Anti-poverty advocates push utilities discount plan

Douglas Hadden
Pawtucket Times (RI)
August 1, 2003


PAWTUCKET -- Scores of people, many arriving in a big yellow bus, rallied in front of City Hall, then packed the council chamber Thursday night in support of a three-part plan to ease the high costs of gas and electric utilities for low-income people.

The occasion was the first of a series of public hearings by the state Public Utilities Commission on the plan, backed in all three parts by a grassroots coalition, but with utilities opposing a funding option that would hike their customers’ bills.

Backers of the entire plan include such social agencies and groups as Progreso Latino, the R.I. Campaign to End Childhood Poverty, the George Wiley Center, Project Hope and the Providence-based chapter of ACORN. State Rep. Elaine Coderre also attended Thursday’s meeting to show support.

Chanting, alternately in English and Spanish, "The people united can never be divided," supporters carried signs, towed young children and signed up to speak before PUC commissioners Kate Racine and Robert Holbrook and Leslie Clement of the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, which advocates for ratepayers.

"Think of our children, Turn our gas and electricity back on," read one hand-lettered sign propped against the dais.

Speakers from single mothers to seniors told hard-luck cases of being on disability, welfare or other limited incomes in a tough economy, and having to provide for children while experiencing shutoffs and being unable to arrange satisfactory payment plans with utilities.

John Lawlor, a lawyer for the Wiley Center, during a break showed figures that listed more than 8,000 utility shutoffs from April through June. He noted the annual winter shutoff moratorium ended April 15.

Activists, Narragansett Electric and New England Gas have worked for 18 months on the plan, overseen by the PUC. Two main parts apparently have support from both the utilities and customer-advocacy sides, while the third aspect -- where subsidy funds would come from -- is where they part company.

The first two parts call for utility bills to be limited to 7 percent of the income of low income people enrolled in the plan, and a forgiveness of back bills for people enrolling in the plan who maintain payments for an extended period.

But the utilities are balking at adding a 1 percent surcharge to customer bills, to pay for the parts of the proposal not now financed by federal energy programs, such as LIHEAP, that would be folded into the program.

For the average homeowner, that would amount to about $1 a month. But the added cost could be up to several thousand dollars more per month for large commercial and industrial users, according to rates read by Racine.

Terry Schwennesen, general counsel for Narragansett Electric, said during a break that such an add-on fee would be charged on a per kilowatt basis. That base rate can vary, with big-volume commercial users paying less per kilowatt hour than homeowners, though Schwennesen noted that would make their increases higher as measured by a percentage above what they pay now.

"The electric company is not in favor of increasing other customers’ bills for this program. It’s very difficult to do that. We don’t want to raise customers’ bills," Schwennesen said.
"We were directed (by PUC) to do something that didn’t do that," but were unable to craft such a solution, she said.

Speakers read into the record support letters from Mayor James E. Doyle and Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey. Doyle said thousands of families, including many in Pawtucket, are "going without lights, stoves, refrigerators, and in the winter months, heat, because they are unable to pay their bills or the cost of re-installing service."

Doyle urged the PUC to help insure "that all Rhode Islanders can afford the very basic utilities of gas, heat and electricity.. As a body you must act now to protect our residents who have been touched by a slow economy, layoffs or illness."

Shirley Vasser said after her cousin’s electricity was shut off, the utility refused to take 50 percent of the arrears to restore service. "They talk to you like you’re trash and they don’t want to hear anything," she said. (Racine however said the PUC had conducted a random service calls check that found service satisfactory.)

Carlos Lopez of Project Hope said "too often ordinary people are coming to our agency desperate" due to a shutoff or shutoff notice, fearful they’ll have no hot water to bathe their children, in what he said "amounts to economic discrimination. A more permanent solution is needed." Lopez said the new plan is "a step in the right direction" over a system he called "punishment rather than cooperation."

Spanish-speaking Dominican native Cleotilda Acevedo, of Providence, said through a translator there is "no orientation" for how customers should proceed with payment agreements. "All of us who are making the minimum wage, we can’t make it with so many expenses," she said.

Colombia native Alicia Lopora, 78, of Providence said through a translator that after paying for gas and electric, "that leaves us without money to buy food for our children or pay the rent, and the bills keep coming."

Activist Maggi Rogers of Pawtucket said the PUC should "finally acknowledge this system is broken," and it "must take into consideration the income of the working families of Rhode Island."

Joyce Baker, 46, a Providence single mother with twins age 16, said stretching her $629 monthly disability payment for rent and other expenses is difficult, and she supports the plan.

Lashawn King, 24, of Providence, mother of a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old with asthma, said her $449 welfare payment was further strained by having to repay a $2,000 utility bill run up in the name of her jailed boyfriend. "And they wanted me to pay the whole bill. How can I do this?"

Wiley Center director Henry Shelton said later a similar program to the 1 percent charge now being discussed worked well for several years in the 1980s until its federal subsidy dried up. He said bigger users could pick up that slack.

"They’re the ones that get the big breaks on the taxes, GTech, Toray," Shelton asserted. "They all get big subsidies. No one wants to say that.

"The plan will work," and Shelton said the $1 monthly hike for residential users is affordable and the utilities themselves were recently granted a $5 hike.

One property owner and manager in the audience, who did not want to be named, said he was skeptical about the 1 percent plan, which he figures could cost him $60 a month per unit.
"Rents will go up because you’ve got to make that up," he said.