Hastings: 'AEP has lit a prairie fire with its destructive actions'
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Hillsboro Mayor Drew Hastings has submitted the text of his address at a hearing Friday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to review a modified Electric Security Plan (ESP) submitted by American Electric Power (AEP).
The meeting was held March 23 at the Public Utility Commission of Ohio in Columbus.
In a March 16 letter from AEP senior counsel Matthew J. Satterwhite to the PUCO chairman, Todd A. Snitchler, the commission had been told that the meeting will address the "matter of application of Columbus Southern Ohio Power and Ohio Power Company for authority to establish a standard service offer pursuant to Section 4928.143 of the Ohio Revised Code of an electric security plan."
The AEP letter references Case Nos. 11-346-EL-SSO (Highland County consumers' case number), 11-348-EL-SSO, 11-349-EL-AAM, and 11-350-EL-AAM, and seeks "approval of certain accounting authority."
After numerous complaints from Highland County small business owners and other consumers over excessive increases in their recent AEP bills, last month PUCO ordered AEP to restore its rates to December 2011 levels.
In late February, the commission disapproved AEP-Ohio’s electric security plan (ESP) as it was outlined in a settlement agreement submitted by 21 of 31 parties to the case.
Hastings' address to the commission ands AEP reads as submitted by the mayor's office:
During the past 60 days, the people of Ohio, and Hillsboro more specifically, have learned much about the energy market, and our vulnerability as consumers to the licensed monopolies that provide us with our electric power.
As AEP’s ratepayers, we’ve learned the unwelcomed news that we must bear the unfair burden of this company’s rapacious greed or its obvious failure to prepare for a so-called deregulated marketplace. We are struggling to distinguish which is a more accurate description. Either way, AEP will again soon ask the PUCO to approve significant rate and service fee increases that are simply unsustainable in our current economic climate.
In the face of unprecedented anger with PUCO’s December rate decision, the Commission has wisely backtracked, and so here we are today locked in a desperate struggle for our livelihoods, as AEP ponders what short-sighted policies it must ram-through, this Commission in order to secure its 12 percent targeted annual rate of return. Never-mind, that the economy’s growth rate is flat, AEP appears hell-bent to stick consumers, who cannot afford these increases, with a tab that can be described not only as a job killer, but as an existing small business killer.
For years, AEP has relied on keeping consumers confused with mystifying and undecipherable jargon, and upon its powerful allies and friends in state government, to pass on significant cost increases to its consumers. Just a few years ago, when electricity prices were relatively high, AEP was swimming in profits, more than $7 billion in earnings during the period of 2008-11. Coming on top of nearly $600 million in federal and state tax subsidies to improve its operational efficiencies, AEP paid little or no income taxes for years because of the tax breaks that it has built into state and federal law.
With the economic downturn and the advent of so-called competition, AEP’s position in the marketplace has apparently deteriorated as its customers fled to better managed utilities offering more competitive rates. So what is AEP’s response? Use its lobbying clout, greased with generous political donations, to stick its customers with its so-called losses, despite the company’s ample profits.
Just this month, AEP successfully lobbied this Commission for a "capacity charge," of roughly 1.6 cents per kilowatt-hour applied when customers switch to a competitor. This is simply shameful, and makes a mockery of the so-called de-regulated energy market cherished by the politicians who dreamed up this scheme.
Note that AEP’s competitors, including Akron-based FirstEnergy, have suggested that the capacity charge is merely a way for AEP to shut out competition and hold its customers captive to high rates. AEP, like so many others, seeks to throw overboard the risk and reward model of economic growth and replace it with a model far more sinister and pernicious in American life today, “private profit, and subsidized losses.” This is not competition, but rather the worst form of corporate welfare sanctioned by the state.
In response to PUCO’s decision to rescind the unfair increases of December, AEP President Nick Akins has warned of significant job loses, including a possible relocation of AEP headquarters out of Ohio. This blackmail, legal or not, illustrates how poorly led this company is. And this week, the CEO also announced a new President of AEP Ohio, Mr. Pablo Vegas. Brought in from Texas because, as Mr. Akins crows, “Pablo Vegas has a knack for getting regulatory approvals.” Tell Mr. Vegas to hone his skills at consumer approvals. He’ll need them.
If PUCO grants these destructive rate and services increases by AEP, the decision will provide further evidence that the energy marketplace in this state is rigged in favor of a few at the expense of the many. Many of us in this room today will refuse to allow this issue to fade away.
AEP has lit a prairie fire with its destructive actions, and bought itself intractable and vocal critics, including myself and the people that I represent, among many others. Yes, you’ve started a prairie fire and with the current political winds, who knows in what direction this fire will spread. We will closely examine AEP’s submission to PUCO in the days ahead, and the utilities’ executives and Commission members should expect that we will not go away until justice is served.
