Ohio Utility Consumer Advocates Vow Not to Get Fooled Again

Energy Consumer Groups Gather to Monitor New Energy Rules

OhioNewsBureau 

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Vowing to not get fooled again like they did nearly a decade ago when Ohio lawmakers last enacted an electricity deregulation plan that didn’t work, 16 utility consumer advocate groups said they intend to carefully review proposed rules issued Wednesday by Ohio’s utility regulatory commission to assure customers receive the lowest possible price for energy and alternative energy and efficiency standards are respected as intended in a bill that represents a major redesign of Ohio’s energy landscape.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) initiated a process to establish rules implementing portions of Am.Sub.Bill 221, a hybrid bill proposed by Gov. Ted Strickland last fall that went through a couple incarnations in the General Assembly until an acceptable balance between regulation and market forces was struck in was arrived at and signed into law in early May, a year after Strickland first launched his Energy, Jobs and Progress Plan to stabilize electricity prices, create jobs and expand Ohio’s green energy industry.

GROUPS SOUND OFF ON IMPORTANCE OF ENERGY RULES

The rules made public today at the PUCO’s Web site represent an outline of the requirements and procedures for Ohio’s electric distribution utilities to submit electric security plans and market rate options, file corporate separation plans and describe special economic development and efficiency arrangements, according to an agency news release.

The timeline proposed for making the rules permanent while giving various stakeholders input on them runs from July 22nd, when comments to PUCO staff are due, through July 31st when the bill becomes effective to the end of September, when the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, a bi-partisan committee of legislators, is expected to provide final approval of them.

“We need to ensure that customers see the lowest possible electric rates. This can be achieved through a process in which regulated and market options are compared,” said Janine Migden-Ostrander, Ohio Consumers' Counsel. “Aggressive implementation of the alternative energy and energy efficiency standards are also key to long-term price stability.”

Amy Gomberg of Environment Ohio said “The rules also need to ensure that utilities have solid plans for incorporating wind and other renewable energy technologies into the mix of power plants.” She added that “SB 221 made real changes in the types of electricity utilities and marketers must provide.  Customers will see more stable prices over the next 30 years and beyond if the renewable energy requirements are correctly implemented.”

Leigh Herington, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council (NOPEC), Urged that market options need to be kept open, noting that NOPEC has been saving northeast Ohio customers money for seven years. “We need to retain market options as a check on utility rates.”

Noting that for more than three decades residential families in Northern Ohio have suffered from electric rates that were among the highest in Ohio and in the nation,” Tim Walters, a long-time community organizer and spokesperson for the Citizens Coalition, said he is “hopefully the PUCO rules and regulations, implementing the new SB 221 law, will bring a measure of relief by reducing electric rates for all residential customers, including the working poor and low-income families.”

ENERGY RULE PROCESS DIFFERENT THIS TIME

Dave Rinebolt, executive director of Ohio Partners for Affordable Energy, one of the groups included in today’s joint press release issued by the Office of Consumers’ Counsel, said he had not had enough time to digest the rules to speak with any certainty on their contents and significance.

“The Governor and the General Assembly called for transparency in the
process and putting customers and utilities on equal footing,” he added. "The rules must ensure a fair and balanced outcome for all consumers."

However, as a player in the last effort by Ohio lawmakers nearly a decade ago to provide certainty of delivery affordability of price through market competition, Rinebolt said that while the staff last time was driven by the PUCO's chairman, this process is being driven by PUCO staff, who he said has “walled off the world” to their thinking.

“This is different than any process I’ve been involved with for rule making,” said Rinebolt, who was one of four candidates submitted to Strickland to fill a seat on the PUCO but who was not chosen to fill that seat, told the OhioNewsBureau. “The chairman hasn’t driven the rules, it’s been staff driven and they’ve walled off the world in terms of the rules.” He said “nobody knew what was in them” and that even utilities, who many say have had the ear of commissioners far more than consumers, “was unaware of them…not even any gossip.”

