Ruggerio: Senate won't hold hearing on PUC nominee - The Providence Journal

The Senate president said it would be "premature" to conduct hearing on the appointment of Laura Olton. Under state law, must be a Rhode Island "elector" to be a commissioner, but she has lived till now in Wellesley, Mass.

PROVIDENCE — Senate President Dominick Ruggerio has pulled the plug — at least for now — on Gov. Gina Raimondo's nomination of former National Grid lawyer Laura Olton to chair the state's rate-setting Public Utilities Commission.

With time running short on the legislative session expected to end Friday, and no confirmation hearing scheduled yet on the Olton appointment, Ruggerio on Tuesday issued a late-day statement that said:   

“It would be premature to conduct an advice and consent hearing on the appointment of Laura Olton to the PUC while she is not a qualified elector of this state as required by statute. Therefore, the Senate Environment & Agriculture Committee will not be scheduling a hearing on her appointment prior to the conclusion of the regular Senate session.”

The statement followed a report in The Journal earlier on Tuesday about Olton's attempts to qualify for the $132,727-a-year job to which Raimondo appointed her in early June. 

On June 17, Olton — who has until now lived in a stately, $1.5-million home in Wellesley, Massachusetts — registered to vote in Barrington, Rhode Island from the Annawamscutt Road address of a charming single-family 1895 home owned since 2002 by one-time Barrington School Committee member Roni Phipps.

State law requires that each of the three PUC commissioners be an "elector," which means: eligible to vote in Rhode Island. The assumed reason for the law: so the state's utility rate-setters would have the same stake in their decisions as other ratepayers in Rhode Island.

Asked on Tuesday if she had sold or rented her home to Olton, Phipps emailed: "I did not, she is my cousin ... She’ll be staying with me while she finds a permanent home in RI."

A short time later, Olton also responded to a Journal inquiry: "Yes, I recently established residency in Barrington and registered to vote. I am living with my cousin Roni while I continue my search for a permanent home in Rhode Island."

There's one more wrinkle.

According to the Barrington town clerk's office, Olton is not yet qualified to vote in Rhode Island, and won't be until July 17.

Raimondo spokesman Josh Block translated that to mean: Olton would be a registered voter — i.e. "an elector" — by the time she started work at the PUC in mid to late summer.

And then there's this: as of midday Tuesday, Olton was still a registered voter in Wellesley, where she last voted in the town elections in March, according to the town clerk's office.

Raimondo chose Olton to replace former U.S. Attorney Margaret "Meg" Curran as chairwoman of the PUC, days after an arm of the PUC rejected National Grid's bid for a bonus payment as part as a compensation package for buying wind power.

On the questionnaire she submitted to the Senate in recent days, Olton listed her cousin's Annawamscutt Road home in Barrington as her own home address.

She described herself as a 1989 graduate of Tufts University with a bachelor's degree in political science, and a graduate of Boston University School of Law in 1994.

Among the past jobs she listed: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compliance bank examiner 1989-1991; U.S. Attorney's Office, Boston, intern in Civil Asset Forfeiture Division, Summer 1992;  Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C., attorney-adviser in Office of Administrative Law Judges, 1994-1995; Rubin and Rudman LLP, Boston, regulatory and litigation associate, 1995-1997; McDermott, Will & Emery, Boston, energy and litigation associate, 1997-2000; National Grid USA Service Company, Westborough, Massachusetts, associate counsel, 2000-2004; National Grid USA Service Company, The Narragansett Electric Company, Providence, general counsel, 2004-2008; Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, Boston, general counsel, 2008-2011; LSO Energy Advisors, LLC, Wellesley, principal, 2012-present.

— kgregg@providencejournal.co­m

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