The Public Service Commission on Wednesday removed commissioner Davante Lewis as its vice chairman after he called Gov. Jeff Landry an "a**hole" on social media.
On a 3-2 vote, the commission chose to replace Lewis with Commissioner Eric Skrmetta in that role on the board. The vote followed public comment from a line of people arguing the move violated Lewis' right to free speech.
How thin is the Governor's skin? I mean asshole is not even that out of bounds. The WBRZ version of the story doesn't even censor it.
BATON ROUGE — The Public Service Commission voted to remove Davante Lewis as vice-chairman at a Wednesday morning meeting after Lewis called Gov. Jeff Landry an "asshole" on social media last week.
The commission voted 3-2 to remove Lewis and named commission member Eric Skrmetta vice-chair.
Of course there is also the possibility that this is about a little bit more than just hurt feelings. It might, for example, have more to do with protecting Entergy and Meta from public oversight than with people using rude words.
Two environmental and consumer protection groups are challenging Entergy's plan to power a massive AI data center for Meta, Facebook's parent company, in northeast Louisiana.
The Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists have filed a motion asking the state's utility regulators to deny Entergy's request to build three gas power plants at a cost of over $3 billion until it follows standard procedure. If the regulators side with the advocacy groups, Entergy would have to scrap the proposal in its current form and resubmit it after proving the gas plants are the best option available.
The regulator being appealed to here, of course, is the Public Service Commission. And the ousted co-chair seems to have a different approach to the issue than the person who will replace him... on behalf of the Governor's hurt feelings, of course.
PSC commissioner Davante Lewis said that it was too early to comment on the motion, but that the filing raises questions that the commission should look into.
"Having a review process is important to ensure we are building generation that is needed that is also the most cost-efficient," Lewis said.
Eric Skrmetta, another commissioner, similarly declined to comment on the motion specifically, but said that he believed the concerns over fast tracking the process or massive power needs to be unfounded.