Official's Ties to Lobbyist Detailed

Utility Employee Defends E-Mails With Agency Chief

A top utility company lobbyist in Annapolis and Maryland's chief utility regulator have exchanged scores of e-mails, shared strategy and together met with the governor's appointments secretary as regulators were preparing to make major staff changes.

The correspondence released yesterday between Public Service Commission Chairman Kenneth D. Schisler and Carville B. Collins, who represents Pepco and other utilities, heightened concern among state lawmakers about the independence of the agency that oversees utilities.

Yesterday, as the commission approved a rate relief deal brokered by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the state's largest electric company, Democrats decried the plan as "fake relief." The commission ordered Baltimore Gas and Electric to drop a 5 percent interest charge for customers who choose to phase in a 72 percent rate increase taking effect in July.

The e-mails, released in response to public records requests, show Schisler and Collins batting around ideas, proofreading each other's letters and discussing dinner plans at a conference.

"There is absolutely nothing in these e-mails that is wrong, inappropriate, illegal or unethical," Collins said yesterday. "These e-mails show that we communicate, and I expect that the chairman and others at the commission communicate with lots of people."

House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) had a different interpretation. The e-mails and the meeting with the governor's appointments secretary "give more credibility to the fact that there was more than a casual relationship with the utility industry and their lobbyist," he said.

Busch and other Democrats have questioned the independence of the agency since Schisler, an Ehrlich appointee, fired five senior staffers in April 2004. Many of the employees were longtime aides considered more consumer-friendly than those who replaced them. Last month, another batch of e-mails showed Schisler referring sarcastically to the staff changes as a "lobotomy" for the agency.

The latest e-mails show that in January 2004, Collins and Schisler met in the governor's office with the Public Service Commission's chief of staff, Craig Chesek, for a conference call with Ehrlich's appointments secretary, Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. According to court records, Chesek helped determine who would be fired. Chesek has said he was involved in personnel decisions but was not there expressly "to get rid of people."

Hogan declined to comment yesterday, but Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the firings of employees were not discussed at that meeting. Collins said he could not recall the reason for it. In general, he said, "my opinion was solicited from time to time about all sorts of people and their qualifications."

Collins stressed that he "would never discuss or have any involvement ever with any issue associated with the terminations."

Lawyer Cary Hansel, who represented one of the fired workers, said that the meeting "certainly raises an eyebrow," adding that "the terminated employees have always had great concerns about where the decision to terminate them came from."

In a series of e-mails last spring, Schisler and Collins strategized about how to answer questions from Democrats on legislation to curb air pollution, known as the "4Ps bill" because it would limit four pollutants from coal-fired plants. Utilities, including Constellation Energy Group, BGE's parent company, argued that the bill would significantly increase their costs and the price of electricity.