Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board Chairman Weber quits amid frustration

The chairman of the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board resigned Wednesday, expressing frustration with the direction in which his colleagues want to take the state agency that now advocates for residential and small-business utility customers.

The resignation of Brian Weber, a former Republican state legislator from Garden City, comes five days after a pivotal meeting in Wichita where his colleagues on the CURB board proposed either dissolving the agency or drastically changing its mission away from litigating Kansas utility rate cases and toward fighting federal air-quality regulations.

Weber said the birth of his second daughter two months ago and a desire to spend more time on his family and his heating and air-conditioning business were major factors in his decision to step down.

But he also said he was troubled by the direction the CURB board wants to go.

“Whatever the result looks like, if it’s different, it needs to include rate cases, it needs to include advocating for consumers, for the small businesses and the individuals collectively. I think that’s important,” he said. “If CURB were to stop litigating rate cases and were to focus on other matters, I don’t foresee that you’d get the results you have now (that benefit) small business and individual ratepayers collectively.”

CURB’s primary statutory duty is to act as legal counsel representing residential and small-business ratepayers in the court-like hearing process where the Kansas Corporation Commission sets utility rates. The KCC has jurisdiction over private-sector, for-profit utilities, including Westar Energy, Kansas Gas Service, Kansas City Power & Light and Black Hills Energy.

CURB also has traditionally represented utility customers’ interest at the Legislature, another role the board is cutting back.

At Friday’s CURB meeting, all the board members except Weber said they want to change the organization’s focus to more of a lobbying/legal role fighting federal Clean Power Plan regulations.

The cost of upgrading the state’s aging coal plants to meet current emissions standards is driving rate increases. And the board members said they think opposing the Environmental Protection Agency on that could benefit customer bills more than litigating rate cases.

Instead of CURB serving as an adversary to utilities, board members proposed joining with the utilities to fight the clean-air rules in Washington.

Weber said he thinks that much change is too much.

“I certainly think we should be open to saying could or should Kansas be doing things differently,” Weber said. “But at the same time that’s maybe more a matter of how the entity is organized, not what the entity does. I think CURB certainly needs to be involved in rate cases and we’ve seen historically what … that impact has been in ensuring the fairness and rationale behind rate cases.”

This story was originally published December 16, 2015 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board Chairman Weber quits amid frustration."