In another indication that California’s new top regulator wants his own team, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Thursday replaced its civil service executive director with an outsider who is a long-term consumer/environmental activist, Bill Ahern, a former state government manager who has been a senior policy analyst in the Consumers Union San Francisco office.

Ahern replaces CPUC Executive Director Wes Franklin who had served in the post for seven years. The new director worked at the CPUC in the 1980s as a staff manager between stints at several other state agencies, including the energy commission, coastal commission and insurance department among others. He is credited with having “significant knowledge of the utility industry and a proven track record in policy analysis and management,” according to his new boss, Michael Peevey, the CPUC president who was named to the top post at the end of last year by Gov. Gray Davis.

In a prepared announcement, Ahern said that following the 1990s utility industry deregulation push, he is planning to help the CPUC “navigate to smoother waters.” He replaces Franklin, who earlier this month announced his resignation from the executive director’s position. Franklin said he will remain at the CPUC on Peevey’s staff.

Earlier in the week, CPUC chief counsel Gary Cohen, a hand-picked chief legal officer with former commission president Loretta Lynch, announced his resignation, although he is staying on for a few months to finish two major legal/regulatory cases involving the CPUC — the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Chapter 11 bankruptcy case and the regulators’ federal court settlement with Southern California Edison that prevented that utility’s involuntary bankruptcy in 2001, but is being challenged in the state Supreme Court.

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