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Discover how Tri-State and our members are embracing the opportunity to power the West in our new podcast, Western Watts!
We'll dive into the heart of energy issues, from reliability to wildfire mitigation, and share firsthand insights relevant to rural, agricultural and mountain communities across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
Speaker 1: 00:00
This podcast may contain certain forward looking statements concerning Tri-State's plans, performance, and strategies. Actual results may differ materially because of numerous factors, and Tri-State undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements. We urge you to review Tri-State's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these factors.
Lauren Vernon: 00:13
It's just this really beautiful world of really incredibly kind people who care about their community, who care about democracy, who care about education.
Melissa Swinehart: 00:23
Welcome back to Western Watts. I'm your host, Melissa Swinehart. Today, we're gonna be doing a roundtable session with our Government Relations team. They're gonna dive into what happened this past legislative session and what their day to day looks like and how that impacts you as our cooperative members and the communities we serve. With that, I'll turn it over to Evan.
Evan Jurkovich: 00:42
I'm Evan Jerkovich. I'm the Vice President of Government Relations at sure many of the guests on this podcast say this, but I have the pleasure of the best team at Tri-State. I would argue the most fun. I get the joy of overseeing our state folks, our State Government Relations folks, that's our state lobbyists in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nebraska, along with our federal engagement with Congress and the administration. And then also our external folks doing some of our community facing work.
Evan Jurkovich: 01:14
And then along with the newer addition, I think, to the team, the external funding team, which has really been targeted around looking at funding opportunities at mostly the federal and state level, but having some of these opportunities come back to Tri-State and our member systems. So I have the best team. I'm going to get to share that with you all, with my colleagues here, and I'll give it to Lauren for an introduction then.
Lauren Vernon: 01:36
Hey, I'm Lauren Vernon, a Government Relations Advisor for New Mexico. And I always describe my job as just getting to hang out with really interesting people who are really powerful and trying to help make sure that they understand about what coops do.
Shelby, I'll pass it over to you.
Shelby Piper: 01:55
I'm Shelby Piper. I'm an energy policy analyst at Tri-State. I do work mainly on the federal side. While statesides have specific legislative sessions, it just continues year round until about Christmas time and the occasional congressional recess that happens as well. So, yeah, I'll pass it off to Leslie.
Leslie Cannon: 02:15
Hi, everybody. Leslie Cannon. I'm the senior government relations adviser at Tri-State. So I'm the lobbyist for the state of Colorado. And really, in brief, I think the biggest part of our job as government relations advisers is to educate the public and educate the legislators on the issues with which they're probably not very familiar.
Leslie Cannon: 02:32
Because out of a 100 legislators in the state of Colorado, very few know the world of energy. We have people coming from teaching backgrounds, from farming backgrounds, all kinds of different arenas. So it's really important to get to educate these people before they go to vote on a bill that could affect us.
Evan Jurkovich: 02:50
When people ask me, what do I do? I usually say I I work with government relations because lobbyists can have such a negative connotation. And we have the movie, thank you for smoking, for I think that stereotype of what we do as lobbyists. But
Leslie Cannon: 03:02
So good, though.
Evan Jurkovich: 03:03
Yeah. Very good movie. If you haven't, there's an inside look at what we don't do. So feel free to tune in. What I think of as lobbyists and what I hate this negative connotation because certainly when I worked on Capitol Hill and was a staffer, I really leaned on lobbyists, government relations people, to learn.
Evan Jurkovich: 03:22
As a policymaker, you're often an inch deep and a mile wide on subjects. And so you do need those people to call up and get to understand an issue. Who's on the ground? Whose members are on the ground? How do you really learn what a policy decision you're making?
Evan Jurkovich: 03:38
And lobbyists are those educators. So maybe we'll just flip educators here as we talk about this. But I think that's a huge part of our job, which is to educate policymakers on the impacts of the policy they're gonna pass. And obviously we take that with Tri-State's Tri-State first mentality of how we explain that and how we explain those benefits to our cooperative and our cooperative membership. But I just think it's a really unique way because that lobby really has such that negative connotation with it.
Evan Jurkovich: 04:07
How do we talk about what we do? And I just always go back to, I always had, as a congressional staffer, the handful of people that I could really rely on. And that's what I look at as my goal to do when I'm interacting with staff, is I need to build that relationship so that on that first phone call they pick up when they have a question about electricity or energy or co ops, I want to be that person for them. And it's really that education aspect for that. And Lauren, you came from Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and now you're on the state side.
Evan Jurkovich: 04:38
What have you seen as being a staffer now on the other side of that table as well?
Lauren Vernon: 04:43
I remember in my interview with you, you asked me what lobbyists I really liked and what I wanted to emulate as a lobbyist. And first of all, the co ops were always one of my favorite meetings because they're just such nice people and they were always, they just had great stories about what life was like and they really brought it home. But the lobbyists that I really loved were the people who I could call at any time of the day and ask a question and they would get an answer for me. It's been interesting to see it from the other side. I think the educator framing works really well with what we do, but I also, I actually see it more as a translator.
Lauren Vernon: 05:22
So we take this world in which the policymakers are so steeped in and they understand the power dynamics and what can and can't pass. And we also take the world of utilities where they understand ultimately how to get power to to our communities, and we help fill that gap and bring those two worlds together. And I really enjoy being a translator there.
Evan Jurkovich: 05:47
Yeah. I've talked about it as being a bridge sometimes too. Right? You've got this sometimes highly technical world, and you're trying to talk to policymakers where you really try to figure out, okay, what one zero one level course do I need to give this policymaker on this issue, and how do I get them to understand this? And so a translator or bridge from this technical side to the policy side is like how I've thought about it too.
Evan Jurkovich: 06:12
Leslie, you've now been a lobbyist for a while.
Leslie Cannon: 06:15
Over a decade.
Evan Jurkovich: 06:16
Over a decade. As you're a lobbyist, how do you go into each day thinking about interacting with policymakers and the kind of the job we have at hand of talking about Tri-State and co ops?
Leslie Cannon: 06:25
To your previous point, I also hate the reputation that lobbyists get because I can't tell you how many times people just assume that my job is martinis and cigars and playing golf. And a, cigars are gross. And b, I can't golf because I don't have any depth perception because I'm cross eyed. So just none of those things work for me, and it's really my method is getting involved on a personal level at whatever opportunities I have with legislators. I wanna know about their families.
