already left businesses out of business for several days. the company says its service is overall getting better. at a washington post report says pepco has a long way to go to catch up with standards. businesses and consumers still question whether pepco can handle the hot summer months without major outages. in the hot seat today, regional president. it is not easy to be the head of pepco regional these day. >> we are ready. we have made a tremendous commitment to improve service reliability over the next five years. we have spent millions of dollars in a commitment. we are doing many parts of our reliance accountability plan, including a lot of tree trimming. there are a lot of cables that have to be replaced and new technologies put on the system. very soon in the district and in maryland smart meters. we are going to replace 280,000 meters in the district. in maryland, which started in june and will finish in december 2012. >> you have your work cut out for you. you are a military kid who grew up in washington, d.c. do with the first eighth grade class at -- you were the first eighth grade class at a high school. 25 years at pepco. how did you rise up to get a top job? >> i have had some great mentors, and i have a value system that i stick with. number one, safety. then i belve connected relationships and purpose and pleading with your hard and being very disciplined. the key to me has been great mentors. i have had three mentors within the company. >> let's begin with discipline. give pepco a grade for their performance last year. give yourself a grade on how you dealt with those outages. >> let's talk about effort. with effort, it is an 'a'. if you can imagine working 12- or 16-hour shifts days at a time -- crews were working "- hour shifts in 100-degree temperatures. where we have some challenges and where we need to improve our our communications, providing accurate restoration times. we have been lookingg at improvements so we can better meet the expectations of customers. >> you need to have betteter communications if you have a better system in place. a lot of people would give you an 'f' on infrastructure. and what would you give yourself? >> our infrastructure is aging infrastructure like many other utilities. that is why we are implementing our reliability implementation plan. the distribution automation that we are putting in -- our customers will experience significant benefits from that. we are moving forward. i to optimistic about the future. we have had some very bad weather. we have had four or five major storms. they were very challenging for us. we think we are in a better position now with more customer service r representatives that can interphone calls. some of the tree trimming work -- we went from 80 tree trimmers to about 350 tree trimmers in less than a year, so we are doing everything we can do. we have identified every resource we can to improve service for our customers. >> first, let's start with recently when it was quite noticeable when wolf blitzer had to do cn and outside because of the power outage. let's take it to aa more regional level. one sadaid he had 15 new restaurants opened. the lost business and inventory. they went on to say that they had 17 million square feet of new development. they say they do not know if they can count on pepco. why cannot you deliver reliable service to those businesses? >> you can rely on pepco. our number one priority right now is to improve the reliability of our service. i was on the side for several days and have met with the board since that time. we have talked about so many imprements that we have planned. some of those projects were already in the books. we were going to do that work in june 2012, and now we are ststarting their work right now. in the 2001, because of the projects coming in and all of the business is coming in, we felt we needed a new substation by 2007. our long-term plan is to shift all of that load to serve that area with that northeast substation. >> d.c. has -- montgomery county not in such a good position. let's turn to the montgomery county council, one of your biggest critics. this is one of the highlights. the first of all you talk about the storms that we have had. even on sundays, reliability is a 75% below the industry norm. a primary cause of unreliability they found was due to inattention and under investment in basic distribution systems, going on to say that warnings were down-played excused, or ignored. customers in the service. experience approximately three times as many hours of interruption than pg&e which speaks to a much bigger problem. >> we are not stepping away from those responsibilities. things tha we need to do on a sunny day, yeah, and we are doing those things now. an additional100 million investment that we made it into the system. $256.5 million in maryland investment addressing many of the things that the council man has referenced. also the working group referenced. do we have standards in maryland right now? in the legislative body for the state just passed a bill. we support thatt bill. we want to be held accountable. what are we doing? we have been very aggressive on tree trimming. what are some of the things holding us back? some of the customers have not been respectful of the work that has to be done. we continue to partner with the county in customers' -- >> we have to wrap it up. these studies found that it was not the trees and the customers to blame. they found it was the infrastructure that pepco kept making a profit without investing in the infrastructure. >> we are making additional investments in that infrastructure. without question, 90% of this outages are due to trees. indisputable. on suny, we know we have to make improvements in our infrastrtructure, and are doing that every day. >> thomas, we appreciate you coming in. thanks so much. coming up next, our roundtable. >> a lot to talk about this week. local executive pay and management issues surrounding anthony weiner. first the bottom line for television and media companies. led by nbc darling katie couric announcing she signed a deal with abc. what does that mean for the media bottom line? joining us this week, keach hagey. and the congressional producer for cnn, ted barrett. keach, start with you. why did katie couric signed with abc after she had been with nbc and cbs? >> i think she had a tough round at cbs. she was never able to pull them out of thirdlace. they were paying $15 million at a time when networks are really having trouble. i think she is tired of the spotlight and wants to do something new. >> she