Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said Monday he has chosen former Utahn Michele Beck to fill the post that was vacated in April when then director Leslie Reberg resigned to run for the office of Salt Lake County recorder.

Beck's professional background includes five years working as a consumer advocate for the Minnesota Department of Commerce and five years working as a rate-regulation analyst at an electric cooperative. She is employed as a resource-planning analyst for an investor-owned utility in Minnesota.

"Michele just wowed everyone with her qualifications," said Francine Giani, director of the Utah Department of Commerce. Giani served as chairman of the committee appointed to find a replacement for Reberg.

Beck left Utah 13 years ago to pursue graduate studies in applied economics at the University of Minnesota.

"I really only thought that I'd be gone from Utah a couple of years, but after I got a job [in Minnesota], I just ended up staying," Beck said. "I'm excited about the possibility of returning to the state."

She said from what she has read about Utah's utilities "there's certainly the opportunity there for a consumer advocate to make a difference."

Beck's name will be sent to the six-member Committee of Consumer Services, which has the final say on whether she will be hired. It is unclear when the committee will consider the matter. It meets next on Nov. 14.

She already has at least one supporter on the committee.

Chairman Dee Jay Hammon, who also served on the selection panel, in mid-October indicated that Beck and one other candidate received unanimous support from the group charged by the governor with narrowing the field of potential nominees.

"I look forward to bringing Michele's name before the Committee of Consumer Services," Hammon said in a statement announcing Beck's selection.

The committee, founded in 1977, represents the interests of the state's consumers and small business owners in utility rate cases.

Beck's nomination isn't expected to spark the same controversy that followed the governor's selection in early 2005 of Reberg, a former US West lobbyist.

Her confirmation by a 4-2 vote followed weeks of controversy that began earlier that year when Huntsman abruptly fired the utility watchdog organization's longtime director, Roger Ball. The governor's move came after he received a report from his transition team that Ball fought too aggressively to keep utility rates low for the state's consumers.

Utah consumer advocate Claire Geddes, a member of the selection committee who a year earlier had fought to oppose Reberg's nomination, agrees Beck had the best résumé of all the candidates.

"Still, it is always a little nerve-racking, because you can never really know how effective someone will be before they have been on the job," she said. "And we really need someone in that post who can stand up to the utilities and the political pressure that goes along with it."

steve@sltrib.com