Leslie Cannon: 06:48
As we are down at the Capitol, we are the faces of our organization, so we represent Tri-State. We are the reputation of Tri-State. And so I always go into these conversations with legislators trying to explain to them the co op model, give them a little bit of the background on Tri-State and on our members and how it works, about the challenges that we've seen in the past and the things that we're expecting in the future. And I'm always there for questions. Legislators have my work phone number and my personal phone number because I've been doing this for a long time, so they don't all know me just from Tri-State.
Leslie Cannon: 07:17
And I think it's just an amazing thing to have that relationship because when it works, and it really does, you can talk to a legislator who doesn't know anything about the issue and say, this is what your constituents are gonna think. This is how they'll want you to vote. This is who's gonna be opposed to it. And I can tell you, if you vote in my favor or my amendment, you're not gonna be disappointing anyone. And there have been multiple times in the past where they didn't know the issue, and they could take me on my word, and they can trust that.
Leslie Cannon: 07:43
And I think the most important thing to build with those relationships is trust by always being honest, being completely okay with saying you don't know if you don't know, and getting them the answer whenever you can. There are a lot of times with what we do that I am sitting in committee meetings sometimes for six to ten hours listening to hundreds of people testify. And I'll have legislators up on the committees texting me going, is what she said true? And can you please give me a question to counter that? And I'll have a legislator ask that witness the question that I gave them.
Leslie Cannon: 08:13
And those are just the things that come about when you approach this from the relationship perspective. And just knowing a lot of lobbyists are bigger than their britches, but I don't know a lot. And I have to come in and ask my subject matter experts very often. So it's understandable that legislators also would need those questions to be answered.
Evan Jurkovich: 08:30
But a real skill is being able to hold a cocktail and an hors d'oeuvre in the same hand so that you are able to shake hands with the other one to people who still come up. That is a real
Lauren Vernon: 08:39
It's a balancing act Yeah. Of a true
Evan Jurkovich: 08:42
Receptions are places we interact with lawmakers or policymakers fairly often. And I will tell you, there aren't a lot of those that don't feel like work stuff to me. You're on. You're trying to say the right things. You're trying to stick to your talking points.
Evan Jurkovich: 08:54
You're trying to know who you're talking to and know all of their pet issues and stances on things as you communicate yours to them to make sure you're saying the right thing and jiving with the right audience. So I always feel like I have to be more on sometimes in reception environments of who's around you, who's saying what, how do you communicate your message. But they are great opportunities to get a lot of face time with people that I don't think we otherwise get. Shelby, you're newer to the political space probably than all of us, but you interact with our congressional staff and members a lot too. But at the federal level, we get a lot of staff, right?
Evan Jurkovich: 09:30
Sometimes the members of Congress aren't quite as accessible. But tell me about the interactions with staff. I know they often carry a lot of the good momentum with bosses in conversations and things like that, and you have a lot of those. What are you learning, or how do you approach those conversations?
Shelby Piper: 09:44
Yeah. It's been a little over four and a half years now, so slowly making way in my time. But the staff are interesting because you get some staff that really know what they're talking about. Very in-depth. They've been there for a long time.
Shelby Piper: 09:57
They understand energy really well. They know what a co op is. And then you get the other side of things, which is staff who don't know what a co op is, maybe don't know very much about energy. There's some folks who are way newer. And so it just depends.
Shelby Piper: 10:11
Offices will have a couple folks sometimes working on energy. Others will just have one. Some people don't have one single person dedicated to energy as a topic. And like you mentioned earlier, a lot of these staff are spread very thin in terms of they cover a lot of topics. You'll have energy, but they'll also be covering health care.
Shelby Piper: 10:30
And so when you get somebody who's not quite as experienced in the energy field or doesn't know about co ops, It's just back to that education piece. And we're always educating folks, especially in DC. And if we've seen them or had a conversation with them once before, we always assume we're always going over what is a co op again at the top of the meeting because, again, they just they have a lot of meetings. They might not remember your face. You get to the point where you have met with someone long enough that they do remember your face.
Shelby Piper: 10:58
And I think that's that trust building and being that call or text for people. But it's also getting to that point, telling them who Tri-State is, what we do, who we serve. And just going off of the point that Leslie mentioned earlier too, knowing when we can provide information or knowing when we need to go to our subject matter experts to provide more detail. We lean very heavily on our subject matter experts, and that's where we get a lot of our knowledge from to pass on to staff and their bosses. We do have a lot of staff that we interact with, and they carry a lot of strength in the offices by themselves and do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Shelby Piper: 11:35
So that's really a lot of relationship building. And then one more thing I was just gonna add is I think it really is impactful going to DC because we're not in the state. And folks aren't necessarily seeing co op members every single day. And so when we do make those trips out there, it's so important and key for our members to be joining us and to see those folks in our boots on
Lauren Vernon: 11:57
the ground with their cowboy hats showing up in meetings to make
Shelby Piper: 12:00
those points. And so just having that representation, I think, especially in DC, is really important. Just being further away.
Evan Jurkovich: 12:08
I think from like the members' perspective, they are our currency. You know, lot of the government relations lobbying work we get to do. We just did year two of it, but we brought a group of our members, both member managers and board members out to Washington DC to meet with our congressional delegation, administration folks, and having them in the room and talk about some of the issues feels like it gives us the license to go back. And to hear from Shelby and me enough, but that reminder of who we worked for each time is having them come up and show up. And we're co ops.
Evan Jurkovich: 12:44
They're hard to miss. They show up in the cowboy boots and the cowboy hats, and you know who's in your office, and you know what their issues are. But that's a translation we get. And it's nice because at the end of the day, we are their voices in these rooms. We are these voices with policymakers.
Evan Jurkovich: 12:59
And it's interesting because I think we do that education every time where, Shelby, it must be 90% of the meetings we do. We reintroduce people to co ops. I'm gonna beat the steam to you. That we are a not for profit. That other people would not serve these areas if it wasn't for us, that people at the end of the line pay every single bill.
Evan Jurkovich: 13:20
But it's like such an important part of the story. And again, that's currency for us as we do our work and make people care about the issues we're talking about. Lauren, we've got a good active New Mexican membership. Our members. Do you bring relationships with our board members, our managers down there?
Evan Jurkovich: 13:38
What is that to for you at the Roundhouse as you go talk to legislators, policymakers?
Lauren Vernon: 13:43
Are you asking what is it to have kind of that army of CEOs and managers behind?
Evan Jurkovich: 13:47
Yeah. And just knowing you get to go and represent the co ops at the Capitol.
Lauren Vernon: 13:51
Oh, I love it. I don't think that there are a lot of companies or organizations that I could lobby for. There's always, if you leave Capitol Hill, people are like, Oh God, you're going in lobbying. Oh, that's the worst. And it is so fun to be able to go to legislators and be able to talk about us being not for profits, talk about us being community driven.
