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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”
