Jeff Ono has been Hawaii’s state consumer advocate since January 2011, and so far seems to be enjoying it.

"Being in public service is exciting; it’s rewarding," Ono said Monday when interviewed about his work and some of the issues his office has been focused on recently — including, most prominently, the proposed merger-acquisition of Hawaiian Electric Industries by NextEra Energy of Florida.

Ono said he applied for the job after newly elected Gov. Neil Abercrombie "put out word in the private sector that he was looking for people from the private sector to come in and take roles in state government.

"So I answered the call," Ono said.

Executive director of the Division of Consumer Advocacy ever since, Ono previously had worked as an attorney in private practice — 15 years in insurance defense litigation and the last 15 years in plaintiffs’ personal injury litigation.

Now he looks after the interests of consumers who must deal with Hawaii’s legal monopolies and other highly regulated businesses — such as power generation, telecommunications, water, wastewater and transportation — whose activities fall mostly under the purview of the state Public Utilities Commission but also the Federal Communications Commission and other local and federal agencies.

Currently his division is part of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, but originally it was actually a part of the PUC.

Ono explained that "back in probably the late ’70s, the early ’80s, there was concern over whether the consumer advocate was really providing independent analysis," so the position was shifted from the PUC to the DCCA.

With an annual budget of "just under $3.9 million," the division these days has a staff of 18, including "accountants, attorneys, economists, research analysts, rate analysts and engineers — can’t the forget the engineers," Ono said.

Ono, 60, is a graduate of Kalani High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Hawaii and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He has a 22-year-old son and lives in the McCully-Moiliili district.

Question: What kind of regulatory teeth does your division actually have?

Answer: We’re not the decision-maker, but we certainly can influence the decisions that are made by the PUC.

Q: How can we be sure that the concerns you raise in various cases actually reflect what consumers care about?

A: Well, there’s certainly what I would want to think are universal principles that all consumers would support. Having reliable and safe utility service is certainly important. All consumers want to see their utility bills lowered. That’s one of our goals, to try to lower bills.

Q: Do you feel sometimes that you’re working within models that are maybe antiquated, and maybe you’re thinking inside the box all the time because that’s just the way things are?

A: No, I wouldn’t say that. Certainly we have certain constraints within what the regulatory laws and rules allow us to do.

Q: For example, I’m thinking of the NextEra deal. If NextEra hadn’t stepped up to the plate, do you think that the monopoly utility model involving both power generation and power distribution here might have been on the verge of ending? And that this deal could prolong that economic model, which might not be the best for consumers?

A: I don’t necessarily agree that taking the utility out of the generation of electricity is the right thing to do.

Q: What about taking out the grid and making that a separate company? Particularly in terms of the solar issue, … as people exit buying power from HECO, it still has grid costs, so that obviously is a separate function, … (and) some people … are thinking that perhaps the grid could be operated separately.

A: Well, one of the things that’s being suggested is that Hawaiian Electric should be out of the business of generating electricity. … The problem I have with that model for Hawaii is that independent power producers are not regulated. We don’t get to see what their profit margins are. So if we’re looking for transparency, I don’t think you necessarily get it by having independent power producers providing all of the electricity generation.

Q: But if they’re no longer a monopoly, … wouldn’t that remove the justification for government regulation?

A: If there was true competition, then there would be less need for regulation. I agree with that statement.

Q: Is the proposed NextEra acquisition of Hawaiian Electric the main topic on your plate right now?

A: It certainly is one.

Q: What are your main concerns about the proposal, pro or con?

A: I think it presents a potential opportunity for Hawaii and Hawaii consumers. NextEra brings with it a great deal of experience in renewable energy generation — solar and wind projects. … They’ve been very successful in converting Florida Power & Light from a largely oil-burning generation fleet to a natural gas-burning fleet. … (And) NextEra has a much better credit rating than Hawaiian Electric. So there are potential opportunities with this merger. We just need to make sure this is in the best interest of Hawaii’s consumers before we’re going to say "OK" and allow this to happen.

Q: What kind of benefits do you think the deal could provide, in particular? They (NextEra executives) seem to think that they have economies of scale; that they could buy 50 trucks at a better price than one truck, that kind of thing.

A: Right, and certainly that’s what they’re saying, that because of their size and their ability to buy equipment in bulk they can lower the costs to Hawaii consumers. And those are certainly benefits that we need to look at. One of the things that I’ve been saying is that NextEra needs to quantify those benefits.

Q: What are the drawbacks, then?

A: Well, for example, we lose local governance. It would be run by a mainland company. Secondly, NextEra brings with it a certain amount of risk. They do have better access to capital, but they come with a fleet of nuclear electricity generating units on the mainland. We want to make sure that Hawaii is isolated from the risk of their nuclear generation activities.

Q: What about the spinoff of American Savings Bank?

A: That’s not part of our concern. … Because the bank is going to be a complete spinoff, it will then exist as a separate legal entity apart from HEI. … But the Division of Financial Institutions in DCCA will certainly be looking at that.

Q: So besides NextEra, what other topics are at the top of your list right now?

A: Well, certainly all of the filings that were made by Hawaiian Electric last August — the power-supply improvement plan, the distributed-generation improvement plan, the integrated demand-response portfolio plan, and we’re involved in the ongoing decoupling reexamination.