Lauren Vernon: 14:13
I really identify a lot with the values of co ops and it makes it this very easy story to sell legislators. It sells itself because it's just this really beautiful world of really incredibly kind people who care about their community, who care about democracy, who care about education, who care about inclusivity. And no matter what party the legislator is, you can bring those values to them, and you can bring those people to them. And it makes it a very easy job.
Evan Jurkovich: 14:44
Leslie, you in Colorado, we've met at the capital, Leslie from the co ops, and then you're surrounded by lobbyists from the Fortune 500 side of the lobbyists, the all the for profit organizations, and then there's Leslie with Tri-State. What does that do for you inside the Capitol?
Leslie Cannon: 14:59
It's actually really fun, and it helps me to speak to the issues in a way that the other lobbyists can't. A legislator will look around the room and see a lot of corporate lobbyists in the room. Some utilities have upwards of 11 lobbyists, and then Tri-State has me. And so I think that a lot of them really appreciate that different perspective. They also appreciate that there's a big difference in the manpower and the money behind what we're doing versus what the other utilities are doing, and they find that valuable too.
Leslie Cannon: 15:27
They do see the parts of the state that we serve. And Coloradans love Colorado. You're If from Boulder, you still love Southern Colorado. It pulls on the heartstrings a little bit when they see the one Tri-State lobbyist and all these other lobbyists, and they're really interesting. Well, they're more powerful
Evan Jurkovich: 15:43
than what we are here. How to
Lauren Vernon: 15:45
be sad. Small vote by me. Small vote by me.
Leslie Cannon: 15:48
So it is actually a pun. There have been times when I've been standing outside of the Senate at midnight or 01:00 in the morning waiting for a bill, and I'll just turn on my camera and count the number of lobbyists for certain IOUs. Then you can't leave until they're gone because you know that there is something happening if you leave. But it's just it's really fun, honestly. It's an ego boost because we accomplish a lot here.
Leslie Cannon: 16:08
And it's so much to do with our leadership and with our subject matter experts the people that are guiding me and helping me do my job at Capital. It's really fun to be effective and to actually have so many of those individual relationships that help me to do that.
Evan Jurkovich: 16:20
Leslie and Lauren, so different at the state level, and this is something I'm still learning. Shelby and I, when we need something policymakers, we work through staff. If I was gonna go try to grab a member of Congress as they're coming off the floor, I'm gonna be pinned down and handcuffed within a matter of seconds. But that's very different than you all at the state level. You get a lot of real interaction with state representatives, state senators.
Evan Jurkovich: 16:45
Talk to me about how that's different and that role that you guys play, Leslie.
Leslie Cannon: 16:49
A lot of the initial interactions I get are with different political action committees. So I interview candidates before they're elected and decide with different organizations whether or not we're going to endorse them. And once we move on with an endorsement, I will then actually go walk doors with the candidates themselves. I don't know how this works at a bigger level. Right?
Leslie Cannon: 17:06
But in the state of Colorado, I'll drive a few hours and knock a door with the person who's probably going to be elected. And then they know that you're in their corner, you're doing the work, you're not just saying that you are willing to endorse them and signing a check. That's not the best way to get their interaction and to have their ear when it comes time. And I was surprised because I guess federalists are different. I don't deal with the legislative aides here, really.
Leslie Cannon: 17:30
They
Evan Jurkovich: 17:30
Yeah. If you're negotiating a bill, you're negotiating with the representative or senator. Right?
Leslie Cannon: 17:35
If that's dealing with an aide, somebody doesn't like me, and I've messed up.
Shelby Piper: 17:38
Right? So I need to make sure to actually get in the room with
Leslie Cannon: 17:41
the person who's going to be casting the vote. So it's very different, but I don't know about your perspective.
Lauren Vernon: 17:46
Yeah. So learning that I can work with the representatives and the senators themselves has actually made a big learning curve for me. I'm very used to coming from the federal background, where if you go and talk with someone's boss directly, you will get fired immediately. You can't just walk up to a US senator and be like, I have this bill for you. They may think that you're a crazy person and scary.
Lauren Vernon: 18:09
Whereas on the state level, you go out to breakfast with the bill sponsor or some legislator, and you actually do strategy together. And it's a much more collaborative environment. And you can have the legislators themselves have a lot more power and a lot more ability to get things done individually. Whereas on the federal level, they have to coordinate with so many people and leadership that it is really hard for any one legislator to make a big difference on the federal level. On the state level, one legislator can make a world of difference.
Leslie Cannon: 18:46
I think one other thing that I've noticed working for Tri-State specifically, because I used to do contract lobbying, so I would do all kinds of issues, mile wide, inch deep. But there is such a fondness for Tri-State itself that very often, even if I don't have the relationship with that legislator yet, they find out that I work for Tri-State, they tell me about what's going on in their service area, and they suddenly just want to know what they could do to help me because they love their members. It's just such a cool thing. We have had legislators say, no. I'm holding up that bill until Tri-State is in a good place.
Leslie Cannon: 19:18
And it's because of Tri-State, sometimes my relationships too, but very also because of Tri-State. And I think that's just an amazing thing to be able to say that people really care about organization that I work for, that we all work for, more of a business and donation kind of a way.
Lauren Vernon: 19:32
The number of legislators who say, Oh, you work for co ops and love my co op? I have yet to hear that about us, the single investor owned utility.
Evan Jurkovich: 19:41
You do have to share this, though. There was a story, Wesley, that you shared the call times with me, but just things happen at a different pace at the state. I mean, one, it's so foreign to me. You pass notes into legislatures to me. But you had one story where there was a meeting on one side of the chamber.
Evan Jurkovich: 20:01
Little to your knowledge at the time, it was a cover for another meeting that was happening at the other end. Tell that story because it was like, this is the pace that things can happen at the state and just speaks to, like, how fast you and Laura and then our state folks have to be on top of it.
Leslie Cannon: 20:15
So for instance, this last session, we were monitoring and I think about 30 bills and actively working on a huge majority of those bills. So, if there are 12 bills that are alive at this current moment, four of them could be in three different committees in one day. And so oftentimes you're sitting in one committee room and listening to another committee room in one ear and listening to another committee room in another ear, and then sometimes your boss has to listen to another committee for you. So I was in a meeting about, I believe it was a clean energy plan targets bill that we were opposed to. This is, I don't know, four years ago.
