Posted on August 12, 2020
Dear Friends, Neighbors and Eversource Citizen Ratepayers:
I have important news to report regarding Eversource and their ill-timed July 1, 2020 breathtaking hike of our electric delivery rates.
As you know, at the insistence of my office and legislative colleagues in all four caucuses, the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) temporarily suspended Eversource’s recent rate increase while it conducts a full review, the purpose of which is to ensure that Eversource is not over-collecting revenues in the short term at the expense of ratepayers. Likewise, a similar but lower rate increase request from United Illuminating has already been suspended indefinitely.
Before Tropical Storm Isaias, many of you had reached out to my office to share your frustrations and impact these electric rate hikes will have on you and your family especially with many of you forced to work from home during the summer months due to the COVID pandemic.
Now that we have all seen and experienced the epic failure and complete lack of urgency on the part of Eversource in their post-storm response, this monopoly electric utility company has a lot of explaining to do about how they could be so ill-prepared for the storm, as it followed its predicted path for days.
Despite supposedly applying past electric rate increases to improving manpower, line-hardening and tree trimming to ensure week long electric outages did not happen after the storms of 2011 and 2012, how could this happen again and actually be worse than past experiences?
There will be a PURA Zoom Hearing held on August 24, at 10:00 a.m. and you are invited to share your thoughts and suggestions, as well as attend this meeting. My colleague, Danbury Representative David Arconti is a Co-Chair of the Energy & Technology Committee and has expressly requested the attendance of Eversource CEO, Jim Joyce be on-hand to answer for his company’s performance.
To attend, you MUST register ahead of time by clicking https://ctdeep.zoom.us/…/tJYqcO2urTosGtGf4iMYOF9fUA1xdzNgkD…
The meeting ID # 927 7463 1605. If you only want to view the meeting, it will also be available to watch on ct-n.com.
Written testimony becomes part of the public record. To submit constructive testimony, please compose and email it 3-days prior to: pura.information@ct.gov and please copy me, Mitch.Bolinsky@housegop.ct.gov on the email. If you have not submitted testimony or testified before and would like guidance on how to make the most of your efforts or, if you run into any issues while attempting to register, please contact me, I’m happy to help!
To review, this hearing is about how Eversource jacked our delivery rates without proper public process, without legislative notice and how we will recover their overcharges for you. It is not about their terrible storm response. Further information about Eversource’s accountability and prevention of future service debacles will follow, probably in a couple weeks.
Be Well. Stay safe. Spread only hope.