Fulk to take reins at CU

A former private practice attorney who joined City Utilities of Springfield in 2017 is slated to take the top job at the organization this fall.

The selection of Dwayne Fulk as president and CEO of CU was announced at an Aug. 23 news conference. Fulk starts Nov. 1, succeeding retiring CEO Gary Gibson.

In an interview with Springfield Business Journal the week after the announcement, Fulk said his appointment as CEO is humbling. It’s a similar feeling he had in December 2017, when he was named associate general manager and general counsel after 25 years in the legal sector, including most recently serving as a partner at Lathrop Gage LLP’s now shuttered Springfield office. He had enjoyed service to the community as a member of nonprofit boards.

“It’s so refreshing to have your life purpose and your business purpose align,” said Fulk, who is currently senior vice president and chief legal and economic development officer at CU.

Fulk also spoke about the advantages of coming from a background in private law practice.

“One advantage, if you will, is I don’t have some of the same preconceived notions that some others might have because I have that outside experience. I’m practiced at disagreeing without being disagreeable,” he said. “In private law practice, something that I became accustomed to is learning about every client.”

Kristin Carter, chair of the Board of Public Utilities, which governs CU, said four finalists – two CU employees and two external candidates – were narrowed down through a search process conducted by Los Angeles-based Korn Ferry (NYSE: KFY). She said more than 30 candidates were screened through the process, and two sets of interviews slimmed the field.

“Given our great reputation in the utility industry, we had a large number of very qualified candidates from all over the United States that applied,” Carter said at the news conference.

“We’re so fortunate to have exceptional talent in our own backyard that knows our community.”

For its work in the search process, Korn Ferry was paid $100,000, the firm’s minimum charge for services, said Joel Alexander, CU’s manager of media relations. Travel expenses for outside candidates totaled less than $2,500, he added.

Fulk’s salary as CU’s president and CEO will be $400,000, officials say.

His predecessor Gibson announced in April plans to retire from the organization early next year. Gibson started with CU in 1990 as an intern and in December 2019 took over for the retiring Scott Miller. Prior to that, John Twitty led CU 2002-11.

Priorities and opportunities
Fulk said coming into the CEO role, his first priority would be to implement a 100-day plan that largely calls on him to meet with CU employees and members of the community through a series of discussions.

“It’s something that I’m going to need a lot of help with,” he said. “I’m going to take that information and develop additional initiatives that we can use to better serve our customers.”

Fulk said he would work to expand CU’s commitment to transparency, engagement and trust.

“How I would hope to expand upon that is to get out personally, to respectively collaborate and build relationships – and encourage all of our employees to do the same,” he said. “We’ve always tried to be responsive to information requests. We will continue to do that and try to communicate as clearly as possible and follow through over time.”

Fulk said his upcoming responsibilities would include filling his own duties as senior vice president and chief legal and economic development officer, a role through which he’s been responsible for overseeing developer services, economic development, electric reliability compliance and environmental affairs, among other initiatives.

He said Dean Thompson, CU vice president and chief economic development officer, would spend more time in economic development at CU as he wraps up his executive-in-residence role with the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce and serves as interim executive director of Leaders for Ozarks Region Evolvement, or LORE, a new regionalism nonprofit.

“We’ll cover the legal side in some form of replacement,” Fulk added.

Incoming budget
Fulk also will become CEO of CU during the second month of its upcoming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

The Board of Public Utilities on Aug. 22 passed the fiscal 2025 budget measure to Springfield City Council for a first reading on Sept. 9, with a subsequent vote to follow on Sept. 23.

Disbursement authority – defined in budget documents as the total amount of planned expenditures – is set at $895.4 million in the budget passed by the board. That’s up from a reprojected fiscal 2024 figure of $709.5 million.

Disbursement authority was approved at roughly $698 million when the CU board passed the budget in August 2023, according to past SBJ reporting.

The disbursement authority includes $200 million for future power supply contingency. There is no such contingency in the current budget.

Fulk said the future power supply contingency is the main reason for the projected expenditure increase in the upcoming budget and would help CU meet power requirements as part of its membership in the Southwest Power Pool, based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

CU is required to move toward increasing its power supply by a 34% margin during the winter months in response to extreme weather events, and to keep customers from having to reduce loads.

“We have to acquire additional capacity, buy it on the market, to satisfy that requirement,” Fulk said, noting money likely would be borrowed for that purpose.

City Council also is slated to receive a proposal for natural gas rate adjustments and a request to decrease transit fares.

If approved, natural gas rate increases would start with a 2.5% adjustment on Oct. 1, 2025, followed by 3.9% increases in October 2026 and 2027, according to the release. The transit fare decrease would amount to a 20% reduction in fares.

“The reliability and integrity of each service we provide is funded separately, and as with other businesses, we have seen supply chain and inflationary issues impact every area of the utility,” Gibson said in a recent news release announcing the budget.

“It’s necessary that we seek these adjustments to continue providing exceptional services and reliability to our community.”