Utahns pay utility companies more than $2.5 billion a year. Utilities spend about $10.5 million of that to get themselves the best deals when the Public Service Commission is deciding rates. Large industrial and commercial customers hire expensive lawyers and experts to do the same for them. The Utah Committee of Consumer Services gets about $1.5 million to look out for the 96 percent of customers who use smaller amounts - about one-third - of utility services.

The real insult - the real harm in Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. firing me as the committee's director - is to those who elected him, those he purports to serve: the 2,250-plus ranchers and farmers, the 60,000-plus small business owners and the 650,000-plus families the committee represents.

The Legislature created the Committee of Consumer Services in 1977 to:

Assess the impact of utility rate changes and other regulatory actions on small business, farming, ranching and residential consumers;

Be an advocate on its own behalf and in its own name, of positions most advantageous to those consumers as it determines; and

Bring original actions in its own name before the commission or appellate courts.

The attorney general is to assign at least one attorney to represent the committee at all hearings and to prosecute all actions which the committee deems necessary to enforce the rights of those consumers. While the governor has considerable discretion to determine how most executive branch agencies function, that isn't the case with the committee. Utah law clearly states that it decides what it will do and how, not the governor. The governor can't fire the president of Questar or US Magnesium, and he lacks legal authority to fire the director of the committee on his own. He can't impose his choice of chief executive on PacifCorp or Kennecott, and he can't make the committee accept his nominee for its director.

This degree of independence has been anathema to successive governors. They are lobbied intensively by - and often receive significant campaign contributions from - utilities and their largest customers.

So the committee is inadequately resourced, there are frequent attempts to reduce its budget further and to interfere with its independence, for example by arbitrarily firing its director.

Utah statutes provide that most officers appointed by the governor serve at his pleasure. The one regarding the committee's director is different - it is silent in that respect.

Nevertheless, when Gov. Mike Leavitt first took office 12 years ago, the director of the committee was fired.

In 1993, Section 54-10-5 of the Utah Code read: "The Department of Business Regulation, with the advise (sic) and consent of the Committee of Consumer Services, may employ a qualified person in the field of public utilities who may carry out the policies and directives of the Committee of Consumer Services."

Public outcry caused the 1995 Legislature to change it to: "The governor shall appoint, with the concurrence of the Committee of Consumer Services, a qualified person . . . "

The Legislature not only discarded "advise and consent . . . ," but considered and rejected "in consultation with . . . " before adopting "concurrence."

In Utah law, words mean what they say. "Concurrence" means agreement in opinion or judgment, a meeting of minds, a state of cooperation, a coincidence of equal powers in law. Subsequently, this position has been vacant only once before, in 1997 when Leavitt agreed on a selection process with the committee.

The position was advertised and three applicants, all with extensive utility experience, were short-listed by a panel of three committee members and three governor's nominees.

These candidates were then interviewed by the governor's chief of staff, and finally by the governor himself, who selected me for the job. After I was introduced to the full committee in closed session, it voted in open session to concur with the governor's choice, before his office announced my appointment publicly. Huntsman's transition team knew all about this process, because I explained it to them.

Still I was fired, and a new interim director was announced. No attempt was made to warn the committee, much less to seek its concurrence in what was about to happen, although the governor had consulted the attorney general on two or three occasions over the previous six or seven weeks.

While The Tribune rightly concluded that "Respect must be paid," it is to Utah's more than 700,000 small utility customers that the governor must pay it, because they still need the committee to be an independent advocate for their interests only.

He needs to do more than appear before an open meeting to back his nominee. If he truly believes Utah's citizens are his customers, he will apologize to them for attacking their interests, and he will commit to strengthen the committee's future independence and resources.

The small business, farming, ranching and residential utility consumers of Utah should demand no less of him.

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Roger Ball was appointed to serve as Utah's residential and small commercial utility consumer representative by Gov. Mike Leavitt on May 5,1997. He was fired by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. on March 9, 2005.