Tomblin appoints members to West Virginia's Public Service Commission, a regulatory body that oversees utility companies including First Energy and its subsidiary, Potomac Edison.

Tomblin's office reported that the governor re-appointed Chairman Michael Albert [a former member of FirstEnergy's preferred regulatory law firm, Jackson Kelly]  to oversee the three-person commission, effective July 1.

"FirstEnergy works with numerous elected officials in West Virginia and all the states where we have operations," company spokesperson Mark Durbin said. "The company does not comment on political contributions made by FirstEnergy employees other than they have the right to participate in the political process just like any other U.S. citizen."

We will work tirelessly to assure:
1. Impartial and efficient resolution of all jurisdictional issues;
2. Public safety through inspections of motor carriers, railroads, and natural gas pipelines;
3. An increase in business investment, job creation/retention and the state’s overall competitiveness;
4. An improvement in the standard of living and quality of life for the people of West Virginia;
5. That consumers receive the best value in utility service from financially viable and technically competent companies; and,
6. That utilities receive an opportunity to earn a fair return on their investment in regulated services.

PSC Chairman Michael Albert’s recent remarks before a West Virginia legislative Joint Standing Committee on Judiciary epitomize the stagnant and captive nature of our current PSC leadership. Albert told the committee that the days of cheap utilities are over and that the only remedies for consumers who cannot afford higher utility costs are conservation or budget and consumer assistance programs. Instead of investigating creative solutions, which the PSC is empowered by law to do, Mr. Albert throws in the towel and goes along with the claims of West Virginia’s Ohio-based electric companies.

§24-1-3. Commission continued; membership; chairman; compensation;  quorum.
 
 (b) The Public Service Commission shall consist of three members who shall be appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The commissioners shall be citizens and residents of this state and at least one of them shall be duly licensed to practice law in West Virginia, with not less than ten years' actual work experience in the legal profession as a member of a state bar.

Merger benefits increased significantly from '11 to '12 to '13. As I said, Gary's going to speak more to that, but this is the pretax earnings impact associated with those and you'll see that, that's in excess of $1 billion.

We're also targeting O&M reductions beyond the synergies of between $75 million and $175 million in 2012 and 2013. We expect asset sales in the range of $800 million to $900 million per year, and we expect to reduce debt by $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion over this time period.

...we continue to look for opportunities to reduce O&M. I just want to give you one, very quick example, of what we're doing on the O&M side.

We closed the transaction February 28 of last year. There are roughly 75 major applications that have to get integrated between the 2 companies. For some of the operating savings to occur, those systems have to be integrated. I'm pleased to say that our IT folks are basically going to integrate all of those applications in record time, and they'll make their cut-over shortly. They've had 5 test runs, so you'll see that some of the synergy has been accelerated and some of the synergies too, become, as we integrate our systems. And we're quite pleased with where we are. We'll continue to look for incremental costs. It's kind of our nature. But we're not going to do anything simply for a short-term benefit that puts the company at a longer-term risk. That's just not something we are going to do. Everything we are doing is to place FirstEnergy in the best possible forward position.

U.S. power company FirstEnergy Corp said Monday there were no evacuations at or around the Perry nuclear power plant in Ohio after the company shut the plant to fix a coolant leak that was contained within the plant, company spokeswoman Jennifer Young told Reuters.

In a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the company said it shut the reactor due to a small reactor coolant leak on a recirculation flow control valve vent line.

Young said the event caused no harm to plant workers or the public and radiation did not leak out of the plant.

Meyers said the companies have been aware of the issues and will assist the PSC.

“It’s just an exercise that we need to go through, and hopefully, when we come to the end of the investigation and the recommendations and everything else, we can be stronger for it and have a good outcome for our customers,” Meyers said.