Leslie Cannon: 20:48
And we had some serious problems with that bill, and I was sitting in a stakeholder meeting with the environmental organizations. And at one point, my boss was listening because I had my ears full. And she said, I'm listening in the committee, and it looks like they're trying to sneak this bill onto another bill. And so I stood up, I told the whole room what was going on. And we ran over to the other committee, and they were doing exactly that, taking the language of our bill and trying to put something like a 72 page amendment into another committee while they had our heads turned in the other directions.
Leslie Cannon: 21:18
I mean, it can be incredibly complicated, and you really cannot drop the ball on one single issue. Because if you miss that meeting, then that bill just got passed, and you didn't have anything to do to stop it. So that's just how quickly things can move. Stuff like that happens pretty frequently, not on that level, but you just have to have your eyes and ears open. It's part of the reason that I really enjoy being present at the Capitol because I can't tell you how many times somebody has snuck an amendment to me because I'm in the room and they could pass me a piece of paper that nobody would be willing to email me.
Leslie Cannon: 21:49
And that amendment has often been very bad for Tri-State, and I've been in the building and in a situation where I can get it fixed before it gets adopted onto the bill. So things happen very quickly. Things can be on a calendar for Wednesday, and then suddenly they're doing it at 07:00 on a Saturday night when you thought you were gonna go out on a date. But it's a busy time of year, and it's incredibly fun and lots of brain work and relationships, but I love it. I think we all love it.
Evan Jurkovich: 22:12
And even Leslie, even speaking to Vivi at the Capitol, I think for every reception and cocktail you have during your job, That also is at least one to three days you've been at the Capitol till 10PM as well. And that schedule is a lot. We're always on it. Lauren, Leslie, talk to me about what sessions like just from a day to day. I wake up Lauren, not sure what the day is gonna bring, not sure when it's gonna end.
Lauren Vernon: 22:37
So every morning, I wake up, and the first thing I do is I check the New Mexico State Legislature website and check and see what's gonna be on tap for the day. And usually by 10AM, it's totally different than what it said that morning. You never quite know. I will say, I have a almost two year old and we actually had family come down for the entirety of session because we knew it was just going be such long days. So I'm forever grateful that I have such a strong village that we could have these very early mornings, go to breakfast, the board session starts, you go to all of the committee hearings, they're late at receptions, watching votes.
Lauren Vernon: 23:18
And it made life a lot better that I had some folks who could help out with a very long face.
Evan Jurkovich: 23:24
And you still have other day job things to do. True. Right? You can't Yeah. Just emails to respond to, budget or expenses, dental stuff, all that has to get smashed into this day or week or however you would add it to.
Evan Jurkovich: 23:36
So we do have a it's a big effort. It's I hope it doesn't go unnoticed, the effort that and time that our lobbyists put in. So yours is the longest session. So basically, every December, you start your month long meditation with the kind of session way to, like, mentally prepare.
Leslie Cannon: 23:56
I'll get into it,
Lauren Vernon: 23:57
but I don't
Leslie Cannon: 23:57
want anybody feeling bad for me because I love it. My favorite time of year is Christmas and then session. So I just I wake up every morning. Ours is a hundred and twenty days, but that means weekends too. So similarly, I wake up and I look at the calendar, but you cannot trust the calendar because of politics.
Leslie Cannon: 24:13
So if there's a bill on the calendar and the legislators that are running it aren't prepared or have not properly done the state holding that they need to do, they will ask for that to be moved, and then something else could be moved in instead that you're also working on. So like I said, it's just you're constantly juggling, and you've gotta keep your eyes and ears open at all times. And then, yes, occasionally, is the cocktail hour where you go and you paste a smile on your face because if I wanted to be there, I wouldn't be getting paid to be there.
Lauren Vernon: 24:39
So
Evan Jurkovich: 24:40
But maybe some of a few orders served this dinner for you to hold you over till 10PM.
Leslie Cannon: 24:44
There are people definitely getting some foodborne in Elizabeth Capital because they're eating stuff that was left over. There are times we can't even leave for lunch, and we order food in from whatever's around the corner. And but there's also a lot of sitting around waiting because it's not action a 100% of the time. There have been times I've been waiting in a chair for five hours for one certain bill to come up. And the best thing about those times is that a lot of the legislators are bored too.
Leslie Cannon: 25:08
So it's like shooting fish in a barrel. They want to come and talk to you. They wanna know what you're working on. They wanna know what you're thinking of for next year. They are interested in coming out and, really, they need some entertainment.
Leslie Cannon: 25:20
And that also helps, once again getting back to the relationship development. So it's a lot of hard work. I wear four inch heels on marble, and most of the time I'm running around. I average 21 flights of stairs a day because I don't take those old elevators. But it's action, and it's fun, and it's amazing knowing that you're creating some policy change that will better our organization.
Evan Jurkovich: 25:42
You know, I have something similar. I think to start my day, I unfortunately I think the word phone probably comes out too early, too often after I've opened up. But I scroll to make sure my email, make sure nothing's no crisis. But there's a few political morning briefing is an email that comes out of DC, which is like all the political stuff and just helps you understand what may or may not be happening that day, that week, but anything else. I think I'd look at some of the other digest and news emails, but it's interesting because I feel like if I don't know what's going on in the world by 8AM, I'm behind for the rest of the day because I could be in any conversation and something else comes up or as reference, and you're like, wait a second.
Evan Jurkovich: 26:27
I need to get my basis every single morning before I go and start this job because I don't know what's gonna come up when. And those all have, like, political connotations with them or what could happen or what's not happening or what's something you're working on that's being upended or any of that stuff. And I think news in our world can happen really fast and change the dynamic really quickly. Shelby, from a federal perspective, how do you start your day as you get going?
Shelby Piper: 26:54
Yeah. I think it's very similar to a few things you just mentioned, looking to see what's on the news for the day. Sometimes someone will ask me about something that happened recently, like internationally, and I'm like, I can't. I just need to focus on the energy news and a national level first before
Lauren Vernon: 27:11
I can focus on these other things.
Shelby Piper: 27:12
There's a lot to catch up on, I feel. And there's always things that are happening in the energy industry. And there's innovation that's happening that we have to be thinking about. And whether that's geothermal or nuclear or other types of energy that are being spoken about, even if they don't directly touch what Tri-State is doing ourselves, it might be something that we're starting to think about or that our subject matter experts are starting to talk about. And so we just have to be prepared to answer a lot of different questions on.
Shelby Piper: 27:41
A lot of times, it's just something that a staffer or a legislator has heard in the news at some point, and they're curious about. So I think always starting my day too with news, what's going on, political worthy energy, staying up to date on energy podcasts as well just to hear the latest and greatest of what's happening.
