PUC hears support for plan to provide help in paying bills

Timothy Barmann
Providence Journal (RI)
August 1, 2003


PAWTUCKET -- Speaker after speaker told how they have struggled to pay their utility bills.
There was Irene Vivier, who said her $629 monthly disability check barely covers her rent of $500 a month, let alone her gas and electric bills.

And there was Lashawn King, a single mother of two children, one with asthma. She's been without hot water for two months because her gas has been shut off for nonpayment. She heats up water to bathe her 1-year-old daughter with a microwave oven. She owes $2,184 to the gas company.

"I don't think I can do this," she said. "I'm asking for help. I'm struggling."

These were some of the stories the Public Utilities Commission heard last night at a public hearing, which was held to take public comment on a plan the PUC is considering to help low-income families afford utility bills.

The plan would give discounts based on a family's income, and it would also provide for a one-time forgiveness of past debts to gas and electric companies.

The plan, which supporters call the "affordable energy bargain," is the result of an 18-month effort by several community groups, state agencies and utility company representatives. The group was charged by the PUC with coming up with a plan to help curb the ongoing problem of utility shutoffs.

Utility companies shut off service to thousands of Rhode Islanders each year for not paying their bills on time.

In the first half of this year, 8,600 households lost gas or electricity service, an increase of 70 percent over the same period last year. Part of that increase is likely the result of this year's unusually cold winter, combined with high fuel prices. (The shutoff numbers for last year may have been artificially low because a labor dispute prevented New England Gas from performing as many shutoffs as usual.) Shutoffs this year were 12 percent higher than they were in the first six months of 2001.

While the group that devised the energy bargain plan agreed on the principle of providing discounts and debt forgiveness, they could not agree on how to pay for such a plan. Part of the money could come from LIHEAP -- the annual allotment the state gets from the federal government to help low-income residents pay for heat. The state received $11.5 million this year. That won't be enough.

For the rest of the money, consumer groups such as ACORN and the Campaign to Eliminate Childhood Poverty want to tack a surcharge on the bills of all gas and electricity customers of about 1 percent each month. Utility companies don't support such a surcharge, though they haven't offered any concrete alternatives.

What is clear, according to those who testified last night, is that some kind of plan is desperately needed. Some 80 people, mostly women, came to the hearing, held in the council chambers at Pawtucket City Hall.

About 50 were members of the group ACORN, and they carried signs and shouted slogans as they marched into the council chambers.

PUC commissioner Kate Racine smiled as the marchers filed into the chambers. When they were finished chanting, she welcomed them, and invited them to tell their stories.

"The Latino or the Hispanic community is in a state of poverty now for a lack of work and for the poor wages we receive," said Alicia Lopera.

"The major part of our salaries go towards paying our gas bills, our electric bills. That leaves us without enough money to buy food for our children."

Margaret Rogers, of Pawtucket, said that although she wouldn't qualify for heating assistance, she supports paying the extra surcharge every month to pay for it.

She views the plan as a kind of insurance policy. She might need the help someday, and paying an extra $24 a year is worth it, she said.

Representatives from New England Gas and from Narragansett Electric sat quietly in the audience.

"Unfortunately, we hear these problems year in and year out," said Daniel Crocker, an attorney with Partridge Snow & Hahn, which represents New England Gas, during a break in the hearing.

"With the bad economy, it seems to have gotten worse," he said.

Both the gas and electric companies have come out against adding a surcharge to customers's bills.

Raising rates to pay for the program, Crocker said, is a "difficult thing for the gas company to support."

John Gallagher, of Woonsocket, noted that those who oppose the plan cite the fact that businesses will foot about half the bill, though they will receive no benefit. He said some companies, such as GTECH and Lincoln Greyhound Park are the beneficiaries of tax breaks because it's good for business.

"Keeping these people alive, preventing people from freezing to death in their trucks in the winter is good business."