GOP intensifies pressure to reduce Eversource and UI costs
The Republican minority in the state legislature on Tuesday stepped up its push to lower electricity prices this fall by using budget surpluses.
GOP leadership and their colleagues launched a petition to force a special session on the issue, but because a majority of lawmakers in the House and Senate are needed to force a special session — and because Democratic lawmakers oppose the move for several reasons — the prospect of votes in the House this fall remains slim.
“Today we are here to say we are not going away,” said Republican House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora of North Branford during a morning press conference in the Legislative Office Building. “What we continue to hear from our constituents is not, ‘I don’t want to pay my electric bill.’ It’s, ‘I can’t pay my electric bill.'”
Stephen Harding, Republican Senate Minority Leader, added: “It is a dereliction of duty as a representative or senator not to take action on this issue, and not now.” The next regular session of Parliament does not begin until January 8.
Republicans say they have a strategy to reduce the average residential customer’s annual electricity bill by about $125.
Republican Party leaders said last week they would use about $300 million of the government’s $1.6 billion surplus generated in the last fiscal year to offset two state-imposed surcharges on consumers’ utility bills.
The first concerns the hardship costs incurred by the state’s two largest utilities – Eversource and United Illuminating – from customers who failed to pay their bills. These hardship costs increased significantly between March 2020 and May 2024, when lawmakers implemented special limits on utility interruptions to help households cope with costs associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
The second award is related to a nine-year plan launched in 2021 that aims to implement a nationwide electric vehicle charging program.
GOP leadership said all 53 Republicans in the House and all 12 in the Senate had signed the petition to force a session, but that is not possible without a majority of members of both chambers, 76 representatives and 19 senators.
Democratic leaders said last week that the Republicans’ cost-cutting plan made no sense.
House Speaker Matt Ritter (D-Hartford) said his office expects monthly savings to be closer to half the figure cited by Republicans.
And both he and Senate President pro tempore Martin M. Looney (D-New Haven) pointed out that Republicans are targeting money earmarked for expanding the state’s emergency reserve, commonly known as the “emergency fund.” That seems like a double standard, Democratic leaders say, pointing out that it runs counter to state budget controls that Republicans say must be strictly adhered to.
Democrats say the minority is only trying to win voters’ support with meager relief measures in a state election year.
“A lot of what (Republicans) have proposed politically is pure politics,” said Senator Norm Needleman (D-Essex), co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee.
Eversource and United Illuminating do not generate their own electricity, but buy it from generators. Republicans also want to set a cap on future power purchase agreements in a special session that would prohibit utilities from paying more than 150 percent of the average wholesale market price.
Republicans also say lawmakers and Democratic Governor Ned Lamont need to meet to discuss filling the two vacant seats on the state’s five-member Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA).
The governor wrote to Republican party leadership on Tuesday that he had invited the legislature to discuss important issues and that he remained open to discussions.
“High energy costs do no one any good,” he wrote. “What we need are practical, real solutions that will reduce energy costs in the long term. I firmly believe that this is not a partisan issue and that we all want a system that lowers the cost of producing and delivering energy.”
The governor added: “The answer does not lie in bureaucratic restructuring at PURA.”
During a public event later Tuesday, the governor did not rule out short-term subsidies to lower energy bills, but said the optimal solution is to find ways to improve energy supply in Connecticut.
