Who says utility regulation is boring? Until Gov. Charlie Crist cleaned house at the Florida Public Service Commission earlier this year, utility regulators in the Sunshine State provided all kinds of fodder for critics who argued that they were too tight with the companies they were charged with regulating.

Case in point: ex-PSC commissioner Rudy Bradley, a former state legislator from St. Petersburg. During a 2002 wholesale phone rate case, Bradley received a talking-points memo from Verizon and parroted portions of the memo verbatim at a public hearing, presenting the remarks as his own. When the commission ruled against Verizon, the company appealed the decision to the Florida Supreme Court, supporting its case in part by quoting Bradley's remarks during the rate hearing – that is, by quoting the same remarks that the company itself had written. The state Commission on Ethics fined Bradley $5,000 in July for his involvement in that case.