This isn’t new, but it’s important to hear it again. Gov. Haley Barbour is against expanding the Publics Service Commission staff:

Barbour was adamantly opposed to lawmakers authorizing additional staff positions for the PSC, saying the PSC had enough staff to do the job and that there was no money in the state budget to pay for them if they needed more staff.

With House Democrats, the entire PSC including Republican Leonard Bentz and Attorney General Jim Hood supporting the addition of technical staff members for the PSC, this will prove a difficult political fight that leaves about 100 innocent state employees between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The real investigative and regulatory agents do not work for the PSC. They work for the governor. That means, while the PSC has regulatory oversight, they do not direct the men and women “on the ground”, so to speak.

And considering the governor’s strong donations from the energy industry, you can bet that Barbour will not move those staffers back to the PSC, where they rightly belong.

So much for inviting bipartisanship with PSC Commissioner Bentz…