Q: What does that involve?

A: The PUC asked to have the parties take another look at the decoupling mechanism that Hawaiian Electric uses in between rate cases.

Q: That’s kind of complicated. Do you think most consumers understand that?

A: No, they don’t.

Q: And how important is it to them?

A: It’s important because consumers need to understand that with revenue decoupling, when consumers put rooftop solar onto their homes, this does not erode the revenue of Hawaiian Electric. It reduces their sales, but because we have revenue decoupling, Hawaiian Electric’s revenue doesn’t go down. … What ends up happening is that those people who don’t have rooftop solar make up the difference.

A: So is that what the big argument is about among the rooftop solar owners versus regular customers?

A: That’s one of the concerns that I have as consumer advocate. … We want to give consumers the choice of self-generation or buying from the electric utility, (but) there are costs involved with that. … People who have rooftop solar are still utilizing the grid. They’re still connected to Hawaiian Electric’s system. And their PV (photovoltaic) systems aren’t producing energy after 6 p.m. to 9 p.m, which are the peak hours. They’re drawing energy from Hawaiian Electric.

Q: So you’re trying to come up with some fair way of dealing with this?

A: Yes, we need a fair way of dealing with this so that we minimize the cross subsidy from non-solar, PV customers to solar PV customers.

Q: Are you proposing something on how to deal with that, or do you kind of just comment on what is being proposed by others?

A: We’re going to analyze what is being proposed by Hawaiian Electric.

Q: I don’t want to focus too much on just the electrical thing, but it does seem to be the main topic for you guys these days. Is that right?

A: It is. But, you know, you’re correct. We do have to deal with all of the other regulated utilities.

Q: Do you think there’s enough competition in the interisland cargo field? I was a little shocked last year when Young Brothers … was (able to get a law passed that) pretty much ruled out Pasha Hawaii being in the business. Do you remember that?

Q: Yes, I’m well aware of it.

A: How did that happen?

Q: Well, I can understand why people think that having Pasha as a competitor is potentially good, but … the argument against doing something like this is that it basically cherrypicks one of the more profitable routes Young Brothers had — the roll-on, roll-off cargo between Honolulu and Kahului. Young Brothers, on the other hand, has to provide service to Molokai (and) Lanai, sometimes at a loss. … Pasha wasn’t being required to do any of that. Is that true competition? Is that fair to Young Brothers? I mean, it raises a lot of issues, and the Legislature decided that we’re going to put very stringent requirements on when we’re going to allow another water carrier to actually compete with Young Brothers.

Q: If the basis of the decision was that Young Brothers is required to provide service at a loss, then maybe that’s the issue that should be analyzed. … That’s one reason I was thinking that if you’re guided by public utility theory, that’s how you’re going to approach all these problems — and sometimes that just sort of delays better ways of doing things. Has that ever come up?

A: That’s part of the discussion we have with the electric utility: Is our regulatory framework falling behind technology?

Q: Yes, exactly, like the taxis and these new ride-sharing apps.

A: Uber and Lyft?

Q: Yeah. … You’re involved in some of those discussions, I bet.

A: To some extent. … Taxis are clearly the city. (But) my feeling is that Uber and Lyft ought to be under the PUC. Their argument is they don’t provide transportation services; they’re a network service provider.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add about what your division is doing?

A: You know, we’re doing the best we can to move Hawaii … toward greater sustainability in energy. We want to get off our dependence on foreign oil. We want to have greater amounts of renewable energy. I agree with all of those things. But one of our big concerns is the cost that is going to be put on consumers.

Q: We’ve benefited from lower fuel prices; do you think that will continue?

A: I think the costs for all of the technologies are going down. Solar panel costs have come way down. Same with wind turbines. … Battery costs — right now they’re high, but they’re going to come down.

Q: So you think consumers have a lot of good news to look forward to, perhaps, regardless of what happens with Hawaiian Electric and NextEra?

A: I think the future is very promising. … I think we’re on the verge of certain technological breakthroughs that are going to change the energy landscape.

Q: Do you think the interisland cable is a dead idea?

A: It’s a dead idea in the sense that Hawaiian Electric did not include it as part of its preferred plan in the power-supply improvement plan.

Q: Is that fine with you?

A: As long as they can justify why that’s the case, I’m fine with that. In terms of our energy future, I don’t think we can take anything off the table, including an undersea cable.

One last thing, because we’ve been talking so much about electricity:

To all of these other utilities that we have to deal with — their rate cases, what they’re proposing before the Public Utilities Commission — it’s important to them, and they don’t care that we’re busy with dealing with the NextEra merger application or some of these other electricity dockets. They expect their applications to be processed in the same way we process everything — you know the electricity dockets — and we have to get to it. That’s all there is to it.

Q: Do you think the PUC is understaffed?

A: Both the consumer advocate and the PUC are understaffed.

Q: That’s one of the problems of government, isn’t it? Everyone thinks they’re dragging their feet, but sometimes it’s not that simple. Right?

A: It’s not that simple, and, you know, we do the best we can. I really don’t like to make excuses about how many people we have or our budget, but we do the best we can.