then we have john howit who is a senior analyst at the nashville consumer law center. he's been involved with policy issues since 1981. he manages products related to low income, energy affordability and efficiency programs, consumer protection, rate design, and utility grid technology. and last but not least, we have lawrence daniels who is the director of litigation for the d.c. office of people's counsel. lawrence has an extensive background in the electric and telecommunications industry. since january 2000, lawrence has worked for the office as a regulatory attorney advocating on behalf of consumers' interest in a number of grid case and telecommunication cases. i'll turn it over to jim to get us started. >> thank you. thank you all, it's a pleasure to join you. really an august group of mark, john and lawrence. i've had the great opportunity to join inner eca. i'm going to give you a few statistics about america's electric cooperatives and what that amounts to. then, again, as we see, it's some of the challenges and opportunities. before i do that, is steve brobe

then we have john howit, senior energy analyst at the national consumer law center. john has been involved with energy programs and policy issues since 1981. he manages program products related to low-income, energy affordability and efficiency programs, consumer protection, rate design and utility grid technology. and last but not least, we have lawrence daniels, who is director of litigation for the d.c. office of people's counsel. lawrence has an extensive background in the electric and telecommunications industry. since january 2000, lawrence has worked for the office as a regulatory attorney, advocating on behalf of consumers' interests and a number of electric cases and telecommunications cases. with that i will turn it over to jim to get us started and we'll have time at the end for questions. >> thank you, delia. and thank you all. it's a pleasure to join you, and really the group of mark, john and lauren. a real alliance in this industry. i've had the great opportunity to join nreca, we represent america's electric cooperatives. i'm going to give you a few st