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NW Members to Lead Power Council by Mitch Lies Capital Press, February 24, 2006

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Tom Karier, a Washington member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, was appointed at a meeting last week in Vancouver to chair the four-state energy planning and fish and wildlife mitigation agency in 2006. Joan Dukes, an Oregon member, will serve as vice chairwoman.

Karier, of Spokane, was appointed to the council in 1998 by then-Governor Gary Locke. He now serves under Gov. Christine Gregoire. Karier was an associate dean at Eastern Washington State University from 1995 until his appointment to the council. He had been a professor of economics at the university since 1981. While a professor, he also served as a research associate for the Jerome Levy Economics Institute in Annandale, N.Y.

Karier earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, with a major field in natural resource economics. He holds bachelor degrees in physics and economics from the University of Illinois. His research areas included public policy, taxation, labor, international trade and industrial organization.

Dukes, who lives in Svensen near Astoria, was appointed to the council by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski in 2005. She resigned her seat in the Oregon Senate, where she had served since 1987, to join the council. Dukes, who served a four-year term as a Clatsop County commissioner before being elected to the Senate, has experience in education, transportation and fisheries issues at the local, county and state levels, including having served as chairwoman of the Pacific Fisheries Legislative Task Force, an association of western legislators that works on regional fish issues. She is a graduate of Evergreen State College.

The Council is a compact of the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and is charged by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 with developing a program to assure the Pacific Northwest an adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply while also protecting, mitigating and enhancing fish and wildlife that have been affected by hydropower dams in the Columbia River Basin.