Innumerable Pennsylvania consumers have been upset with their utilities even more than usual over the past year due to widespread error-prone billing and the state Public Utility Commission’s habit of rolling over for the companies.
Many Pennsylvania customers of utility companies, for example, aren’t sure why the companies are able to assess a “weather normalization adjustment” that increases their bills even when unseasonably warm weather enables them to use less gas.
Customers might not realize that they pay not only for the power that they use in their homes, but for the utilities’ political power that enables them to have their way with legislators and regulatory agencies.
Utilities use money from customers’ bills to fund their own state and federal government lobbying efforts, and for their memberships in trade associations. So customers often pay for lobbying against their own interests.
As recently reported by The Washington Post, the state governments of Maine, Colorado and Connecticut recently passed laws precluding utilities from using ratepayer money to fund their political activities, including lobbying, politically oriented advertising and trade association membership dues.
In an ironic example, the principle trade group for the power industry, the Edison Electric Institute, paid for Facebook ads in Colorado urging people to oppose the pending law that would have precluded Colorado utilities from using consumers’ money to join the Edison Electric Institute.
In Maine, where voters will decide in December whether the state should buy out Central Maine Power and Versant, which provide 97% of the state’s electricity, the parent companies of both used money derived from ratepayers for $18.4 million worth of ads opposing the referendum.
Even that is a relatively small amount of money in the context of the billions of dollars that utilities collect from ratepayers. But the issue isn’t just money. As Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Connecticut put it: “It’s not purely symbolic. There’s a dollars and cents impact. But it’s more about resetting the relationship and making it clear that Connecticut ratepayers will not be patsies for the benefit of utility shareholders.”
Pennsylvania lawmakers should hear that message and elevate state ratepayers from patsy status.
— Tribune News Service