Rinebolt, an attorney who said he will be talking about the rules further tomorrow when a conference call with the other groups will take place, said the rule-making process was much longer for SB 3, the number of the last electric bill deregulation bill signed into law in 2000, and that consumer groups then were forced to enter into settlement agreements with stipulations with utilities he said “pretty much ignored the rules.” He and his colleagues want consumers this go-round to gain as much leverage as they can, and are concerned that the rules, which he said have “statute embedded in them,” favor his low-income constituents as much as possible, which would be a big change from who had the upper hand in past negotiations with utility companies.

BEEN THERE, VOTED FOR IT: ONE LEGISLATOR'S VIEW OF THEN AND NOW

One legislator who voted for the electric deregulation bill but who has since left to run a group focused on issues related to land use planning, smart development policies and related green energy efforts, said making the rules come our right for consumers this time will go a long way to making this energy legislation work when the last one didn’t.

Gene Krebs, who served in the Ohio legislature between 1993 and 2000 and whose district was rural and constituents were mostly hard-working farmers, said he and his group are a part of the coalition of energy utility advocates because he considers the placement of wind turbines, a darling energy source Ohio hopes to reap the wind to create jobs from, is basically a land-use issue, one that speaks to the preservation of farmland.

The legislator, who had a perfect attendance record during his seven years of service, said wind turbines, if developed to the extent many supporters of alternative energy sources would like, will boost farm income and the tax base for counties, cities, townships and school districts. “Every single (wind) turbine, if they are taxed as a utility, will almost produce enough revenue to buy a school teacher for the district,” he said, tying the success of Ohio’s new plan for energy to the economic health of school districts, perennially worried about revenue from taxpayers, who are increasingly voting down bond issues and operating levies as their economic fortunes, due to job loss, home foreclosure, too much debt, deteriorate.

Greater Ohio, the group Krebs leads, is concerned about the energy security of Ohio. Based on energy data from 2002, the former lawmaker said Ohio imports $17 billion worth of energy. He wants the state to produce more of its own energy, design more walkable communities, build more green building, further reduce vehicles miles traveled and invest in mass transit.

“Personally, my hands have been burnt so badly I no longer have fingerprints on them,” he said jokingly of his involvement with the passage of SB 3 in 1999. “It didn’t work as we thought it was going to work because of how the rules came out,” he said in a phone interview with OhioNewsBureau. “A burned hand teaches best,” he said, who is cautioning various stakeholders that it would be unwise to delegate too much authority to the PUCO. “We need to set guidelines as firm as they can, in as clear language as possible,” he warned, citing the mention of a 3% rate cape in the bill as in need of much greater definition. He wants the PUCO to know that his group and others will be “carefully monitoring the rule process…to come up with a dynamic that will be more in keeping” with the law.

Krebs, a member of the governing board of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s utility-funded residential consumer watchdog group, noted that the PUCO has been ranked as very friendly to utility company over consumers, often times in the top three, by Lehman Brothers, an investment company.

But with a new Democratic governor leading the state for the first time in 16 years, Krebs thinks the PUCO, its members and especially its chairman, may have a different attitude about this law than it did for the last one, when Ohio had a Republican governor and legislature.

“Strickland has a different emphasis,” said Krebs, who speculates that PUCO chairman Alan Schriber may be singing a new tune in light of constituencies Strickland favors, like consumers and unions. He says the PUCO, which everyone agrees will play more of a role going forward in response to the greater emphasis on regulation instead of pure market forces, “may be hearing what the governor is saying and that we understand he is the governor of the state, and we will be show a  respectful attitude to him.”

Krebs admitting voting for SB 3, but said he “voted for something and held my nose because I got in amendments to protect rural people from voltage power swings,” which he said were blowing up farmer’s electric motors.

OHIO’s UTILITY CONSUMER ADVOCATES

- Office of the Ohio Consumers* Counsel
- Ohio Partners for Affordable Energy
- Ohio Environmental Council
- Environment Ohio
- Appalachian People*s Action Coalition
- Citizen Power
- Communities United for Action
- Consumers for Fair Utility Rates
- Cleveland Housing Network
- Empowerment Center of Greater Cleveland
- Greater Ohio
- Neighborhood Environmental Coalition
- Northwest Ohio Aggregation Coalition
- Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council
- Ohio Interfaith Power and Light
- Ohio State Legal Services Association

To contact this reporter with tips or story leads, send an email to ohionewsbureau@gmail.com