Protesters reaction at a 2007 heating on a rate hike request by AmerenUE.

It isn’t easy being a utility regulator in Missouri. Hearings are filled with arcane technical jargon. Politics is hard to escape, especially for Public Service commissioners appointed by a governor.
And then there’s the public scrutiny, or, as Commissioner Terry M. Jarrett put it in a recent speech, there are “newspaper editorial boards with their own agendas [that] improperly question the impartiality of the commission, find ethical problems where there are none and stereotype commissioners.”
We’ve written more about the PSC than any other editorial board in the state, so we’re guessing he means us. It’s true we have an agenda: The PSC should make sure utilities get a fair return and that consumers have reliable sources of energy at the lowest reasonable prices. We also think the commission and its staff should abide by the rules.
We disagree that we’ve found “ethical problems where there are none.” The issues we’ve written about on this page — in particular, undisclosed private meetings between a commissioner and utility executives during rate cases — are very real. We didn’t make them up.

Mr. Jarrett isn’t alone in his desire for less public scrutiny. AmerenUE, the state’s largest utility, wants the PSC to approve a rate hike. It asked commissioners to prohibit lawyers opposing the request from speaking to the press. AmerenUE executives usually don’t talk publicly about pending rate cases.
The ban on public comment would include lawyers and members of consumer groups like AARP that oppose the rate case. That’s a free speech issue.
It apparently also would include Public Counsel Lewis R. Mills Jr., a state official who represents ratepayers in the case. “My client is the public,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to communicate with the public without involving the press.”
AmerenUE lawyers allege that public comments are an improper attempt to “bring pressure to bear upon the commission.”
There’s no ban on public statements by lawyers in most civil and criminal cases. Protesters even gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington while it hears important cases. If Supreme Court justices can make impartial decisions under those circumstances, surely PSC commissioners can, too.

Over the past few years, utilities, including AmerenUE and Kansas City Power & Light, and the commission that regulates them have gotten a lot of heat. KCP&L had a commissioner in for a private chat about a proposed merger. While he was PSC chairman, commissioner Jeff Davis chaired a secret meeting when the Legislature was considering a bill that made it easier for utilities to pass on costs to consumers — a meeting from which the then-public counsel was excluded.
AmerenUE asked the Legislature to repeal important consumer protections so that it could build a new nuclear reactor in Callaway County. The effort failed, and AmerenUE got a lot of criticism, here and elsewhere.
Similarly, commissioners have been criticized here and elsewhere for undisclosed closed-door meetings with utility executives after or immediately before big cases were filed.
Twice since 2007, lawyers have filed highly unusual motions asking PSC members to remove themselves from pending cases because of those meetings.
In his speech, Mr. Jarrett said that newspaper criticism “erodes public confidence in regulators at a time when confidence in government generally is at an all-time low.”
He is confusing the cause with the effect.
We didn’t call the secret meetings. We don’t have cozy meetings with the people we regulate. We just write about them. Shame on us.