Director of the council's Utilities Regulatory Office will be paid about $110,000 a year
It has been three years since the New Orleans City Council has had a full-time staff member to assist it in regulating the city's utility companies, primarily Entergy New Orleans. On Thursday the council hired a Topeka, Kan., lawyer to fill the role.
New Orleans City Hall W. Thomas Stratton Jr., 57, will start work Nov. 11 as director of the council's Utilities Regulatory Office. He will be paid about $110,000 a year.
Stratton spent almost four years as chief litigation counsel for the Kansas Corporation Commission, that state's utility regulatory agency. A 1984 graduate of Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, he has spent his entire career in that city until accepting the New Orleans job.
His hiring could be the first step in an effort to bring some of the council's regulatory work in-house, rather than farming it out to high-priced outside lawyers and other consultants. The council has been paying those consultants more than $6 million a year.
The council's 7-0 vote to hire Stratton followed an hourlong closed-door executive session. Stratton joined the seven council members for part of the session.
After the council's last on-staff regulatory officer, Kelley Meehan, retired in 2009, the council initially took its time in trying to find a replacement as members debated whether to give the job more power than it had in the past. Its search efforts then ran into a variety of problems.
New Orleans is one of only two U.S. cities that exercise regulatory authority over their utility companies, rather than having a state commission handle it. The council sets the rates and regulates the services of Entergy, the city's electricity and natural gas provider, and other companies.
The council, along with the watchdog group Alliance for Affordable Energy, has long discussed shifting some of those functions from outside lawyers, accountants and technical advisers to an in-house office that might be cheaper.
At one point, after its initial nationwide search for a new regulatory officer, the council decided to hire a California attorney who then backed out of the job at the last minute, said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, chairwoman of the council's Utility Committee.
After the job was readvertised in November, the council received 40 applications from across the country, and narrowed the field to five qualified candidates. By the time they were contacted this summer, only two were still interested in the job. The Utility Committee -- Hedge-Morrell, Stacy Head and Susan Guidry -- interviewed both during a closed-door meeting in early August.
Guidry said Thursday that she found him "extremely qualified for the position."
The other finalist besides Stratton was lawyer Hilary K. Gold, who moved to New Orleans last spring after working as an analyst for General Electric and PacifiCorp in Portland, Ore.
In a letter to the council in February, Stratton noted that he first applied for the local job a few years ago and was interviewed at that time by phone. He said the interview seemed to be "going well" but ended with a "flame-out" when he asked for too high a salary. In asking for a second shot, he said his pay expectations have since been "tempered by the times and changes in personal circumstances."
Hedge-Morrell said that in light of their unhappiness over the speed with which Entergy restored power to the city after Hurricane Isaac last month, council members "all understand that we have to closely regulate what goes on."