Jason Marks Elected PRC Chair

Congratulations Jason! The AP reports that Public Regulation Commissioner Jason Marks (right) has been elected by his fellow commissioners as the agency's new chairman, succeeding Ben Ray Lujan in that post. Lujan remains on the PRC serving his present term, and is running as a Democrat in the NM-03 2008 Congressional race. Marks, who represents PRC District 1 in the Albuquerque area, was elected to the PRC in 2004 and has served as vice chairman for three years. Commissioner Sandy Jones of PRC District 5, another Democrat, was selected as the new vice chairman.

Marks, a Democrat known as "the consumers' watchdog," is running for reelection to the PRC this year and is expected draw a Republican challenger. I guess they don't like his common sense views on global warming and renewable energy, as expressed in his recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal entitled, "Big-Oil Subsidies Aren't Key to Energy Future." As Marks writes,

Across the country, especially in states like New Mexico that have renewable portfolio standards, the public is benefiting environmentally and economically from the placement of wind, solar and biomass plants.

These renewable projects provide jobs and revenues to rural communities, and in our experience here in New Mexico, wind energy is a lower cost supply of electricity than natural gas!

You can read more about Marks' views on the PRC's role in dealing with the challenge of "a transition from fossil fuel dependence to an energy future based on clean and sustainable technologies" in a text version of his campaign kickoff speech I posted in October. It's a keeper.