For wont of the public trust
Published April 4, 2014
By Tom Campbell
by Tom Campbell, Executive Producer and Moderator, NC SPIN, April 3, 2014.
The Duke Energy coal ash saga reminds us of the old poem, “For Wont of a Nail.” No doubt you remember that because of a missing horseshoe nail a horse, a rider, a message, a battle, a war and a kingdom were lost. In our modern-day proverb we would suggest beginning by saying that for wont of doing the right thing the public trust was lost.
Winston Churchill once said Americans could always be counted on to do the right thing…after they had tried everything else. Doing the right thing today means people and organizations will do what they consider to be in their own enlightened self interests.
Over the past half century our evaluation of business has changed. Once we understood that businesses had four almost equally important stakeholders: their shareholders and investors, their employees, their customers and their communities. As small businesses died out or grew, they often merged into larger corporations and some morphed into conglomerates, forcing them to change their emphasis.
As mutual funds gained in popularity in the 1950’s and 1960’s they began buying large shares in public companies. Their fund managers, operating in their own enlightened self interests, sought more profits for investors so as to get larger fees. They increasingly pressured public companies to focus only on quarterly profits and share prices. Gone were concerns about what was right for employees, communities and, to a lesser extent, customers.
Duke Energy, operating in this “profitability and share price” culture, also had to consider its best interests. Environmental protection and remediation is extremely expensive; costs that would either reduce profits, which wouldn’t be well received by investors, or would require higher electric bills to customers. Ratepayers, operating in their self-interests, might say protecting the environment is of paramount importance but they will not tolerate excessive electric rates or a lesser quality in service. Duke postponed or avoided residue cleanup and decided to take their chances with the regulators
We created the Public Utilities Commission and Department of Environment and Natural Resources to regulate and ensure that Duke and other companies did the right thing. Regardless of their fervor in protecting the environment, employees of these agencies, want to preserve their jobs. Their positions were created and supervised by elected and appointed government officials, people who won these elections and appointments because individuals donated to and hired them. Once in power most want to stay in power and it is decidedly in their best interests to listen to these donors and influential people when they speak, prompting these officials to request regulators to go easy on the regulated. It is painfully obvious the regulators listened and complied.
We now face the environmental result from a system of compounded interests, created and exacerbated because the company, the regulators, the politicians and investors did not do the right things. The end result is that public trust in all of them has been shattered.
In our poem the lack of a nail resulted in the loss of a kingdom. I leave it to you to decide the ending to today’s story of the loss of the public trust, but it is worth remembering that this nation and our state was founded on the principle of government by the consent of the governed.
April 4, 2014 at 10:42 am
Norm Kelly says:
We expect companies to be concerned about their own self interest. We have come to expect politicians to be concerned about their self interest. Politicians are NOT supposed to be like this, but since elected position has become a career, they have a vested interest in having a certain message presented to the public, regardless of what's going on behind closed doors.
What's supposed to be the controlling factor? Public employees who are hired by the agencies that are supposed to regulate businesses and are independent, for the most part, from politics. When the EPA gets out of control and TELLS Congress that if certain regulations/laws aren't passed by Congress, the controlled agency will MAKE UP NEW REGULATIONS to implement the plans that the regulators want, then it is REQUIRED that Congress force the regulated agency back in it's place. When the IRS decides to target political enemies of the current White House occupant, then the responsibility lies with Congress to get the out-of-control, illegal activity back under control. But when a regulatory agency is simply doing it's job, then anyone who gets in the way should be disclosed to the public in very specific and loud terms. If the person pressuring regulators to ignore the rules is a politician, then the regulators have a responsibility to bypass the political process and report directly to the public. If the entity pressuring regulators to ignore the rules is a regulated company/business, then the regulators have the responsibility to report to the politicians in control. If reporting to the politicians in charge does no good, then the responsibility of the regulators is to report directly to the public. This is the ONLY reason the regulators exist. Regulators DO NOT exist to make either politicians or businesses happy. Regulators are NOT supposed to be more concerned about their jobs than they are about their responsibility to the public. If the regulators can't or won't do their jobs, they should not continue to hold that job.
Unfortunately, the average politicians response to the lack of oversight and proper regulatory implementation by the regulators is to 'improve' the situation by implementing new regulations. The average politician, and almost every lib, ignores the fact that the existing regulations are being ignored, and try to convince a majority of the public that if NEW regulation is implemented, it will solve the prior problem. The finger NEVER points to the politician. Sometimes it points to the regulators, but this is usually because some politician is trying to cover their butt and make sure no investigation gets the opportunity to finger themselves.
The public trust is broken more by regulators who fail to do their job than by any private business. Who do I blame more for the Duke coal ash spill? The government because they are the last step in the process. They are the ones who continuously tell me that they are simply looking out for me. But when push comes to shove, they are always looking out for themselves. I blame demon politicians mostly. Why? Because it's so much fun to blame DemocRATs? Partially. But they were in power for a century. They controlled EVERYTHING for a century. If it happened on their watch, it's not George Bush's fault. Secondly, it's the demons who CONSTANTLY and LOUDLY tell us that they are THE PARTY OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS. They tell us CONSTANTLY that they are simply interested in looking out 'for the people' and specifically 'for the children'. Then when something like the coal ash spill happens, the average lib politician shows their demon stripes by claiming that more regulation would solve the problem and that they can be trusted, for some reason, to make sure it's done right in the future. The demons claim the Republicans CAN'T be trusted to protect either the environment OR 'the people'. But, once again, the claims by demon politicians are true about themselves first.
If the regulators want to gain public trust again, they MUST start implementing the regulations already on the books first. When they are threatened by either a business or a politician, it is their RESPONSIBILITY to do something about it. I'm tired of people who fail at their government job getting promoted. This promotes the idea that NOT doing your job is the way to get 'ahead'. In the private sector, those who fail to do their job usually find themselves without a job.
April 4, 2014 at 6:35 pm
Kent Gilliam says:
It's "For Want of a Nail". You repeated the error throughout. Kind of hard to give it any serious consideration when spelling and grammar are so sloppy. What has happened to journalism these days?
April 5, 2014 at 9:38 am
NC SPIN says:
April 12, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Len Bull says:
Tom: EXCELLENT piece! I think that this needs to be required reading for everyone who operates in the public trust!
GOOD WORK!
LEN BULL
