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Marissa P. Gillett, the state's chief utility regulator,
watches Gov. Ned Lamont field questions about a new approach to regulation in
April 2023. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG |
Concerning a suit brought by Eversource and Avangrid,
Connecticut’s energy delivery agents, against Connecticut’s Public Utility
Regulatory Agency (PURA), Governor Ned Lamont surprised most of the state’s
political watchers by affecting surprise.
“Look,” Lamont told a Hartford Courant reporter shortly after
the suit was filed, “I think it is incredibly unhelpful,” Lamont said.
“Everyone is getting mad at the umpires.
Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing
suit. It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a
better job of working together.”
Lamont’s claim is far less plausible than the legal claim
made by Eversource and Avangrid. The contretemps between Connecticut’s energy
distributors and Marissa Gillett,
Gov. Ned Lamont’s appointee as chairman of PURA, has been featured in many
Connecticut news outlets for months, most prominently in the Hartford Courant.
How many skilled lawyers in Connecticut did not see this suit
huffing and puffing up the road for months?
According to a recent Courant story “Eversource,
Avangrid sue PURA, claiming CT utility regulators violated law for years”
– the suit filed in Superior Court “by subsidiaries of Eversource and Avangrid
accuses Marissa Gillett, Gov. Ned Lamont’s appointee as chairman of the Public
Utility Regulatory Authority [PURA], of breaking the law by establishing
herself as sole decision maker in matters that are supposed to be decided by a
majority of PURA commissioners.”
To conceal the fact that she alone impermissibly “has been
deciding substantive regulatory questions, [Gillett] has arranged to issue the
decisions above the signature of PURA’s executive secretary,“ a practice that,
it is alleged in the suit, “violates regulatory law establishing PURA as an
impartial, multi-commissioner and quasi-judicial authority, as well as the
utilities’ due process rights by denying them, for at least five years, their
right to appeal decisions made by a single commissioner to a panel of three
commissioners… Unfortunately, certain actors have undertaken a number of unlawful
procedures that have the effect of reducing what the Legislature intentionally
designed as a multi-member agency to the province of one commissioner. Such a
fundamental abuse of authority violates the statutory framework that the
Legislature created to ensure reasonable and functional regulatory oversight of
public service companies such as the plaintiffs.”
At least one legislator is promoting a bill that would grant
to Gillett legislative authority to make such unilateral decisions as she already
has made, a Hail Mary move that seems to acknowledge the legitimacy of the suit.
The bill being offered plainly acknowledges by its presence that Gillett never had been invested with the power and authority she had unilaterally
exercised against the energy distributors.
Eversource and Avangrid companies, the Courant tells us, “have
had their credit ratings lowered in recent months based on what ratings
agencies refer to as the state’s negative regulatory environment. Bank of America, in a utility overview
issued on January 21, called Connecticut ‘probably’ the ‘worst regulatory
environment in the U.S.’”
Lamont also claimed, “I’ve worked with Marissa [Gillett],
made some small changes on the PURA board and reminded the board, ‘Look, you
are not a prosecutor. You are the judge. And if you can, stay out of the press
and take care of what you’ve got to do.’
“And I gave some of the same advice to Eversource and UI. Stop
litigating this in the press. If you don’t like a decision, you can appeal it.
I think that is the best way to handle this. You have an obligation to maintain
the grid, upgrade the grid. That is your legal obligation. If you don’t want to
uphold that obligation, let me know.”
Lamont has not said at what point he delivered these
instructions to Gillett, and the case has now moved from litigation in the
press to litigation in the courts.
The energy providers in Connecticut have been forced into
litigation for two reasons: 1) the impositions imposed unilaterally by Gillett
have severely increased the operating costs of the energy distributors, and
both companies have, in addition, been downgraded by major financial rating
agencies. 2) The downgrades discourage investments in the companies and
increase the interest payments attached to the borrowing of money to finance
operating costs.
“Top legislative Democrats,” the Courant tells us, “have said
the utilities profited excessively in the past and now are trying to intimidate
lawmakers. The co-chairmen of Legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee [Democrat
Senator Norm Needleman and Democrat Representative Jonathan Steinberg] have
suggested that the utilities conspired with global ratings agencies in a
self-destructive agreement to lower their credit scores in the belief that
doing so would somehow discredit Gillett.”
Perhaps a judicial laundering of all this dirty wash might
clear the politically polluted air. One thing is absolutely certain: The most
efficient way to lower the cost of energy in Connecticut is to increase the
supply of energy and lower unnecessary and economically disruptive regulation,
a sane pursuit of legislative remedies now far beyond the ken of conspiracy
minded politicians.
MORE HERE: “PURA
Head Butts the Economic Marketplace”
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