Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Lamont and Gillett They were very damaging admissions on the part of PURA (Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority), a state agency that, captained by Marissa Gillett, sought to lower energy prices by imposing price controls on the state’s energy distributors.   In a front page, top of the fold Hartford Courant story – “CT agency at center of controversy suddenly releases emails at center of long-standing dispute” – we were told, “In another twist in a contentious disagreement over missing documents, the Public Utility Regulatory Authority reversed itself Wednesday and acknowledged the existence of directives limiting the ability of commissioners to consult staff experts directly on regulatory questions.”   The Courant has been following the story through it various permutations. The “contentious disagreement” between the energy distributors and PURA chairman Marissa Gillett has become a matter of court litigation, and litigation usually turns on supportive...

“Oh, what a wicked web we weave, when once we practice to deceive” -- Sir Walter Scott   The headline in the Courant story must be concerning to the defense: “Judge orders CT regulatory agency to explain statements in controversial utility lawsuit.”   Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA) chief Marissa Gillett and her defense lawyers in William Tong’s Attorney General’s office, no strangers to litigation, have a “discovery” problem with Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik. And it appears that Budzik is not one of those judges willing to accept gladly seeming fools who contravene his court orders.   “A judge [Budzik],” the Hartford Courant tell us, “has ordered a lawyer defending the state’s chief utility regulator to appear in court and explain why she denied possessing any electronic records concerning authorship of a controversial, anti-utility opinion column when she knew an automatic deletion program she activated on her telephone would have destroy...

Lamont and Gillett PURA, Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, was instituted to regulate the state’s energy sector, principally two companies – Eversource and United Illuminating – neither of which are energy producers.   The head of PURA, Marissa Gillett, has secured her reappointment, but her job specs have been changed.   We were told in a recent Hartford Courant story, “Gillett has been at the center of a firestorm as the utilities have filed lawsuits in a contentious atmosphere for an agency that in the past was known for being low key and not making headlines… Eversource and United Illuminating filed a lawsuit against PURA, saying that Gillett was deciding issues unilaterally by freezing her two fellow commissioners out of the decision-making process, an allegation PURA and Gillett’s political supporters deny.”   Some Gillett supporters in the General Assembly had inadvertently dotted the “i” and crossed the “t” of the suit’s claim by pr...

Marrisa Gillett With an appreciative nod from Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, Marissa Gillett , has now challenged energy providers in Connecticut to accept what she regards as a fait accompli : swallow losses without raising your prices. Gillett , the head of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) , might very well be the point of a neo-progressive spear in the northeast should she remain untethered to economic reality.     PURA was instituted to oversee energy prices in Connecticut . Gillett and other price control advocates in the state believe the regulatory agency has in the past operated as a r egulation umpire standing between energy producers and energy consumers calling balls and strikes on price increases.     An early interview with Gillett featured in Voltz may seem to the average energy consumer unfamiliar with regulatory jargon unnecessarily obtuse, but here and there Gillett ’s program lifts its head above the d...