The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies has selected Dan Hartnett to serve as its chief executive officer on a permanent basis, effective Nov. 1, 2026. Hartnett has been serving as the association's interim chief executive officer since July, according to Water Finance and Management's report on the AMWA selection. The announcement settles a title. It does not, by itself, settle any position the association has taken, any comment it has filed, or any meeting already on a calendar.
Where Leadership Shows Up in a Utility File
For a municipal utility, an association's leadership rarely appears as a single line item. It appears across several records that were written at different times by different people. The usual entries include staff seats on committees and working groups, the contact list that receives alerts and bulletins, dues and invoice contacts, signatures on joint letters, and board packet references to positions the association has taken. A title change can alter some of these on the effective date. Others may sit unchanged for months because nobody is responsible for updating them.
Separate the Person From the Role
Many records name a person when they should name a role. A contact sheet that lists an individual by name will go stale as soon as that individual moves on, whether to a permanent post, a new position, or a different employer. A record that lists the role, such as the association's chief executive or the designated policy contact, carries forward more cleanly, though it still needs an owner who checks the name behind the role. The practical question is simple: if the person in the file changed tomorrow, which entries would be wrong?
Keep the Interim Period on Its Own Line
Correspondence and positions that came through the association during the interim period, which began in July, are a matter of record. They should not be rewritten to match the permanent appointment. A utility that files a comment, relays an association bulletin to its board, or cites an association position in a rate discussion should note the date and the person who was in the role at that time. That note protects the record if a later reader asks who said what, and it avoids the error of attributing an earlier position to a leader who had not yet taken the job.
Do Not Assume the Policy Calendar Moved
The Nov. 1 date marks a change in who holds the title. It does not tell a utility what the association will do next, how quickly it will do it, or whether any existing policy priority will shift. Operators should resist the temptation to read a new chief executive into a pending issue unless the association says so in its own materials. Where a utility depends on a specific association action, such as a comment deadline or a committee vote, the schedule should come from the association's published calendar and the relevant docket, not from the leadership announcement.
A Short Checklist Before the Effective Date
A workable review does not need to be large. List every association touchpoint the utility maintains. Record who holds each one today and whether the entry names a person or a role. Flag entries that will need correction on or after Nov. 1. Confirm which internal staff member owns each update, and date the review so that later readers can see when the file was last checked. Where the utility keeps board briefing templates that describe the association, add a line that identifies the leadership period the template reflects.
Member agencies sometimes receive questions from residents or customers about household treatment during these same conversations. Those questions belong with the qualified source, not with a summary of equipment performance written into agency correspondence. Referring residents to local RO specialists for equipment questions keeps the utility's own record limited to what the utility can document.
The change in title is simple to see and easy to overstate. The records that depend on it are slower, scattered, and less visible. Reviewing them before Nov. 1 costs little, and it leaves the file accurate whichever way the association's work proceeds after the transition.