INFORMATION ABOUT SPEAKERS

Commissioner Marc Spitzer
U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

Commissioner Spitzer believes the FERC's primary missions are to ensure that America's ratepayers have safe, economic, and reliable supplies of electricity and natural gas; and transparent, robust and competitive wholesale energy markets. Commissioner Spitzer believes that successful regulation of FERC-jurisdictional industries requires a balancing of all competing interests to ensure just and reasonable rates.

As Chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), he focused on policies encouraging expansion of natural gas infrastructure, specifically distribution and storage; creating a demand side management policy; enhancing the ACC's renewables standard; and advancing consumer privacy concerns in telecommunications. As Chairman, he established a legacy of balancing competing interests, while ensuring Arizonans received safe, economical and reliable utility services.

The expansion of and improvements to the bulk transmission system and the nation's natural gas pipeline system are high priorities for Commissioner Spitzer. He also believes those enhancements are essential to the dispatch of environmentally friendly resources as well as ensuring reliability and efficiency. Commissioner Spitzer also believes that the expanded enforcement authority provided by EPAct 2005 will help deter market manipulation and other anticompetitive behavior and will enhance FERC's ability to appropriately penalize those who are culpable.

Commissioner Spitzer was elected in 2000 to the ACC and in 2002 was elected Chairman by his colleagues. He received recognition for his leadership of the Arizona Commission from 2003-2005.

At the FERC, Commissioner Spitzer is building on his record in Arizona on environmental issues. Demand response, energy efficiency, and access to the grid by alternative resources were major focuses of Commissioner Spitzer in retail rate cases and policy decisions before the Arizona Commission. Commissioner Spitzer believes that EPAct 2005 supports his commitment to those issues, which are germane to both Federal and State regulators.

In 1992, after many associations with civic, philanthropic and political causes, he was elected to the Arizona State Senate for District 18. Commissioner Spitzer served in the Legislature as Chair of the Judiciary and Finance Committees and was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Majority Leader in 1996.

As an attorney since 1982, Commissioner Spitzer represented taxpayers in proceedings involving the Internal Revenue Service. He was first certified as a Specialist in tax law by the Arizona Bar in 1987.

Commissioner Spitzer was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in Philadelphia.

After graduation from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Michigan, School of Law.