Editor’s Note: This is part of an ongoing series on the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission as it nears its 100th anniversary.

Two years ago, a top Hawaiian Electric Co. executive urged state lawmakers to kill a bill that would have forced the utility to give up on oil-fired power plants unless it could prove it was meeting renewable energy standards.

A couple years earlier, that same woman led the state Division of Consumer Advocacy where she was on essentially the opposite side of the issue. Then, she’d helped put in place the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, the state’s landmark agreement requiring HECO to switch from oil to renewable resources and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But Catherine Awakuni didn’t stay long at HECO either. Today, she’s the Public Utilities Commission’s chief legal counsel.

Awakuni’s career path, and others’ like her, illustrates one of the critical problems the PUC has struggled to resolve — staffing and turnover — as it tries to oversee myriad industries and companies, including utilities. The turnover is troubling in and of itself, but it’s of particular concern when PUC employees head down the street to HECO.

A Civil Beat review found at least eight high-level PUC employees who have left in the past several years for jobs at HECO, other utilities the commission regulates or law firms representing those companies.

The commission can attract talented young people eager to start their careers in engineering or law, for instance. But after gaining experience in the niche utilities field, new opportunities open up to them in the private sector.

Hawaiian Electric Co., not to mention other utilities the PUC oversees, lures many employees away, offering significantly higher salaries than the state can afford as well as better opportunities for upward mobility.

This particular revolving door raises serious questions about the independence and integrity of the commission. How objective can the agency be if one year its key staffers are working to maximize HECO profits and the next year they are regulating the utility? What sort of advantage does HECO gain when it hires former regulators to go up against the regulatory agency?

Henry Curtis, executive director of Life of the Land, a non-profit environmental and community action group, called the staffing issue “incestuous.”

The PUC is a quasi-judicial state agency that decides, among other things, if HECO’s proposed electric rates are fair and if the utility is acting in the public interest.

Awakuni bounced between all three main entities that control the electric business in Hawaii. She declined to comment for this story.

After some time at private law firms, the PUC hired Awakuni in 2002 as a staff attorney. This lasted until 2006, when then-Gov. Linda Lingle tapped her to be Consumer Advocate, a state-funded office that is supposed to fight for the public’s interest in rate cases before the PUC.

Awakuni signed the historic Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative as Consumer Advocate in 2008 but left a couple years later to work briefly for HECO until rejoining the PUC as chief counsel.

Her robust range of experience in Hawaii’s utility world should be an amazing asset to the PUC. She has a deep understanding of how things work on each side of the issue, which could mean a tough negotiator who knows when a fair deal is reached.

But skeptics say things are getting a little too cozy.

“The agencies are far too intertwined,” said Lanai resident Sally Kaye, a member of the commission’s 68-member Integrated Resource Planning advisory group. “None of them have enough money. None of them have enough resources. They should pay a little more attention to protecting the public than protecting secrets.”

Kris Nakagawa quit his job as the PUC’s chief counsel to work for a law firm that regularly appears before the commission.

Staff attorneys like Michael Colon have left the commission to work for other utilities, negotiating the same types of agreements they had been working on for the other side.

The attorneys are bound by codes of ethics and professional conduct that prohibit the misuse of confidential information, such as the details of power purchase agreements for new wind energy projects.

The law also requires a one-year “cooling off” period when switching between jobs as a state regulator and working for a utility. During that time you’re not supposed to handle any of the dockets you were previously working on. But critics say this is tough to avoid because previous settlements on rate increases, for instance, shape future agreements.

HECO Executive Vice President Robbie Alm said the utility likes having people come over from the PUC. But, he noted, it can be a mixed blessing because the company also loses someone at the commission who has a deep understanding of the issues.

“We’d get to a substantive argument sooner and everyone would benefit,” he said.

One More Cup of Coffee?

Limited resources are a commonly cited concern when it comes to the PUC and its ability to be effective.

The Legislature has tried to address this problem in recent years as the economy has rebounded and administrations have changed.

More recently, the issue has also been space.

The commission is authorized to hire more people, but doesn’t have anywhere to put them. The state budgeted almost $4 million for renovations and new office space but not until 2015, which means another couple years of getting by with pretty much the same staff of roughly 40 employees.

The staff includes an administrative director, attorneys, engineers, auditors, researchers, investigators, documentation staff, clerical workers and representatives for Kauai, Maui and Hawaii counties.

PUC Chair Mina Morita said she tries to retain qualified staff in part by reinforcing the public servant aspect of the job. But she recognizes that paying them a fair wage is important too.

The commission is trying to boost salaries to a level that’s more comparable to the private sector, but it’s tough to compete on a state allowance.

For instance, the commission recently posted a job ad for a staff attorney that offered an annual salary of $68,000. Energy attorneys in the private sector can get paid double or triple that.

Commissioner Mike Champley, who worked with several other states as a senior executive of a major utility on the mainland, said the Hawaii PUC is one of the most underfunded, understaffed that he has seen.

“Yes, this is a good training ground, but if we could get more competitive salaries then it would also entice people to make this more of a public service career rather than a stopping point,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that’s the inevitability. We can attract bright, talented people out of school, but the down side of that is they may very well go on,” Champley said. “What you hope is they’ll have more than one cup of coffee while they’re here.”

The PUC’s and Consumer Advocate’s limited staffs lead to a higher number of settlements, according to utility experts and people who closely follow the process. The commission has been blamed for hurting the state’s bond rating because of delays in hearing cases, so it has the added pressure to resolve cases quickly.

California’s energy regulators go after the utilities with “equal guns,” Alm said, which can lead to different results.

Attorneys fresh out of law school can have a tough time arguing a case against a private utility’s seasoned lawyers, for instance.

“Things are improving,” Alm said of the Hawaii PUC. But he said it’s hard for the commission to take a strong role without its own staff.