Rocky Mountain Power cutting customer service

The president of Rocky Mountain Power says he's cutting consumer and other services and imposing a "soft" hiring freeze because the electric utility got less than half the rate increase it sought this year from Utah regulators.

Another cut Richard Walje is looking at will leave customers with routine inquiries waiting longer on the telephone for a company representative.

"Something has to change here," Walje said Thursday in an interview requested by The Associated Press for a full discussion of the utility cutbacks.

Walje, 56, a lineman who rose through the ranks, became Rocky Mountain Power's top executive in 2004. In all those years, he said, the utility has been forced to survive on rates that remain some of the country's lowest. Walje said he was devoting the rest of his career to fighting for adequate rates that can support billions of dollars in electric-system improvements he says are desperately needed in Utah.

For now, he said, he was cutting services no regulatory agency can veto because the utility is running out of money — but also to make a point that on a shoestring budget, Rocky Mountain Power can't meet a legal mandate to provide safe and reliable power to a growing population.

"I decided I wouldn't live this life of quiet desperation trying to improve things," Walje said. "It is my civic duty to make this a public discussion, instead of trying behind the scenes to just fudge things."

Ironically, Rocky Mountain Power got everything it asked for in rate hikes totaling nearly 3 percent this year to pay for customer services, yet Walje acknowledged many of his cutbacks target that component of his business to make up for shortfalls in other operations.

He summed up state regulators' attitude as: "We gave you all the money to service customers, but not enough to purchase electricity."

Last month, Walje backed off a publicized threat to cut overtime pay for linemen, which would have slowed the response to some power outages. At the time, he left the impression — in an earlier AP interview and separately with state officials — that Rocky Mountain Power was backing off other threatened cutbacks, as well.

But Walje said Thursday that he was taking a number of cost-saving steps that were outlined in a recent filing to a state consumer agency that demanded the information: