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Three for District 3
Louisiana Public Service Commission District 3 incumbent Irma Muse Dixon faces two challengers.
By
Allen Johnson Jr
Irma Muse Dixon, the first African-American chair of the powerful Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC), is fighting off challenges to her District 3 seat by two black elected officials: fellow New Orleanian Lambert Boissiere III, constable of First City Court, and state Sen. Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge. All three are Democrats.
All emphasize a commitment to ethics, but none say they would refuse campaign contributions from industries they would regulate on the PSC. The commission exercises broad regulatory and rate-making authority over railroads, most utilities, telephone companies and intrastate transportation services, including moving companies, oil pipelines and ship pilots. District 3 covers 10 parishes, including Jefferson, Orleans and parts of Baton Rouge.
First elected to the commission in 1993, Dixon is the dean of the PSC and its only female member. She is seeking a third term and says her experience with complex regulatory issues qualifies her for re-election. She also has more than two decades of experience in state and local government, which she has supplemented with specialized degrees in utility studies from Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico. “You can’t just walk in off the street and regulate [utilities],” she says.
Dixon says her three proudest achievements in the last three years are securing $40 million in federal funding for Internet technology development at New Orleans Public Schools, deploying broadband statewide, and aiding Internet and telecommunications hookups that benefit libraries, hospitals, distant-learning programs, and deaf and hearing-impaired citizens. Her future priorities include safeguards for Louisiana’s place in a national power grid, securing low utility rates by increasing water capacity for power generation, and providing voice-over for Internet services. Plus, she wants to help set up fast rail from Shreveport to New Orleans to Biloxi, Miss. Dixon also says she favors other power generation alternatives to new construction of nuclear power plants in Louisiana.
Dixon has considered leaving the PSC in the past. She mounted a race against U.S. Rep. Bill Jefferson in 2000, thought better of it, then challenged him last year, losing badly. If re-elected to the PSC, Dixon says, she would serve her full six-year term.
State Sen. Cleo Fields, a lawyer, has represented his Baton Rouge constituents once in Congress and twice in the Louisiana Senate. He was re-elected to his second four-year Senate term last October. Although term limits would force him out of the Legislature by 2008, Fields says he is running for the PSC to help the poor. He says his 16 years of federal and state legislative experience best qualify him for the PSC.
Fields rejects Dixon’s insistence that the PSC requires experience with complex, technical issues. “There’s nothing technical about fighting for consumers,” he says. Fields says he would be “open-minded” on the proposed construction of new nuclear power plants and would make sure “safety comes first.”
Fields says he favors tough ethics requirements for the PSC and voted for some of the state’s toughest ethics laws as senator. But an old ethics question lingers overhead — why did Fields take $20,000 from former Gov. Edwin Edwards in a notorious 1997 meeting secretly videotaped by the FBI? Fields was not charged in the federal corruption probe that sent EWE to federal prison, and he says he is not obligated to answer questions about the meeting because he was a private citizen at the time. He says he did nothing illegal. “I am not a crook,” Fields says.
If elected to the PSC, Fields says, he should be judged by his ratemaking: “All I do is set rates — the bread-and-butter deal.” Undaunted by his controversial past, he asserts: “Like me or not, people know Cleo Fields will fight for working consumers.”
Lambert Bossiere III was first elected as a city constable in 1997 and re-elected last year to a second six-year term. His father, state Sen. Lambert Boissiere Jr., is a former lobbyist for Entergy Inc. and is serving as the campaign’s treasurer.
The younger Boissiere says he pondered running for criminal sheriff, but opted to seek the PSC seat. He hopes to earn his law degree at Loyola University in New Orleans next year, adding that his studies in constitutional law and utility regulation will inform his work on the PSC. Boissiere says his background in business and public administration, including computerizing the constable’s office, also qualifies him for the job.
If elected, Boissiere promises to carefully analyze the myriad complex and technical issues before the PSC. “I will fight to keep rates low and services diversified,” he says, adding that high ethical standards will be a benchmark to judge him by after his first term on the PSC.
Boissiere says he could support new nuclear power construction, which first must be approved by federal regulators. “I could vote for it … it’s proven most efficient,” he says, citing the safety record of the Waterford III plant at Taft, upriver from New Orleans. He would want Louisiana contractors to benefit from any new construction and says he would insist on “guarantees of safety” for residents.
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