Evan Jurkovich: 27:59
What's also crazy is that I think both for our membership but the public at large, there's so many things that get talked about or could become law in our states that nobody ever hears about or doesn't understand what the implications are. Lauren, what's a couple pieces of legislation that you worked on or watched this session that could have maybe been impactful to Tri-State in a way that you worked on that were able to communicate a point. But these are the types of things that we work on for the membership where they may never hear about this. And that's a goal, right? What are a few things you worked on that never saw the light of day or were really positive and things that you worked on that maybe didn't quite get the attention that some of the bigger topics or more sexier topics would get?
Lauren Vernon: 28:53
I think, first of all, I'll say that what is sexy for a utility is very different than what is sexy for your normal person. So I think for your normal person, like getting into the nuts and bolts of data centers, like people will just hear like bits and pieces about data centers, and there are a lot of moving pieces that our co op managers really have to juggle, a lot of different competing priorities. And so we looked at a couple of different data center bills in New Mexico that that really helped move the bill and a conversation forward for making sure that we have a good framework.
Leslie Cannon: 29:32
I will say, though, that one of my favorite bills that I watched this year had nothing to do with Tri-State, but it was called negligently luring bears. And so now you can get a citation if you've got the wrong kind of seeds or nuts in your bird feeder because apparently, you're negligently luring bears, but it was one of the funniest topics that was flying around the Capitol this year.
Lauren Vernon: 29:50
Was the legal ramifications or the bear in your backyard the worst consequence?
Leslie Cannon: 29:54
I wouldn't mind a bear in my backyard. That's a
Evan Jurkovich: 29:57
I think the meme that is generated from me after this has the worst consequence. Advantages to that. This group, I think the Dublin Relations group, was charged, I think, with a lot of really important tasks. And I've viewed where we're currently at with a few really big issues that are facing co ops, kinda utilities in general, but they have a unique impact to co ops because of our not for profit business model, because of our members. And I've looked at this a few times because I sat there and I've been like, wow.
Evan Jurkovich: 30:28
Are all of these things really happening at once? But it does feel like there's a few kind of generational issues that are happening that are have really important consequences for utilities, but really co ops of how we serve moving forward. And Lauren, you restarted this process in New Mexico this year, but wildfire liability's been one of those, and you get some great work this year. Can you talk about how that took off, where that is, where that's heading?
Lauren Vernon: 30:55
Yeah. So wildfire liability is, first of all, it's existential for our folks. It is something where a spark could literally take out an entire co op. And that means a rural community is without hospitals, without schools, without these important parts of their life and community. So with wildfire, that was something that immediately I was really excited to jump into.
Lauren Vernon: 31:20
Disaster liability keeps me up at night. I am so terrified that there are just going to be major issues going forward. And so for our managers, we wanted to make sure that we are balancing responsible legislation. We don't want to just hand managers a blank check to say you're not liable for anything. That doesn't serve them or their communities well.
Lauren Vernon: 31:42
But we really wanted to work on balancing different priorities and making sure that the managers are doing the work that they're already doing of wildfire mitigation, of being responsible stewards of their land. But at the same time, we also want to make sure that if there is something that happens that's outside of their control, they can't go bankrupt. That's not fair to the communities that they serve. And so we wanted to make sure to introduce legislation that would protect the entire community. So with that, yeah, it was really fun to work on legislation.
Lauren Vernon: 32:17
I don't even want to know how many drafts we did because we had so many different stakeholders that were sending us comments on I literally have drafts that are like, this day at 1PM, this day at 01:22PM, this day at 01:35PM. The drafts were just coming fast and furious, and we tried to be really careful about taking in as much community comment as we could to make the bill a sharper bill.
Evan Jurkovich: 32:44
And that's the art of this. Right? Which is highly balanced, all of these interests in whatever this is we're working on. In this case, a really important wildfire liability bill. And you said that it's been a top priority for Tri-State, but all of our co op members at Tri-State, which is this wildfire liability piece, and really, you need to figure out how to solve this.
Evan Jurkovich: 33:06
It really is that Tri-State or our members, we talk about it like this, but it's really true, which is one spark away from bankruptcy, where we're just living in an environment where there's a lot of risks around wildfire and what that looks like for a utility to try to operate in these in this kind of environment. Leslie, this is not just one state issue. It is also our top issue in Colorado. As you worked on this issue as we try to get some real reforms passed here in Colorado, what does that look like for you as you tackled this really big issue with and we should just say, there's a lot of really strong opinions on different sides of this issue.
Leslie Cannon: 33:49
It's a really big issue to a lot of people on all different sides. You've got the utilities. You've got insurance companies, and you've got the trial attorneys. And we all have our various justifiable reasons on the opponent's side. Right?
Leslie Cannon: 34:02
They've got their own story just like we have ours. We all have our own reasons to be looking for this legislation, but the bottom line that a lot of legislators do not understand is that we provide an essential service. And we do everything that we can to mitigate vegetation and manage any wildfire risks. And in the end, no matter what we do, even if we did not start or contribute to a wildfire, we can still be sued for millions and millions of dollars. And we will spend so much money trying to prove that we didn't start that fire that we could go bankrupt.
Leslie Cannon: 34:35
That is just crazy. It's a hard thing to get people to understand, but the fact is that policy that allows an essential service to go bankrupt is bad policy. So we've gotta find a way to work with our different stakeholders and our opposition who also understand that this is a problem and come to the table and figure out a solution. We have all kinds of ideas. We've got our Christmas tree idea.
Leslie Cannon: 34:56
We also want people to understand that we're not looking for a blanket liability protection bill to pass. If we did, indeed, contribute to a wildfire, if we were negligent, we want to make the people who were damaged by that whole. All we really want to do is make sure that if we didn't do it, we are not the ones paying for it because that's just not the justifiable reason to come after us. Just because an insurance company wants to and can't segregate their creditors does not mean that they should or that it is a justifiable effort.
Evan Jurkovich: 35:26
And it's just we just have to acknowledge there's a ton of risk of operating an electric system in the climate that we operate in currently. Right? We're in a historic drought right now in Colorado and New Mexico, in places in our service territory. And those risks are real. And I think as people look at what service that having electricity means, that co ops are just kind of more susceptible to this than others in a lot of ways.
Evan Jurkovich: 35:54
We operate in more rural areas, it's more likely that's where fires are. When we have to turn off lines or re energize them, that takes a lot longer. People could be out of service for a really long time. And I kind of hate the saying that we keep the lights on, because I think that very much undermines what we do. We keep people's lives on.
