Public Service Commission urges budget increases as committee reviews House Bill 1008

Public Service Commissioner Randy Christman told the Appropriations - Government Operations Division that the Public Service Commission (PSC) needs additional resources in its 2025–27 biennial budget to sustain regulatory functions across utilities, mining reclamation and abandoned mine lands, pipeline safety and weights-and-measures enforcement. He said the engrossed version of House Bill 1008 covers some costs but does not fully fund every PSC request.

Christman, who presented the PSC’s budget request, said the agency regulates a broad portfolio including utility rate cases, siting of transmission and pipeline projects, coal mining reclamation and abandoned mine-land remediation, interstate and intrastate pipeline safety, enforcement of the one-call law, commercial scales and other measuring devices, and railroad safety. “These are literally saving lives,” Christman said when describing abandoned-mine remediation work addressing sinkholes and high-wall hazards.

The budget request and committee discussion matter because the PSC oversees infrastructure and safety programs with statewide effects—energy reliability, consumer rates, mine reclamation and rail and pipeline safety—and because HB1008 would determine which of the commission’s base and one-time needs receive legislative funding.

Christman summarized program activity and costs the PSC reported to the committee: during the current biennium the commission has permitted nearly 340 miles of pipelines, nearly 70 miles of electric transmission lines and more than 460 megawatts of wind generation (he…