Written for The Texas Observer legislative blog "Floor Pass."
The newest member of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick, took to the podium at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s big Austin policy confab on Thursday with a simple, oft-repeated message: Federal hands off the oil and gas business! Texas knows how energy regulation is done, Craddick said. “People ought to be modeling themselves after us, instead of Pennsylvania or the EPA.” The Railroad Commission regulates (nominally, some would say) the oil and gas industry, alternative fuel research, gas utilities, surface mining and pipeline industries. (It has nothing to do with railroads anymore.) But the agency’s leaders often function more as cheerleaders than regulators. The title of the panel, “Unleashing the Texas Energy Colossus” is slightly inaccurate, said panelist John Hays, a San Antonio attorney and former administrative law judge with the commission. “The colossus is already unleashed,” he said. “The unleashing has been going on for years…The biggest question is whether we will do those sorts of things that will shackle it.” Read the rest.