Hundreds of public power representatives will participate in the American Public Power Association’s 2025 Legislative Rally in late February. The event is the most concentrated effort of the year for public power advocacy, with three days of city and utility leaders coming to Washington, D.C., to meet with national policymakers and their staff members to share how federal policy matters affect their communities.
However, the rally is just one event. Advocating for public power is a year-round endeavor that involves establishing relationships, offering useful information, and being ready to react quickly when needed.
Powerful Advocates
Joseph Owen, director of government affairs for WPPI Energy, a joint action agency serving 51 public power utilities across Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan, sees advocating for public power as an example of democracy in action.
“People inside the Beltway need and want to hear from their constituents,” he said. “They benefit greatly from understanding the practical implications back home of measures they consider.”
Photo courtesy WPPI Energy
Public power leaders and board members are not only constituents themselves — as city and local leaders, they represent a cluster of constituents. Since utility operations are in the unique position of affecting every person in a community, these perspectives hold considerable weight.
“You are representing their voters,” said Vernell Roberts, general manager of Detroit Lakes Public Utilities, which serves about 10,000 customers in western Minnesota. “Elected officials inside the Beltway appreciate a local perspective.”
“A lot of time, issues on Capitol Hill get looked at from an urban or suburban perspective,” said Roberts, who has participated in at least 35 of APPA’s legislative rallies. “It’s important that senators, congresspeople, and their staffs hear from rural America who have to live with what is decided in Washington, D.C.”
In the fight against deep-pocketed interests, “people power is our superpower,” said Madalyn Sukke, a commissioner with Detroit Lakes Public Utilities.
“We participate in the Legislative Rally to show how public power utilities generate social and economic benefits for their communities,” added Paul Warfel, vice president of participant and external affairs for MEAG Power, a JAA that provides wholesale power to 49 member utilities in Georgia. “We exist to improve the quality of life in our communities, and it’s important that our federally elected officials and their staffs understand that.”
“Public power specifically, and all electricity providers in general, are foundational to our economy,” commented Owen. “Economic growth doesn’t happen without a reliable supply of affordable electricity.” He cited the current attention to data centers as a large and important new load source, calling them a “transformational change in the economy, and utilities are at the forefront of that change” because the data centers are huge users of electricity.
Explaining the Issues
Roberts said electric utilities of all stripes — public power, investor-owned utilities, and rural electric cooperatives — are getting pulled in different directions when it comes to industry principles such as affordability, reliability, safety, and sustainability.
While public power utilities and organizations have varying goals, approaches, and priorities, there is a lot of common ground in their advocacy efforts.
“It is vital that public power present a unified and prominent voice in Washington,” said Warfel. “Public power seeks to improve the quality of life where our customers — who are also their voters — live, work, and play.”
Simply explaining what public power is and the issues your utility faces is important in its own right, especially given that more than 60 members of the 119th Congress — including four senators — are new. (A handful of freshmen members of Congress, including the incoming senator for Utah, have served as mayors or other elected officials for jurisdictions with public power).
Photo courtesy Detroit Lakes Public Utilities.
Rally attendees can expect to receive briefing materials and boiled-down bullet points from APPA and their state delegation, which might be led by a JAA or state association representative. But it’s up to participants to put a human face on public power.
Roberts summarized the “three B’s” of successful lobbying: Be prepared. Be brief. Be gone. Being able to follow those guidelines means doing your homework before meetings on Capitol Hill and coming to meetings with a specific ask, which can be developed in coordination with APPA staff or your JAA.
Roberts also urged advocates to remain nonpartisan and not get too technical when meeting with members: “Try to break issues down into terms that are understandable to generalists.” Deep dives can take place when meeting with the member’s staff or in follow-up correspondence.
Above all, try to turn dry data into personal stories, which are more memorable than datasets. If your utility is creating jobs using federal grants, talk about that. While supply chain bottlenecks continue to pose a challenge to utilities, work to find ways to discuss them from the personal, real-life impact they are having, such as longer power outages, higher costs, or delays to local economic development or residential home construction projects because the utility could not procure enough transformers.
“Our job is to make the story real by personalizing data and information. We can make a difference by telling our stories,” said G.L. Tucker, another commissioner for Detroit Lakes.
Readiness and Patience
Just like in agriculture, where seeds are planted in one season, nurtured for a while, and then harvested, legislative work often takes time to bear fruit.