Thank you.
Hillsboro Mayor Drew Hastings has submitted the text of his address at a hearing Friday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to review a modified Electric Security Plan (ESP) submitted by American Electric Power (AEP).
The meeting was held March 23 at the Public Utility Commission of Ohio in Columbus.
In a March 16 letter from AEP senior counsel Matthew J. Satterwhite to the PUCO
chairman, Todd A. Snitchler, the commission had been told that the meeting will address the "matter of application of Columbus Southern Ohio Power and Ohio Power Company for authority to establish a standard service offer pursuant to Section 4928.143 of the Ohio Revised Code of an electric security plan."
The AEP letter references Case Nos. 11-346-EL-SSO (Highland County consumers' case number), 11-348-EL-SSO, 11-349-EL-AAM, and 11-350-EL-AAM, and seeks "approval of certain accounting authority."
After numerous complaints from Highland County small business owners and other consumers over excessive increases in their recent AEP bills, last month PUCO ordered AEP to restore its rates to December 2011 levels.
In late February, the commission disapproved AEP-Ohio’s electric security plan (ESP) as it was outlined in a settlement agreement submitted by 21 of 31 parties to the case.
Hastings' address to the commission ands AEP reads as submitted by the mayor's office:
During the past 60 days, the people of Ohio, and Hillsboro more specifically, have learned much about the energy market, and our vulnerability as consumers to the licensed monopolies that provide us with our electric power.
As AEP’s ratepayers, we’ve learned the unwelcomed news that we must bear the unfair burden of this company’s rapacious greed or its obvious failure to prepare for a so-called deregulated marketplace. We are struggling to distinguish which is a more accurate description. Either way, AEP will again soon ask the PUCO to approve significant rate and service fee increases that are simply unsustainable in our current economic climate.
In the face of unprecedented anger with PUCO’s December rate decision, the Commission has wisely backtracked, and so here we are today locked in a desperate struggle for our livelihoods, as AEP ponders what short-sighted policies it must ram-through, this Commission in order to secure its 12 percent targeted annual rate of return. Never-mind, that the economy’s growth rate is flat, AEP appears hell-bent to stick consumers, who cannot afford these increases, with a tab that can be described not only as a job killer, but as an existing small business killer.
For years, AEP has relied on keeping consumers confused with mystifying and undecipherable jargon, and upon its powerful allies and friends in state government, to pass on significant cost increases to its consumers. Just a few years ago, when electricity prices were relatively high, AEP was swimming in profits, more than $7 billion in earnings during the period of 2008-11. Coming on top of nearly $600 million in federal and state tax subsidies to improve its operational efficiencies, AEP paid little or no income taxes for years because of the tax breaks that it has built into state and federal law.
With the economic downturn and the advent of so-called competition, AEP’s position in the marketplace has apparently deteriorated as its customers fled to better managed utilities offering more competitive rates. So what is AEP’s response? Use its lobbying clout, greased with generous political donations, to stick its customers with its so-called losses, despite the company’s ample profits.
Just this month, AEP successfully lobbied this Commission for a "capacity charge," of roughly 1.6 cents per kilowatt-hour applied when customers switch to a competitor. This is simply shameful, and makes a mockery of the so-called de-regulated energy market cherished by the politicians who dreamed up this scheme.
Note that AEP’s competitors, including Akron-based FirstEnergy, have suggested that the capacity charge is merely a way for AEP to shut out competition and hold its customers captive to high rates. AEP, like so many others, seeks to throw overboard the risk and reward model of economic growth and replace it with a model far more sinister and pernicious in American life today, “private profit, and subsidized losses.”
This is not competition, but rather the worst form of corporate welfare sanctioned by the state.
In response to PUCO’s decision to rescind the unfair increases of December, AEP President Nick Akins has warned of significant job loses, including a possible relocation of AEP headquarters out of Ohio. This blackmail, legal or not, illustrates how poorly led this company is. And this week, the CEO also announced a new President of AEP Ohio, Mr. Pablo Vegas. Brought in from Texas because, as Mr. Akins crows, “Pablo Vegas has a knack for getting regulatory approvals.” Tell Mr. Vegas to hone his skills at consumer approvals. He’ll need them.
If PUCO grants these destructive rate and services increases by AEP, the decision will provide further evidence that the energy marketplace in this state is rigged in favor of a few at the expense of the many. Many of us in this room today will refuse to allow this issue to fade away.
AEP has lit a prairie fire with its destructive actions, and bought itself intractable and vocal critics, including myself and the people that I represent, among many others. Yes, you’ve started a prairie fire and with the current political winds, who knows in what direction this fire will spread. We will closely examine AEP’s submission to PUCO in the days ahead, and the utilities’ executives and Commission members should expect that we will not go away until justice is served.
Thank you.
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