Evan Jurkovich: 36:13
We really do offer a critical service that people can't be without. We're like minded businesses. People lose product or the ability to do business during that day without electricity. For a person at the end of the line, Can they get to a hospital if they need something? What are what's their home plan?
Evan Jurkovich: 36:32
Do they have help if they need it? How do all of those services work without this? It's as small as if power goes out at the wrong time and the wrong stoplight goes out, there's a car crash at an intersection. I think really making real what electricity means to people is really important to this conversation as Leslie talked about it being just a critical service and how we look at that from a liability perspective. Shelby, we've also been diving in on this kind of large load topic, which has been a really important issue for us in Wyoming, but also at the federal level.
Evan Jurkovich: 37:06
That's one of these other, I feel like generational issues that are gonna be potentially really make or break for utilities. Yes. But co ops specifically, that, again, that nonprofit business model. Tell me how we're working on that and what's important about that for co ops.
Shelby Piper: 37:24
Yeah. Data centers and these high impact loads are definitely a very hot topic these days and something of concern and excitement, I think, for co ops. We're starting to see some data center high impact load bills introduced at the federal level, but we're also seeing it at the state level as well. But in terms of the co op perspective, I think we just really need to win this messaging around the fact that co ops, we want to serve all of our members. And I think some people are getting the idea that not only do we not want to serve, but we can't serve.
Shelby Piper: 38:00
And that just is not true. We're really excited about serving. We just have a process that needs to happen in order to serve these loads in a successful way. We have processes that are in place at the federal level in order to make those systems work. We're regulated for a reason, and that's to ensure, going back to wildfire too, we just need to make sure that not only are we keeping the lights on, but we're powering these communities, just ensuring that we can provide power to not only these large loads, but not putting that risk onto our members so that they can't have the power that they deserve, and that they're at top of our priority in order to serve.
Shelby Piper: 38:43
And while we're excited about it, I think there's just some risks that we're concerned about, and that we don't want those to be fair to our members.
Evan Jurkovich: 38:51
And those risks being reliability and affordability, which is critical to the work we do at Tri-State, which is the most important issues to our members. And it's really This really allows us to get to talk about full co op story. Are actually just celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the rural electrification app. There's a ceremony at USDA, at the United States Department of Agriculture around this. But many of our members were establishing themselves very quickly after the Role Act.
Evan Jurkovich: 39:24
And our members and co ops in general have continued to innovate for ninety years in terms of of how to serve what comes along next. At the beginning it was, well, the urban areas are electrifying and we aren't. Farmers, ranchers, rural businesses got together and said, Look, we've got to do this ourselves if we're going to do it. So we're going to band together to do this. And then those areas started growing as agricultural started having more electrical inputs and that demand and businesses started growing.
Evan Jurkovich: 39:54
And they're like, wait a second. If a few of us co ops altogether can get together and form a new entity to help us with the big stuff, we can get our next economies of scale. So we have entities like Tri-State that were formed, G and T. And our members have continued to innovate to meet these rising demand, new areas, geographic challenges. But our service territory from Tri-State and our members, we serve large loads all the time.
Evan Jurkovich: 40:20
Serve a lot of oil and gas. We serve areas where there's mining. We serve large industrial loads. This isn't anything new to us, and I feel like that's a lot of the conversation that's been out there around large loads. This is brand new.
Evan Jurkovich: 40:33
And I do understand some of the size of these new loads coming on are unique, but ideas co ops, I think, are ready to meet this challenge and already are. We have for ninety years. We already have programs and processes in place for folks to work with us. And we're only refining those and getting better and gonna have new processes moving forward to make this even faster and more efficient. That's how we've had to stay around as co ops.
Evan Jurkovich: 40:57
And that's what being member owned actually demands of us because they want things and they drive us to have create solutions for themselves out of this. And I think it's just a really Lauren, you said what keeps you up at night is liability. Mine right now is that there's a side of this larger conversation. Some of that is data centers where there's so much political and outside money being thrown into this conversation from a really political way that we have entities that are really trying to buy themselves out of a process or buy themselves a new process through our regulators, through our policymakers, Eddie. That That scares me because as co ops, we're not out there just throwing money at this in the same way, but we have to convince folks that our story, that who we are, the Colorado or New Mexico or Wyoming way of life, is really tied to the services we provide.
Evan Jurkovich: 41:52
So that's this next deregulation third party conversation that's really happening in this large load as we take on these large load challenges and things like that.
Shelby Piper: 42:01
I mentioned earlier that our members are our priority. They're not only our priority, but we have a right to serve in these areas, and we have certificated service territory for our members to serve their communities. So really, that's a lot of reasoning for why that risk is also so high. It's just our members depend on the service territory in order to be able to get their financial systems in order to provide power to their members. At Tri-State, we're really excited to work with our members and work with high load customers to be able to serve these loads.
Shelby Piper: 42:32
But we just don't wanna do that at the risk of our members.
Evan Jurkovich: 42:36
And that's what's key because we can't pass those risks onto our members, which in turn passes that risk onto the person at the middle end. That's back to this co op business model, not for profit nature. And on wildfire, we've got these efforts in New Mexico. We've got these efforts going on in Colorado. What is great is while we continue to work on those issues, we have had success.
Evan Jurkovich: 42:59
And so we know this is possible. Last year, in Wyoming, Tri-State was successful in pushing legislation through that did provide some of these liability protections that I think are really critical. And with what we're asking for in terms of how do we get some liability protections, it's we have to do our own. Right? And that involves putting forward a wildfire mitigation plan and owning up to that mitigation plan.
Evan Jurkovich: 43:24
And so we feel like these co ops, as we look at our operations, as we look at our vegetation management, that we have to do our work, but you could be the best actor in the world and we could still have some unforeseen circumstances that we never could have planned for be causing an issue. And that's where the WIAA villa challenged us. We have hope out there that Wyoming was able to pass us. And we have seen other states around us pass us too. I do think as we talk about this issue that there is this growing consensus that this is a problem.
Evan Jurkovich: 43:55
Now we can wrestle over what that solution is, and different states may look at that differently. And we certainly are going to push, and I think for what really works well for Tri-State and our memberships last year, we did get some liability relief through the legislature. But we don't get to do that for free, right? And I think that's the trade off that we as co ops really understand, which is The US thinks of us, and we want to get some liability protection turned. And so as we've looked at our wildfire mitigation plans, years in our vegetation management work we do, the ask is, hey.
