Public Utility Commission--Nobody Home?

We called the public information officer for the Oregon Public Utility Commission this morning to do a bit of reporting on Pacific Power's desire to increase our electricity rates by more than 14 percent.

The PUC is the Oregon agency in charge of regulating utilities and so we called to speak to that agency's chief flack, Bob Valdez. We dialed his number and got a tape recording that said he would be out of the office until July 15. But the recording encouraged us to call another number at that agency, 503 378-6678.

When we dialed that number, we received a recording telling us that the PUC is closed — this at 9:30 am on a Tuesday. We hate to provide ammo to the government bashers. But is this any way to run a state agency?