The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
After Eversource fiasco, give power to the people
It’s been a tough week for big electric companies in Connecticut, but it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
Let’s review:
⏩ First, Eversource raised rates on July 1 — in part because people had been using less electricity, and everyone knows the money spigot cannot be closed for a monopoly doing business as a “public utility.” Those quote marks are not original with me. Rep. Steve Strafstrom (D-Bridgeport) mentioned that conundrum on Twitter last week when he asked: “Can someone explain to me why a ‘public utility’ that operates as a monopoly can be traded on an exchange and has a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder profit?” (This when Connecticut residents already pay some of the highest rates in the country. So there’s that.)
⏩ Then, EversourceCT vastly underestimated the impact of the tropical storm Isaias, which left the state looking like a giant had stomped through. Altogether, nearly a million customers without power. (United Illuminating, the state’s other big electric company, called it correctly, which sped their customers’ power recovery.)
⏩ Then there was Eversource’s communication system, where customers who managed to get through to report their outage were greeted with a tin-eared recorded explanation of the fee hike.
⏩ A corollary: Then the company’s website wouldn’t update, and people in towns around the state were greeted with the message that Eversource was still “evaluating” the damage, which left everyone in the dark in every imaginable way.
(Hi, EversourceCT. Customer here. I know my bill is late, but I’m still evaluating it. I’ll let you know when I’m done evaluating. It could be days.)
A long, hot, sticky summer in a pandemic is a good petri dish for growing discontent. This kind of shoddy business governance stood out, and people spoke up. The co-chair of the legislative energy and technology committee called for Eversource’s CEO, James Judge, to resign. State Sen. Norm Needleman, a Democrat who represents Essex, is a selfidentified capitalist. He does not tend to call on CEOs to resign, but the buck has to stop somewhere, he said, and if it’s with James Judge, who last year pulled down far more than you did, c’est la guerre. (Sen. Needleman says he will be seeing what can be done legislatively. Jim? You’ve been warned.)
Mayor Mark Boughton, of Danbury, took to Twitter to ask for help with Glen Apartments, where a large group of elderly people and people with disabilities remained without lights days after the storm. The town responded beautifully, according to a Boughton spokeswoman. The electric company, not so much, so Boughton tweeted that it was time to break up with them.
“A monopoly only works as a board game,” he tweeted. He later called Eversource’s congratulatory public messages to itself “laughable.” He suggested a more temperate approach,
A tree is broken down after causing damage to a home on Mianus View Terrace Cos Cob last week.
and reimbursing customers who had to toss out rotted food.
In fact, Working Families Party started a petition to require the electric companies follow the lead of Con Edison in New York, and reimburse customers for spoiled food and medication.
If this was strictly a matter of meat spoiling in the fridges of homes of people who can afford to grocery shop, it would be annoying. But the outage forced some people to go back to their job sites — some for the first time in months — in order to get back online and keep working.
The extended outages happened in a week leading up to the state’s primary and on election day. A spokesman from the Secretary of State’s office said the office gave UI and Eversource a list of the state’s 750 polling places prior to the storm. By the day before the election, just 7 polling places were without electricity, and all of those were powered by a generator. That push to restore energy was supported by Gov. Ned Lamont and the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), the agency responsible for
rates and services of utilities such as Eversource.
(So now we know Eversource answers at least some phone calls. Neither the CEO board members have answered any my requests for a conversation.)
The issue goes beyond inconvenience for lowincome state residents who are already living on the edge, said Joanne Goldblum, CEO of National Diaper Network and coauthor of the forthcoming book, “Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty.”
“By definition, people living in poverty do not have extra money,” said Goldblum. “The money you have to prepare for a storm is what you have in your wallet. And that will also be the money you’ll have after the storm to get by should your place of work be closed for days, weeks or more. A family living on SNAP benefits that loses all their food because of a blackout does not have extra cash to resupply.”
PURA has scheduled a public hearing to ask if maybe, given their rotten response to Isaias, Eversource is charging its customers too much. The meeting will be held on Zoom. The meeting ID is # 927 7463 1605.
Oddly, Eversource let investors know they won’t feel the sting of paying for the cleanup. They’ve offered reassurances, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission , that investors shouldn’t worry about any “material impact.”
The company filed that fast, didn’t they? Wouldn’t it be awesome if they were that quick to turn the lights back on? Time for a change. Time for Connecticut residents who are subject to electrical monopolies to take back the power.