Seeking to shake up the state’s utility board and reduce rates, a key Republican leader called Thursday for Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont to appoint a Republican lawmaker to help fill all five seats on the regulatory board.
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora said that he had spoken with Lamont during the past two weeks and proposed the nomination of state Rep. Holly Cheeseman, a respected member of the legislature’s energy committee who lost her bid for re-election in November. As such, Cheeseman could devote fulltime efforts as a member of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, known as PURA.
The utility regulators have been enmeshed in controversy for years as they have battled against the utilities that say that they cannot earn enough money to make important investments in Connecticut. A key Wall Street agency lowered its credit rating last week on two gas utilities, citing rate decisions by the regulators that affected the financial viability of Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas.
But Lamont rejected the ideas of the House Republican leader.
“We have some of the highest electric prices in the lower 48 states, and if the answer to it is going from three PURA commissioners to five PURA commissioners, God bless you,” Lamont said Thursday in downtown Hartford when asked by The Courant. “I’m not going to make a big fuss out of it, but it won’t make any difference.”
Lamont has repeatedly ignored Republican calls for increasing the number of utility regulators. But Candelora noted that the Lamont administration is ignoring state law, which says the utility agency shall have five commissioners.
Saying that the number of commissioners is not the answer, Lamont said the solution is increasing the amount of supply of electricity in Connecticut.
In another development, the two co-chairmen of the legislature’s energy committee, Sen. Norm Needleman of Essex and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Westport, wrote an opinion article in the CT Mirror that blasted the “propaganda” of the utility companies.
“To suggest that these ratings agencies are independent or objective is nonsensical,” the Democratic legislators wrote. “The utility itself can pass through the cost of debt to its captive customers, so what does the utility care if it becomes the company that cries wolf and provokes a downgrade in pursuit of its grander strategy to warn regulators across New England not to replicate the accountability measures and rate decreases imposed by its Connecticut regulators?”
The legislators added, “Let’s get real. The actual tax-paying businesses in the state of Connecticut who have to compete for customers already know this: a vigilant regulator who orders rate reductions when the record supports it, as well as one that imposes enhanced accountability and transparency in conjunction with the legislature and the governor, is a better long-term bet than the unfounded rhetoric and propaganda of investor-owned monopolies with fiduciary duties to their shareholders.”
Candelora said he was flabbergasted by what he read.
“They’re now putting forth these conspiracy theories that somehow S&P and Moody’s, who are long-respected ratings agencies, are conspiring with the utility companies to create this type of environment,” Candelora told reporters in Hartford. “These level of conspiracies is rising to the level of science fiction movies. These ratings agencies are heavily regulated by the federal government. They have ethics standards. These are publicly traded companies. The gamesmanship that they are suggesting isn’t possible.”
Regarding the conspiracy theory, Lamont said, “I wouldn’t say that. Look, the analysts and the utilities work together very closely. There’s no question about it. I’ve talked to a number of the analysts. It’s just worth noting that they’re downgrading utilities all across the country. It’s worth noting that they downgraded Eversource not just in Connecticut but also in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. You can’t blame all that on [Connecticut PURA chairwoman] Marissa Gillette.”
Gillette has been a lightning rod for the utilities and has come under fierce criticism by utility supporters for not approving more rate increases.
PURA
One of the key concerns of Republicans is the authority of the PURA, which was combined into the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in 2011 under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Republicans want to restore the independence of the utility regulators in the same vein as the once-powerful Department of Public Utility Control, known as the DPUC, that ruled on major issues like proposed mergers of utilities. When three PURA commissioners called for more independence in 2015 because they were serving in a “dysfunctional” agency, Malloy responded that they could simply resign if they were concerned about the structure of the organization.
More recently, the state legislature passed a law so that five members would be allowed on the PURA board, but only three of the positions have been filled for most of Lamont’s tenure.
“He has always said we don’t need to go to five. Yes, you do,” Candelora said Thursday. “You have to follow the law. For a sitting governor to say, ‘I’m not going to follow the law’ is alarming and disconcerting to me. I said that a year ago, and frankly, I’ve been amazed that nobody seems to care about this.”
Both Republicans and Democrats said in 2019 that one of the PURA appointments would be set aside for Nick Balletto, the former Democratic state chairman who was ousted by Lamont as the party’s leader. But the Lamont administration said at the time that the authority was being expanded to go back to its original, five-member board of the past and not as a favor for Balletto, who has not been appointed in the five years since then. PURA currently has four commissioners, but the longest-serving, former state legislator Jack Betkoski III of Beacon Falls, will be stepping down at the end of the year – reducing the number back to three.
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