The “ask” made of members of Congress represents harvesting of prior efforts.
Take MEAG Power’s effort to inform Capitol Hill staffers about the importance of nuclear power. The JAA is a 22.7% owner of the four nuclear units at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, including the two newly commissioned units 3&4.
In 2015, MEAG Power started bringing congressional staffers down to Waynesboro during the August congressional recess for a briefing on the importance of nuclear power and a tour of the two existing units and units 3&4, which were under construction. It was part of a multipronged strategy that included working with home-state lawmakers in the House and Senate to recognize the critical role that new nuclear generation needed to play in the nation’s energy mix.
“Our goal was to make nuclear power less abstract,” Warfel said. “We wanted to give them a sense of the scale of Vogtle 3 and 4, learn about nuclear power, safety issues, and spent-fuel storage.”
“It was a resounding success,” Warfel said, pointing to in excess of $500 million in value for their long-term efforts. This included explaining the need for nonprofit utilities to be able to take advantage of the federal production tax credit for advanced nuclear electric generation. This ability was enacted into law in 2018, a precursor to tax-exempt entities’ ability to access direct payment of tax credits, which was achieved in 2022.
But legislative advocacy isn’t always a decades-long endeavor.
In early 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy was about two years into a rulemaking process that would increase the efficiency of distribution transformers, Owen recalled. Supply chain bottlenecks had sharply increased the costs and wait times for delivery of new transformers. Public power organizations worried that raising the efficiency standards of transformers would add more costs, delays, and uncertainties to the procurement process. Along with APPA staff, public power leaders articulated how changing efficiency during such a precarious period would make a bad situation worse, with direct personal impact on customers in the form of reduced reliability and longer outage restoration times.
“DOE’s effort was well-intentioned, and we’re always keenly interested in pursuing efficiencies, but this effort came at the wrong time,” Owen said.
WPPI Energy provided members and their staffs a “Before and After” briefing document about the distribution transformer market showing that costs had at least doubled and wait times were two to three times longer than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The before-and-after document was pretty effective at showing that we’re not opposed to changes, but they’ve got to make sense,” Owen reflected.
During a meeting with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) as part of the 2024 Legislative Rally, the senator agreed on the spot to become a co-sponsor of a bill to pause the DOE efficiency effort, Owen said. After meeting with WPPI Energy representatives, Wisconsin’s other senator, Republican Ron Johnson, directed his staff to look into the distribution transformer issue.
Faced with bipartisan opposition, DOE adjusted the rulemaking in 2024 to make it more workable.
“Typically, our work pays off in three or four years,” said Owen. “It was exciting and gratifying to see a same-year result. Having bipartisan support for a cause was critical in convincing DOE to abandon its own rulemaking.”
Be Ready for Anything
“In Washington, things can change in a heartbeat,” commented Roberts. “Members of Congress may have to miss a meeting because they have an unexpected vote coming up. You have to roll with the punches.”
Warfel can attest to that. In 2015, he was just starting to work as a lobbyist and was attending his first APPA Legislative Rally. His plan was to observe how the meeting was conducted so he could lead future meetings with Hill personnel.
But at the last minute, Warfel’s group was split up, and he had to deliver the advocacy message developed for someone else in his group.
“I was nervous. I was fumbling over my words,” he said. “But other members of the group had my back, and the message was well-received. The staffer we were presenting to became one of my closest acquaintances on Capitol Hill.”
Owen recalled a similar experience one month into his role at WPPI Energy at his first APPA Legislative Rally. As a newbie, his plan was to listen, not talk. But two utility leaders from Wisconsin had gotten sick that morning and could not lead the discussion with a powerful member of Congress from Wisconsin. On the short cab ride to Capitol Hill, WPPI Energy’s CEO turned to Owen and said, “You’re going to run the meeting, and you’ll be fine.”
By coincidence, Owen and the member of Congress bonded over their shared love of Diet Pepsi. When Owen placed his can of the soda on the meeting-room table, the congressman thought it was meant for him, and he quickly snatched it up. Wisely, Owen decided to play along.
“The Legislative Rally is the Super Bowl of APPA’s legislative efforts,” Owen said, explaining that the full team needs to show up to tell lawmakers and their staffers about the consequences of their actions.
Because what goes on inside the Beltway does not stay inside the Beltway.