Evan Jurkovich: 44:25
We need to formally file those or submit those plans in order to get this protection. But that's definitely do what we get to show we're doing every single day because we could be the best actor in the world and still have something happen that is completely out of our control. We need some of this liability protection, even when we have a really robust wildfire mitigation plan that we're living up to every day. That's the real reason that we need some of these protections. So that's the trade off we're looking for, which is liability protection for our formerly submitted or filed wildfire mitigation plan.
Evan Jurkovich: 44:58
In case folks are wondering whether we do this work, it's really important to us. We do it every day. We've been doing it. Now you can see it on paper that we're really committed to this effort from our side as well.
Lauren Vernon: 45:09
So I had a conversation with one
Shelby Piper: 45:11
of the
Lauren Vernon: 45:11
insurance lobbyists who was opposed to our bill, and we
Shelby Piper: 45:15
were trying to sort things out before our hearing.
Lauren Vernon: 45:18
We were talking through why the liability protections are so important for co ops. And he said, but you guys should be doing this wildfire mitigation for anyways. And I said, we are. We absolutely are. We have tons of projects in New Mexico.
Lauren Vernon: 45:32
We are spending millions of dollars on wildfire mitigation work every single year. And there needs to be a reciprocal relationship.
Evan Jurkovich: 45:41
Watts, one thing that's at the core of all of our work as we, whether it's get things passed or make sure things don't happen is and we said it, a bunch are ready, but it's relationships. And, Lauren, earlier, you said we talked about translating and bridge. Like, that's how I view part of my job we do. I also see this job as those relationships. Leslie, you've got a whole swath of people that you need to have relationships with.
Evan Jurkovich: 46:10
And they're not just inside the Capitol, are they?
Leslie Cannon: 46:13
I don't know how it works in the other states, so I'm just gonna speak for Colorado. But we are part of a bunch of different political action committees. For instance, today, was working with the Colorado Rail Electric Association and individually interviewing the candidates who are up for the primary elections. We get to talk to them about the co ops. We get to talk to them about their platform, what committees they want to sit on, what bills they're looking to run.
Leslie Cannon: 46:34
Being part of that specific committee really helps me to develop relationships with the legislators. Also, we develop a lot of different coalitions around multiple different bills. And for instance, we have the Public Utilities Commission sunset bill, and we worked with a very large coalition to make sure that bill didn't go off the tracks. We worked with commissions on the clean energy plan bill, which is another bill that they have been trying to run for the past few years that is changing the targets of our emissions reductions. Our goals would be changed.
Leslie Cannon: 47:07
It would affect reliability. It would affect affordability. So having the relationships with the other actors in the business world, in the realtors world, and really add, you just have no idea where these different relationships are actually going to intermingle in a way that you could develop a coalition and work for the same goal together, even if you never really thought it was going to happen. Was, for instance, I have really good relationships with people in medical and pharma. I never knew that was going to do me any good until I realized that the medical world actually accomplished limitations on liability for pharmacists, for doctors.
Leslie Cannon: 47:42
So I was able to go to these people who I already have these relationships with and have discussions saying, how did you get past this hurdle in your world? Because it's exactly what we're facing in the world of wildfire liability. So I could tell you just dozens and dozens of coalitions that we've worked with. But he's also developing relationships with those coalition members. There are government relations people in the different corporations or whatever entities may be and other lobbyists at the capital so that you know who you can trust to work together and move forward.
Evan Jurkovich: 48:12
In the trust aspect, we talked about our members are being cooperative is a nice currency, I think, as the political meetings, as we talk to policy makers and things like that, who are we, who we work for, the battle goes really long way. I think the other biggest currency in what we do is trust. And you get a lot out of trust and vice versa, I think for folks. That's certainly what at the end of the day when push comes to shove, if things are really happening or really there's a big issue, you really fall back to those people who you built that relationship with. Lauren, do you have some of those relationships in New Mexico?
Evan Jurkovich: 48:51
Or what's the value of those to you?
Lauren Vernon: 48:53
Yeah. So first of all, in New Mexico, like, people can trace their family back 13 generations. So everyone in New Mexico knows everybody else. And so that that trust and that family relationship in New Mexico is, I think,
Shelby Piper: 49:07
maybe, like, an order
Lauren Vernon: 49:08
of magnitude bigger than what you would find in some others.
Evan Jurkovich: 49:11
We were recently meeting with senator Liu Han, and he made this valid joke of he gets a lot of calls in his office of somebody say, but I'm part of this banning. I mean, which is frustrating, Rodney. It's true. But and his role was if I haven't seen you at a wedding, I haven't seen you at a funeral recently, that's where I dropped the line with my special access to me because you're family. So I thought that was a very good anecdote of maybe how Nuemeiszko family ties work.
Lauren Vernon: 49:38
The New Mexico family relationships are so strong and so deep, and that's why the trust is so important. We hear from our co op managers. One legislator did something wrong, no joke, a decade ago, and it still gets brought up. And every single time we talk about that legislator. So I absolutely do not want to be the lobbyist that a legislator is like, Oh, that lobbyist did something shady.
Lauren Vernon: 50:03
Absolutely not. Because every single person in the entire roundhouse will hear about it within maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. So the trust currency is incredibly important in New Mexico, and it also goes both ways. We have incredible bill sponsors that we know that we can trust that they've been in the co op world or have taken the time to educate themselves about the co op world. And we know that we can call them and ask them if there's something happening on in the background, and they will let us know immediately.
Evan Jurkovich: 50:34
Shelby, as you interact in there more at the federal level, what does that relationship game look like at the federal level?
Shelby Piper: 50:41
Yeah. It's huge. It's definitely a bit different than at the state level, especially our headquarters are Colorado. But I think every time we're able to make it to DC and have face to face time, even when we can't make it to DC and we're having video calls and we're just checking in to remind people that we're there and about our priorities and what those priorities are, I think, is valuable. And over the four and a half years that I've been at Tri-State, while there's been some turnover of staff that's been in DC, there's also been some staff that have really stuck around.
Shelby Piper: 51:13
And I know, Evan, you could relate to this, in terms of being that person's first call when they need something. And I think Tri-State has set ourselves up for success in a lot of those aspects with a lot of those staff, because we are always at the table, and whether that's in their office, we're at roundtables that they offer in state, whether that's in DC, or if it's in a bid that somebody else is putting on either Western Governors Association or another organization. I think we do a really great job of always trying to be there, and I think that face value says a lot. And I know we always try to be in the room, and that goes for the State folks as well. But just being there and being visible, I think, is a huge part of growing trust, especially for those relationships out east.
