Archive for the PSC category
Turn out the lights
Jeff Davis helped engineer a deal that resulted in a blatantly anti-consumer utility law in 2005.
He helped write the rules that dictate how the law can be used to fatten utility company bottom lines.
And when one of those utilities files a legal case to take advantage of it, he serves as a judge and helps give the yea or nay.
Please click here to read the entire St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial.
Consumers are rejected in late night meeting with legislators
by Michael Sorkin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Consumers complain that they don’t get much respect from Missouri legislators, even in an election year.
A group of consumer representatives asked a key legislative committee to block surcharges that could be tacked onto consumer electric bills starting this year. Critics say it could add millions of dollars to monthly electric bills statewide.
The legislators agreed to hear the consumers — at 10 p.m. Tuesday, on April Fools’ Day. Please click here to read the full story.
Home water rates are going up
The price of water in St. Louis went up Tuesday, and residents of St. Louis and St. Charles counties and Southern Illinois may be next to pay more when they turn on their water faucets at home.
St. Louis residents buy water from the city. The Board of Aldermen and the mayor passed a law to raise rates by 19 percent starting this month. A typical city resident will pay $58.80 every three months, up from $49.54.
Those rates will go up again on July 1, 2009, by 11 percent.
Meanwhile, the Missouri-American Water Co. is seeking rate increases for its 466,000 water customers in Missouri. The company asked state regulators this week to approve $50 million in annual rate increases. Increases would vary by community. Click here to read the full story.
Power switch
Missouri utilities want to change state law to encourage energy efficiency programs. They’re willing to help their customers pay for installing energy-saving equipment, insulation or even new energy-saving air-conditioning systems.
Saving power is a good thing — for the nation, for consumers and especially for electric companies. It means they don’t have to build expensive new power plants to meet increasing demand. The economic benefits for utilities are so great, in fact, that legislators should be asking why Senate Bill 1277 and House Bill 2298 are needed to encourage them.
The answer is that they are not. Not the way they’re currently written, anyway, and probably not at all. Please click here to read the full editorial that ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, March 16, 2008.
| Dear Friends:Once again the Missouri Public Service Commission takes action to benefit the utilities and not consumers. The attached St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial criticizes the PSC’s adoption of an environmental surcharge—criticism the Consumers Council of Missouri has raised ever since passage of SB179 in 2005. This unfortunate statute approves four possible surcharges which can be added to utility bills. The PSC has already approved two—the fuel surcharge and the environmental surcharge. Now each and every one will have to be opposed when they are presented for adoption. It will be a challenging task considering the current composition of the current PSC. I recommend you read the editorial in full.
Alberta Slavin, Consumer Council President Post Dispatch Editorial
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Please see STLToday for the rest of the editorial
Jeffrey Tomich of the St. Louis Post Dispatch
02/28/2008 4:03 pm
The Missouri Public Service Commission voted 4-1 Thursday approving rules that may allow electric utilities to impose a customer surcharge to recover environmental expenses, PSC spokesman Kevin Kelly said.
Commissioner Robert Clayton III voted against the rules, which will take effect later this year.
The rules are based on 2005 legislation that was pushed by the utilities to help them recoup certain expenses without having to go through a rate case, a thorough, 11-month review of all a utility’s costs and expenses.
Utilities would need individual approval from the PSC to add a surcharge, which would be a separate line item on bills and could be adjusted from year to year. The amount of the surcharge would be limited to 2.5 percent of a utility’s revenue. St. Louis-based AmerenUE’s revenue exceeded $2 billion in 2007.
For instance, Aquila CEO Rick Green earlier this year told his board of directors in an e-mail that PSC Chairman Jeff Davis had indicated he favored the deal and wanted it to go through quickly.
It would be highly unethical behavior for a regulator to make such a decision without hearing the evidence in public.
For the full editorial from the Kansas City Star, click here.
In the wake of the scandal involving PSC commissioners and utility executives involved with the proposed merger of KCP&L and Aquila, Governor Matt Blunt is calling on the PSC to review its conflict of interest policies. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis, is calling for a Senate-led investigation.
For a posting at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch blog, click here.
By David A. Lieb
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The state’s top utility regulator said today that he will remove himself from a decision on whether to approve the sale of Aquila Inc. to utility rival Great Plains Energy Inc.Public Service Commission Chairman Jeff Davis told The Associated Press that he plans to recuse himself from the case because of a controversy over a conversation he had with Aquila’s chief executive. But Davis denied any wrongdoing.
For the full story, click here.
Michael Sorkin of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting this afternoon that Lewis Mills, who heads Missouri’s office of public counsel, said today four of the five commissioners on the state’s Public Service Commission are “tainted” by behind-doors conversations with power company executives in a merger case. He also said customers could not expect a fair trial before the commission.
For the full article, click here.