is coming to our network. tonly the abc are guaranteed to cover the new show. it is going to be a syndicated show says they may or may not see katie couric here in our market. where are the other dominoes falling? >> well, scott has to brandt himself as a slightly more serious news man. for a guy his first night on the air in his new job -- >> anthony weiner. i got called back in it saying he had sent out new pictures. >> he tried to take the high road. he put off the news as far as he possibly could. i think the whington post did give him some reprise for trying to take the high road. >> rate the winners and losers. which affiliate's have the best chances of making more money off of these job changes? >> i think that it will probably be hard to cbs. they have pretty reasonable expectations. i think abc is a big winner in getting cady, but they lost oprah. >> they are getting anderson cooper so aot yet to be seen. speaking of jobs doug, executive pay and new rules about allowing stockholders [unintelligible] >> this is theirst time shareholders get to vote under the new law. we did some research and we found of t the 62 companies to get to vote, only two have voted down the executiveve pay. they do not really get a say. they just to get -- they just get to give their opinion. >> it was interesting to see the two companies. they senate rejected their executive pay. >> 55% of shareholders rejected the pay. of the ceo made it $30 million in salary and additional compensation last year. you cacan understand in theome building world, even though they are one of the better ones, some people thought maybe he did not deserve $30 million. >> what happened with the other? >> they are a internet service provider. comparatively, his pay for ceo was a percentage higher than his colleagues in the industry. >> i would like to make 1518% more than my colleagues. what does this mean for company's overall? >> we have been watching this for a cple of years. it is very interesting. the importanthing to note is even though they do not have an official say in the executive compensation, they do get to vote on the executive compensation committee. if they do not listen to shareholders -- >> ok. ted barrett we are saving you for the next segment because we want to have a roundtable discussion on anthony weiner. 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[ male announcer ] mach tower. heart racing. jaw dropping. coming soon to busch gardens williamsburg. >> back to our roundtable. what the markets may be dealing with watching congress this week the debt ceiling with no progress on the final deal, we want to talk about what everyone else is talking about this week. anthony weiner. we are going to ask how you would handle a problem employee when you cannot fire him and what career rules govern the use of office equipment for issues that arise of a clearly personal nature. ted barrett are going to start with you. anthony weiner was asked by you to just tell the truth. instead, he chose to call you a rather derogatory word on live television. now, congress has a problem on its hands. >> this is a difficult situation for leadership because they are dealing with what they were dealing with in the last two weeks, a lawmaker not telling the truth to the media but private the reassuring them that he had not done anything wrong. >> he was telling members of congress the same thing. >> they weren't inclined to believe him. he is a very effective communicator for the docrats and a very good on television. e problem for managing this crisis of rt leadership is at the scandal itself was all over the democrats' message which at that very time was a big win in the special election in new york. it is hung on the issue of the republican plan to open " privatize" medicare. >> you probably did not spend too much time -- i did the credit card swipe fees but we kept turning back to this issue again and again. talk to us about what congress can do. they cannot fire anthony weiner. >> there have been calls -- this is partly how they are going to minutes this crisis. nancy pelosi called for an ethics investigation as well as some other democrats. this is an attempt to put pressure on anthony weiner to try to get him to leave. >> i do not think he is the kind of guy to respond to that. the investigation really wi come down to the use of office equipment. cell phones that are issued by congress you can do some personal things like, your family. what the issues here? >> the first issue iwhetr or not he used his government- issued equipment. he says he really cannot remember. the ethics guidelines state incidental personal use of house equipment facilities is ok when it is negligiblele in nature. the question is, what will they find? if they do a full investigation, that is really problematic because they will be able to delve into every message he sent and be able to specify where he was when he sent them. >> doug, office equipment, this is an issue that all bosses have to deal with. any thoughts on this? >> it has been a big issue for the last few years. mo comnies have policies. we will not use it for personal use and stuff like that. >> i do not care if my insurance salesman is sexting but members ofongress are supposed to -- >> public employees are held to a different standard. anything they do is available through the f freedom of information act. you can read athing they send in an e-mail or on twitter. >> we have to wrap it up. friday's new york post. "politico's"'s headling -- you say there is another story in this. twitter usage but from the members of congress is going down. all lessons that we can learn. we thank you all for joining us. when we come back, we are going to have the number of the w week. is 1 14. >> now for our number of the week. of 14, the average number of sick days taken each year by american employees. in case you might be tempted to take a day, a pop culture writer has some advice. choose a believable ailment, she says. for example, allergies are always a good bet for washington, d.c. thank you for joining us. we hope to see you hear back sunday. freight rail delivered caterpillar to peoria more than 100 years ago. and they're still delivering cat machines today. you can find us on every continent. and the journey starts here on freight rail america's freight rail companies. helpg deliver jobs across this country and goods around the world. reinvesting billions of their own money every year to build a rail network that powers our economy. nobody moves more dirt than caterpillar. and we rely on freight rail to move us.