Our Time with Public Citizens’ Tyson Slocum

Since the beginning of his time at Public citizen in 2000, Tyson Slocum has been at the forefront of the fight for a more just energy transition. As one of the first to identify corporate malfeasance as a cause for one of the biggest scandals in American history, the Enron deregulation crisis of 2000-2001, Tyson is no stranger to utility corruption.

We sat down with Tyson to discuss the history of the electric grid, and how - in spite of recent examples of utility corruption in the 2000s, and more recently with the Con Edison and First Energy bribery scandals - regulators have failed to take action to prevent utilities from taking advantage of their power.

“We need to break that connection between ratepayers paying their monthly bills to utilities and utilities taking that money and investing it in political operations. Ratepayers should no longer pay a penny for any advocacy that utilities do.”