William Dann Steinmeier

Bill has more than thirty (30) years of experience with the electricity, telecommunications, natural gas and water industries as a State regulator, attorney and consultant. In 1992, he founded William D. Steinmeier, Professional Corporation, a law and consulting firm which focuses locally on Missouri Public Service Commission practice and nationally on utility industry competitive and restructuring issues.

From 1984 to 1992, Bill served as Chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission (MoPSC), having been appointed by Governor Kit Bond to finish an unexpired term and then re-appointed twice by Governor John Ashcroft. He is also a former President of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). Immediately preceding his appointment to the Commission, he served the MoPSC as a Hearing Examiner (now called "Regulatory Law Judge") from 1980 to 1984. Professionally, he has also worked as a trial attorney for the Missouri Highway Department (now the Missouri Department of Transportation), and as a law clerk for the 22nd Judicial Circuit of Missouri. Bill earned his B.A. degree in political science in 1972 from Wheaton College in Illinois and his J.D. from the School of Law of the University of Missouri-Columbia in the Class of 1976 (diploma conferred December 1975).

In 1986, Bill was appointed by Governor John Ashcroft to serve as Chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Telecommunications Reform, which crafted HB 360 (enacted in 1987) establishing the legal framework for competition in telecommunications in Missouri. Since local exchange competition was opened in 1996 by the federal Telecommunications Act, the firm has represented scores of competitive local exchange and long distance carriers before the Missouri PSC in individual and generic proceedings.

Well-known for his expertise and insight into utility industry restructuring, Mr. Steinmeier has written, given speeches, lobbied, and offered advice, counsel and expert testimony on regulatory and restructuring issues, including electric industry restructuring. As a regulator, he appeared before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. Since then he has testified as an expert witness before a number of State regulatory commissions, state legislative and Congressional committees, and in federal court litigation, on a variety of regulatory issues. In articles, speeches and expert testimony he has addressed such issues as industry, regulatory and political trends; federal-state jurisdictional tensions; market and regulatory structures; mergers and acquisitions; system reliability; diversification; resource planning and environmental issues. He and the firm have also provided advice and counsel to clients on the regulatory environment and requirements in various state jurisdictions, including Missouri, for evaluation of merger and acquisition, and other business, opportunities.

Bill has written and co-authored papers with national distribution on a number of regulatory and restructuring issues. These include three papers on electric stranded cost recovery principles and methods, and cooperative federalism, with Ms. Linda Stuntz, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.

From 1996 to 2004, Bill served as National Chairman of the Electric Utility Shareholders Alliance ("Electric USA"), an ad hoc political coalition engaged in the Congressional debate about retail restructuring of the electric power industry. In that capacity, he testified before the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on electric industry restructuring.

Bill was named a member of the National Energy Panel of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in 1997. He is a Member of AAA's Neutrals Panel for commercial arbitrations, and has received extensive and ongoing training in arbitration and mediation through AAA and the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. He has served as sole arbitrator, and on panels of arbitrators, in energy and telecommunications disputes, real estate and commercial contract disputes and other matters.

Internationally, Bill has consulted on the restructuring and privatization of electric systems in several former Soviet Republics, including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and in Ghana in West Africa. His work contributed to new electricity laws adopted by the Republic of Kazakhstan. He served on the faculty of a World Bank-USAID seminar, in Vienna, Austria, for electric industry personnel from Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Republics, to discuss strategic resource planning by electric utilities, and has performed consulting services on regulatory ratemaking theories and issues for a major electric utility in Spain.

During his tenure at the Missouri Public Service Commission, Bill participated in hundreds of complex contested cases. These cases included implementation of the AT&T divestiture and FCC equal access policies; nuclear power plant construction cost prudence determinations; electric, gas, telephone, water and sewer utility rate cases involving complex cost-of-service, rate design and capacity planning issues; consumer complaints against regulated utilities; and cases setting new policies for emerging competition in telecommunications and natural gas. As Chairman of the Commission, Bill had primary management responsibility for a Staff of over 200 personnel and served as the Commission's chief spokesperson in dealing with the Missouri General Assembly and the press.

Bill is also a former President of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). As an active participant in, and officer of, NARUC, he was involved in national policy debates affecting the electric, natural gas and telecommunications industries. He served on both the Executive and Electricity Committees of NARUC. He also served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI), the Advisory Council to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Acid Rain Advisory Committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Edision Electric Institute-NARUC Task Force on Electric Regulatory Issues, the Keystone Project on Emissions Allowance Trading and the Energy Subcommittee of the President's Commission on Environmental Quality.