Pa.'s acclaimed consumer advocate retires

Most Pennsylvanians might not have heard of Irwin A. "Sonny" Popowsky, though he has helped save utility customers billions of dollars in a career spanning 33 years.

Popowsky, 61, worked for more than three decades in the Pennsylvania Office of the Consumer Advocate, the last 22 years as the head of the office. The advocate's main mission is to represent consumers before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC).

Popowsky once argued and won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that saved consumers $50 million. But he acknowledges that public utility law is not exactly the fodder for a John Grisham novel.

"I have yet to see a TV show about a public utility rate case," joked the resident of Philadelphia's University City neighborhood. "It's not the type of thing that's easy to dramatize. But to me it's incredibly interesting."

When he retired last month, Popowsky was the longest-serving consumer advocate in the country, according to PUC Chairman Robert F. Powelson, who heaped praise on Popowsky's "stellar career" at the commission's Oct. 24 meeting.

Known as "Sonny" from the day he was born - his father wanted a boy - the soft-spoken Popowsky grew up in Atlantic City and worked as a newspaper reporter for two years before getting his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He landed at the consumer advocate's office in 1979 as a litigator.

Attorney General Ernest D. Preate Jr. appointed Popowsky as advocate in 1990. He has since been reappointed by every attorney general.

Popowsky's retirement from the $140,265-a-year post creates an opening for Kathleen Kane, the Democrat who won Tuesday's election for attorney general, to name her own advocate. Tanya J. McCloskey, a veteran of Popowsky's 30-worker office, is now serving as acting consumer advocate.

Popowsky said the reason he survived so long was that he was not political. He said his aim was strictly to represent the interests of the people who pay the utility bills.

"Our office has always been nonpolitical," he said. "Utility issues, it sounds like a cliché, are really not Republican or Democratic issues."

The advocate's office is independent of the attorney general. In most cases, its mission is not in conflict with the government's.

But the year he was first appointed, Popowsky butted heads with the attorney general over the issue of caller ID when telephone companies were first rolling out the service. The phone carriers wanted to identify all callers, and the attorney general, arguing from a law-enforcement perspective, said consumers, the callers, should not be able to opt out - to have their phone numbers blocked when they made calls.

But Popowsky argued that caller ID without the consent of the customer of the telephone company was a violation of the state's wiretap act, because in Pennsylvania both caller and receiver need to consent. The case went to the state Supreme Court in 1990, where Popowsky won. The decision set a nationwide standard.

"People take it for granted now that you can block your number if you want," he said.

Much of the consumer advocate's work is bread-and-butter rate cases, where electric, gas, water and telephone companies go before the PUC to request a tariff increase. They must document their requests in filings that can consume thousands of pages. Advocates like Popowsky hire experts to analyze the requests for weaknesses.

"The idea was to create this office as a professional counterpoint to the utilities," Popowsky said, explaining his dispassionate, legalistic style.

Popowsky's approach has won the respect of his adversaries.

"Here's a guy we've been fighting with for 20 years and I can't say enough good things about him," said Denis P. O'Brien, the former Peco Energy Co. chief executive officer who now oversees the utilities for Peco's parent company, Exelon Corp.

"He's smart," said O'Brien. "He knows the issues. He fights the good fight. He makes the deal when appropriate. And he lives by the deal. I hold him in high regard."

One of the biggest issues that consumed Popowsky's career was the restructuring of electric and gas utilities in the 1990s to allow for competition. Utilities like Peco, whose rates are regulated by the PUC, became solely distribution companies. Generation companies were forced to compete, which has driven down the cost of power.

Until full competition began, the state's electric utilities argued that the PUC should allow them to keep their rates high to recover the "stranded" investments they made in their power plants. The PUC, after hearing from advocates like Popowsky, reduced the utilities' $18 billion request by a third. The utilities also agreed to keep their rates frozen, or capped, until 2010.

At the Oct. 24 PUC meeting, Popowsky acknowledged some of the utility executives with whom he has fought.

"But when it comes down to it, at a very basic level, we're all in this together," he said. "We all share the goal of making sure all Pennsylvanians have access to these vital, life-sustaining services that your companies provide."

Popowsky plans to stay active in consumer advocacy groups, and is also on several U.S. Department of Energy advisory and planning committees.