Utilities spend big to lobby Conn. lawmakers
In recent years, the state’s two major electric utilities have spent about the same amounts for their annual lobbying of the Connecticut legislature.
In 2015-16, Avangrid UIL Holdings Corp., the parent of United Illuminating, paid lobbyists about $779,000, while Eversource spent about $1.6 million, according to the Office of State Ethics. The latest filing, for 2021-22, shows a slight decrease to $447,000 for Avangrid and $1.5 for Eversource.
But Connecticut lawmakers, consumer advocates and researchers believe that executives of the regional electric providers are dividing and conquering individual states in the Northeast, one state at a time, while delaying overall efforts to address climate change. Environment and climate activists, as well as rate payers are under-funded in comparison to the corporate footprints in the State Capitol.
On Friday, majority Democrats in the state Senate called for a multi-state hearing on the Bostonbased Eversource’s plans to double electric rates starting January 1, the result of rising natural gas prices the utilities have said.. United Illuminating, which provides service for the New Haven region, has similar plans, which still have to be reviewed by regulators. If approved, the average Eversource customer would pay an additional $85 a month and $74 per month for United Illuminating customers.
Last year a Brown University study indicated that corporate electric and gas interests have a “strategic advantage and can slow down strong climate policy and the potential for transformational change.”
“They have a slew of lobbyists,” said Tom Swan, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, adding that he is worried about the so-called revolving door in which state employees transition into the corporate sphere very quickly for their benefit, but not consumers. “When we pay the highest rates, and while corporations get rewarded for lying to the legislature, it’s a real problem.”
Swan recalled that during the eight-year term of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, consumers were told that burning natural gas for power was a bridge in the transition to renewable
sources of energy. “Now they’re trying to say that hydrogen is going to save us, but until then, we have to prop up the gas pipelines,” Swan said.
The current filings in the Office of State Ethics indicate 11 registered lobbyists for Eversource and an identical amount for Avangrid.
“Eversource has quite a big presence at the Capitol between staff and their own contract lobbyists,”
said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, DNew Haven, who back in 1998 was the co-chairman of the legislative tax-writing Finance Committee during the session in which a restructuring of the state’s electric industry, pushed United Illuminating and then-Northeast Utilities, now Eversource, out of the generation business.
State Sen. Norm Needleman,
D-Essex, co-chairman of the legislative Energy & Technology Committee, said it is very obvious that his panel is the most-heavily lobbied in the State Capitol. “I do not think they are out of line, because between the two companies they own electric service, and in Eversource’s case their own electric, gas and water service through Aquarion, and they need access to make their case,” Needleman said.
“But their business model — multi-jurisdiction, multi-platform — is a license to print money. Capitalism is a gamed system. It’s critical to have people in elective office making sure it is not done in an inappropriate way.”
Needleman said that over the last four years, the energy committee has focused on rate payers, including the 2020 legislation that passed in a fall special session, weeks after much of the state sweated through a week-long power outage in August heat that spoiled food and medicine.
While lobbyists pitch their side of the issues, the Office of Consumer Counsel and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, both based in PURA headquarters in New Britain, have less of a presence in the Capitol, he said. “There have been significant positives and significant negatives since 1998,” said Needleman, who is also the first selectman of the town of Essex.
“I believe we have done what we needed to do,” Needleman said. “No one complains when electricity goes down a penny per kilowatt hour. “It’s hard to deal with from a public-perception view. We’re a highly wooded state, so maintaining a grid isn’t cheap. New England is more-expensive. Having the power lines as free as possible and supporting natural beauty is not an easy thing to do.”