A Matter of Exquisite Balance In a world where the only constant is change, the State Corporation Commission is the keeper of economic balance in Virginia. A judgeship is open, and I would like to fill it.   Chief Executive magazine recently ranked Virginia as the fourth best state in the nation in which to do business. Also, our state government is frequently judged the best managed state in America.   This is no accident.   If good business is the goose that lays the golden egg of our economy in Virginia — and it is — fair, reasonable, and balanced government is the gander that makes it possible.   It is a matter of exquisite balance.   For more than a hundred years, the keeper of this balance in Virginia has been the State Corporation Commission (SCC).   The SCC is governed by three judges appointed by the legislature. Judge Ted Morrison retired at the end of December. I am a candidate to fill his seat.   I am not a lawyer. I do not have a law degree. My degree is in business, an MBA from Duke, and my worldview is shaped by those influences that shape most worldviews — my background, my experience, the way I was raised, by insatiable curiosity, and by the things I read — and I read compulsively and eclectically.   But perhaps more than anything, my worldview is shaped by my consumption. I am a consumer. We all are. I want the lights to come on when I hit the switch. I want my insurance company to pay my claims. I want my phones to work. I want my bank to stay solvent and take care of my money.   We take these things for granted. They are such givens we don’t think about them, but underlying every one of these simple events are vast complexities, staggering costs, huge risks and assumptions, and planning timelines that run, in some cases, 50, 60, 70 years.   The future will stun and dazzle us — and raise new issues to vex us. God knows what the technology will be — I have no idea — I can’t believe what we’re using now.   I do know this — actually two things: The horizon that used to be our future is waiting new on our doorstep every morning, and the relationship between consumer and provider will always be one of mutual dependence.   “Fair and reasonable” is a concept that is hard to define precisely — one of those things where if you know what I mean, I don’t have to explain it — and if you don’t know — I can’t.  I think most of us recognize fair and reasonable when we see it.   The marketplace playing field is never dead level — it hasn’t been since God closed Eden to apple vendors — and in my opinion cannot be made so.  There is some bias, advantage, constraint, handicap, natural or imposed, attendant to every market on Earth that I know of.   The best we can do when it comes to regulating our businesses, our institutions, and our markets is — to the best of our abilities — be, in every instance, fair and reasonable.   When I was a kid first out of college, I thought in black and white.  Now I think in shades of gray.  I think age and intellectual maturity does that. I have learned that most issues have — not just two sides — but more like forty — and that diversity and difference in thinking and opinion are not weaknesses, but strengths.   It is no accident that the stones in a concrete mix are all different shapes and sizes.  It makes the mix infinitely stronger. The SCC will be strengthened by making different background, different perspective, different mindset, different experience, a part of it.  Diversity is a strength in all things — especially diversity in thinking.   Compromise, the ability to find and focus on commonalities instead of differences, is a strength too.  It is an art form, I think, that comes with time, experience, and the accumulation of judgment.  Real “wins” occur when all parties have voice and ownership.   Assumptions need to be re-examined from time to time. When the only rationale for doing something a certain way becomes “that’s the way we’ve always done it” it’s probably time to at least take another look.   I know the SCC is no place for partisanship.  We have a long and honorable tradition of putting partisanship aside where the SCC is concerned. I know, too, that it is no place for conflicts of interests.  I have never represented anyone in front of the SCC — no cause, no case, no person, no company.  I have no conflicts — of interests or conscience.   This SCC appointment is anchored in our constitution and rooted in our history, but is really is not about the past.  It is about the future.  The world is changing at warp speed.  Capital markets are global — and hyper-competitive.  Information moves around the planet in real time.  Decisions made in places we can’t find on a map affect us instantly.   The certainty we face is uncertainty — and ever-increasing complexities.  The challenges we face are not interim in nature.  They are complicated, they are long-term, and they’re not going away.   It has taken me most of my life, but I believe that I have acquired the balance, and the contemplative judgment requisite to addressing these challenges.  For 19 years, Judge Morrison put the people of Virginia first at the SCC.  In doing so, he set a worthy and lasting example.   -- January 28, 2007