Commissioner Cheryl Roberto
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Cheryl Roberto Term ends: April 10, 2013 |
Print Quality Biography
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Appointed in 2008 by Governor Strickland, Commissioner Cheryl Roberto brings unique insight to her post gained from her experience leading public utilities and from more than two decades as an attorney concentrating in environmental law. Her work focuses on the electricity sector, primarily on energy efficiency, deregulation and financial management.
Commissioner Roberto is passionate about promoting cost-effective energy efficiency. She is Co-Chair of the Utility Motivation Working Group and Chair of the Sub-Committee for Utility Financial Incentives for the State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network (SEEAction). In 2011, she served as Co-Leader of a delegation on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) and National Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) meeting with the National Electricity Regulatory Commission of Ukraine to share information regarding regulatory structures to support energy efficiency and competitive electricity markets.
She is a member of NARUC’s Electricity Committee and is one of three Co-Chairs for the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an executive-level public policy forum series on electricity infrastructure co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NARUC.
Commissioner Roberto also serves on NARUC’s Critical Infrastructure Committee where she was instrumental in adoption of NARUC resolutions regarding cyber security (adopted February 17, 2010) and electromagnetic pulse effects (adopted July 20, 2011). She has presented as a panelist and served as a moderator on numerous panels discussing pipeline safety, security, and planning for uncertainty.
Commissioner Roberto is a member of the Advisory Board for the Financial Research Institute (FRI) in the College of Business at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has spoken on financial topics including regulation and capital markets and the nature of the changing utility business model
In her previous post as director of the city of Columbus Public Utilities Department, Roberto led a staff of 1,300 people, administered an operating budget of $400 million, and directed an annual capital program of $250 million. She managed four separate municipal utilities: drinking water, wastewater, flood control, and electricity to serve more than 1 million people in Central Ohio. Working with elected officials, community activists, and business leaders, she restructured the city’s water and electricity rates, adopted operational practices and regulatory standards encouraging preservation and restoration of natural resources, and established a regulatory compliance program.
Earlier, Commissioner Roberto enforced environmental and consumer protection laws as an assistant attorney general in the state of Ohio and as an assistant general counsel in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Through criminal prosecutions, civil enforcement and administrative litigation, she promoted compliance with clean air, clean water, Superfund, drinking water, and hazardous and solid waste laws. She also served as legal counsel to the cities of Columbus, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania where she provided regulatory compliance guidance and litigation defense. She taught political science as an adjunct lecturer at the Behrend College of Pennsylvania State University.
Commissioner Roberto received her B.A. in political science cum laude with general honors from the Honors College, Kent State University and her J.D. from the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.