All five DPUC commissioners are out June 30, two keep travel plans

All five DPUC members will lose their job June 30.

The law merging the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Public Utility Control terminates all five DPUC commissioners on June 30.

The terms of three commissioners – Chairman Kevin DelGobbo, Anthony Palermino and Amalia Bzdyra – were already set to expire June 30.

Under the law, which creates the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection or DEEP, Vice Chairman John Betkoski and Commissioner Anna Ficeto also lose their jobs.

Betkoski was scheduled to serve until June 30, 2013, and Ficeto until June 30, 2014.

As the top officials of DPUC, DelGobbo and Betkoski are traveling to the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners Symposium in Bretton Woods, N.H., from June 19 to 22.

Betkoski just returned from a two-day National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners event in Washington, D.C., and will attend another NARUC event in Baltimore immediately after his trip to New Hampshire.

DPUC spokesman Phil Dukes said NARUC will pay Betkoski’s travel expenses for both of its events.

“The Chairman and Vice-Chairman will be attending these functions,” Dukes said. “They are obligated to carry out their responsibilities as commissioners until their last days in office. The work of the agency and its Commissioners will continue from the date of passage through the transition as it must.”

“The participation and engagement of Connecticut at these national and regional forums is a vital part of the agency’s responsibility,” he said.

Within DEEP there will be a Public Utilties Regulatory Authority that will take the place of the DPUC. PURA will have three members, called directors.