Mr. Ritts is a director and Principal in the Washington, D.C., office of Brickfield, Burchette & Ritts. He represents rural electric cooperative, municipal electric and industrial clients on electric power and natural gas issues. Efforts for clients include purchase contracts for electric power and natural gas, evaluating prices and rates, transmission contracts and rates, electric restructuring, natural gas pipeline contracts and rates, local natural gas company contracts and rates, and litigation at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state regulatory agencies. In efforts to reduce clients' costs of electric power and natural gas, Mr. Ritts has led the way to be first to take up an issue and win. Those efforts include:

• For the first time in a litigated proceeding, an electric cooperative received compensation (credits) for its transmission facilities from an investor-owned utility.
• On behalf of four municipalities in Virginia, FERC issued its first-ever decision in a litigated section 211 transmission case requiring AEP to transmit power for four municipalities.
• Five large municipal utilities cancelled their wholesale power contracts with their long-term power supplier, American Electric Power (AEP), and signed up to purchase about 400 MW from Cinergy Services, Inc. at a delivered price of less than 30 mills per kilowatt hour.
• The City of Bristol, Virginia, cancelled its contract with TVA and became a full requirements customer of Cinergy at a price less than 27 mills per kilowatt hour fixed for seven years. Bristol is the first distributor to leave TVA.
• The City of Bristol also defeated TVA's attempts at the FERC to recover stranded costs.
• On behalf of a large industrial customer, the firm led the way on a finding by a state commission that a multi-billion dollar purchase power contract signed by an investor-owned utility was imprudent.
• On behalf of an industrial user of natural gas, the FERC approved a textile company's purchase of gas directly from producers, thereby bypassing the pipeline supply chain.
• After Congress adopted the Regulatory Fairness Act, which allows wholesale customers at FERC to receive refunds on a retroactive basis for overcharges, the firm won the first-ever rate decrease case under the new Act.
• For the first time that we are aware, a large generation and transmission cooperative contracted to buy wholesale power from a utility outside of its control area and obtained power after suing the host utility for breach of contract and violations of antitrust laws.

The firm and Mr. Ritts continue to look for new and novel ways to save clients' money.

Mr. Ritts is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Georgia School of Law.