. So I wish you luck and I hope you speak softly and carry a big stick.

DL: Hey, that's what we do. I tell people I'm a workhorse not a show horse and so they're going to see that we are, as people saw in that first meeting, I could have used that vote against Entergy as a campaign “rah rah” but I got into the weeds of the questions and poking holes in where I thought their weaknesses were and I think people are going to be very surprised. And we're going to keep this up. We're not going to stop organizing. The organizing work on the strong part of the problem in politics. Sometimes we stop organizing the day the election’s over. We don't believe in that. So you'll see us in all 10 parishes. You'll see me talking to my constituents and you'll see us continuing the drumbeat of ensuring that people are in this room as well. Because as I said in my first meeting, when I looked out, when I sat at my seat on the dais, everyone in that room was industry. Everyone was either a lobbyist or lawyer or a regulated entity. I'm going to bring the people back in these rooms because I'm not interested about the in-the-boardroom decisions. I'm interested in what's happening outside of this boardroom. And that's what we're going to do to hopefully keep centered on the people of Louisiana.

EMP: Well, I get a real sense that you're driven to do good. You were I saw an intervention specialist working with students having behavioral issues. As a former parent of a special-needs student, that's God's work in my view. Is that an ethic you'll carry with you to the PSC?

DL: Absolutely, I mean, I started my background in policy. As you mentioned, I turned to education. I’m the son of a teacher. When I became a teacher, I taught two doors down from my mother. We taught in the same school together teaching kids. And for me, this is why I came back to public policy because of what I saw and the challenges and the burdens that I carried for my students and so, that work of getting to know – and I like to say, one of the things that I pride myself as a teacher on was reminding people that that children are people too. And that sometimes we get very paternalistic and in a very bad way and we’re “adulting.” As much as we talk about kids being childish, I think oftentimes we forget sometimes we “adult” too much. And so that type of building relationships, even when we may disagree, or something is wrong, is very important to me, because that's how you make progress. And so I always tell people, I don't listen to agree. I listen to understand. And understanding doesn't mean you agree with somebody. But understanding means now that I know where you stand, how you feel, and what drives you, I can have a better dialogue and a better working relationship with you to get you to where you want to be, but also get where I believe we need to be. And so those lessons and those inner-working relationships with students I'm using with the utility companies as well, to showcase that we're not going to see eye-to-eye but when we commit ourselves to work, we can do it better.

EMP: Commissioner Devante Lewis of the Louisiana Public Service Commission. Thank you very much.

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