Evan Jurkovich: 52:01
Showing up means so much in our world. We can do this. We can pick up the phone. We can email. But showing up when we can, I think it is just such a huge important part of this?
Evan Jurkovich: 52:12
One, it gets to see people's faces. But two, you may be showing up to something that isn't directly your issue or your concern, but you get a little extra face time with a staffer or a representative or a senator, And they like to see you showing up to their stuff or supporting the broader, I think, work that's going on. And I think that just translates so much of showing up. As we talk about policy and one of my biggest, I think, perception is you have to be at the table. A lot of things can get discussed, and it's not always your stuff.
Evan Jurkovich: 52:48
But you wanna be there when your issues come up and that you've had the relationships and you've already been at that table and established. The saying is if you're not at the table, you're on the table. And I just really believe in that. And I think that's as a co op and at Tri-State, you're really trying to do, which is show up, be present. I think those relationship aspects are just as great as us as co op people, but I think they translate really huge into what that means for trust.
Shelby Piper: 53:17
I was just gonna say, and I am sure everybody in the room can relate to this because Leslie mentioned it earlier. But when you get that text or that email with staff or legislator saying, Hey, we just want to make sure you're good with this bill before we, you know, share it with anybody else or do anything with it, that is such a good feeling. That is the golden moment of trust when you're like,
Lauren Vernon: 53:37
big, something's happening here. That's really what
Leslie Cannon: 53:40
we aim for, I think,
Evan Jurkovich: 53:41
and and what we do.
Leslie Cannon: 53:43
I have a favorite story, and I don't know if it's good or bad, so it's up to you guys to decide this or not. But I had a really good relationship with a legislator. She knew that I knew her what she running on the platform, everything else, and that I would never do anything to jeopardize that relationship and the trust that we had. But I was coming down to a floor vote on a really important amendment, and I needed one no. And she had not been working on this bill at all.
Leslie Cannon: 54:07
But I texted her. I don't know if the crowd knows this, but we're called lobbyists because we literally hang up in the lobby outside the house and the senate, and there's glass between us and the legislators. So I texted her, and I said, come to the glass. And she came to the glass, and I slammed the amendment against the window. And I pointed at the number, and I just gave a big frowny face and a thumbs down.
Leslie Cannon: 54:25
And she just went, okay. And then she went she voted against the amendment. So it was amazing. She didn't have to read it. She just knew that we wouldn't have that relationship if I were gonna put her in a bad position.
Leslie Cannon: 54:35
So I love stories like that about my job. It's so much fun, and it's really good to be able to represent your organization in a way that helps people to trust you behind your organizations.
Evan Jurkovich: 54:45
One of the things that I think a place like Tri-State and just co ops will offer is the type of people attracted to work here. And I think that in the relationship game may even be, like, our biggest piece in the whole is just the people that we bring to co ops, like you all as lobbyists, that people you're genuine you care about people and your world. And I think we've worked with a lot of those people too. And as we get to talk about that, I think it almost feels like from a coop perspective, you were granted the trust until we proved otherwise a little bit, which I think we're really good at fostering those and getting to work on these issues that I do think hit home. But I think the cooperative and just Tri-State draws these people that really just care about the world around them, care about people, are genuine, and that can go a long way in making people feel comfortable in building those relationships.
Evan Jurkovich: 55:40
But as we wrap up the podcast and you think about your roles and the people who do this job around you that you interact with every day. Maybe, Shelby, I'll start with you. What's your favorite part of the job?
Shelby Piper: 55:52
My favorite part of the job is definitely working for the members that we work for. Getting to see them every month at our committees, during our board meetings. It's just so funny because there's some people that you'll look at and you think they're intimidating in some way at first, especially just giving to Tri-State.
Lauren Vernon: 56:11
And then you go and have a conversation with them, and
Shelby Piper: 56:13
they are just the sweetest people ever, and really just wanting to make connections and have good conversations. And while some of them are a bit quieter, they're just always so kind and funny and have the best stories. And so I definitely think it's the people that we do our work for. My favorite part of the job, for sure.
Evan Jurkovich: 56:34
Leslie, what makes this a unique overboard and career path for you?
Leslie Cannon: 56:40
Other than all of the things I already said about how much I love this, even about the relationships, the people who are members. Really, I think it is incredibly cool that after a governor signs a bill, it then turns into law, and I helped mold that law along with our subject matter experts, the little army that we all have behind us. It's amazing see the work you did is now a law that is written in so until somebody tries to mess with it later, and then I'm gonna have to fight them again. But it is just really amazing to see the impact that we have on our entire state.
Evan Jurkovich: 57:13
Lauren, you've moved from one side of the table to the other in terms of being a lobbyist. What kind of person thrives in this role? What have you learned? Maybe even about yourself at Michigan in the past, not quite years, to Tri-State and take it in the lobbyist role?
Lauren Vernon: 57:30
Yeah. I think there's a couple traits that would make someone really successful. I think, first of all, you have to be excited to talk to people. It's not just that you can talk to people, but legitimately wanting to understand where they're coming from and being able to draw those connections so that you can find a place where you're both happy. I also think just a general intellectual curiosity.
Lauren Vernon: 57:52
There is so much in the utility world, and especially in the co op world that is so unique and so beautiful. And it takes a decent amount of time to understand the world. And so I just love being able to learn every single day about the people, the work, the communities that they serve. And I think that anyone who has a good sense of curiosity would enjoy this.
Leslie Cannon: 58:16
So Evan, if someone's listening to this and interested in this kind of work, what would you want them to know?
Evan Jurkovich: 58:23
I think the first thing is just the people, people that are around co op world. One, the people at Tri-State. But when you talk to our board members, when you talk to our members, these are people that care about the communities that are really down to earth. And I think the other thing is being at Tri-State and doing this work is you get to do work that makes a difference. I think rural communities and our member systems often don't have a voice in the place that we're privileged to have a voice in places like capitals and in meetings and with stakeholder groups that we get to be that voice for them.
Evan Jurkovich: 58:59
Carry those issues and that passion around rural America and the work that they do in their communities, not just around electricity, but just being the cornerstone of many of their communities. I think that's what makes working at Tri-State and getting it to this work just really amazing and really grateful to get to.
Melissa Swinehart: 59:18
Thanks again for joining us. It was great to learn a little bit more about what you do on a day to day basis, your role. So we really appreciate you joining us today.
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having
Evan Jurkovich: 59:29
me.
Lauren Vernon: 59:29
Thanks so much for having me, folks.
Melissa Swinehart: 59:30
Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in to Western Watts. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or on our website at tristate.coop/wwpod. We'll catch you next time.