Riemer to O'Malley: Fire State Regulators Who Oversee Pepco
The county councilman has launched a petition urging the governor to replace members of the Maryland Public Service Commission.
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County Councilman Hans Riemer (D-At large) of Silver Spring is calling on Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) to replace members of the Maryland Public Service Commission, the state regulatory body that oversees Pepco and Baltimore Gas and Electric.
Riemer has launched a petition at a MoveOn.org-sponsored website, The Gazette reports. The petition comes in the wake of mounting frustration with Pepco after the June 29 derecho storm, which left widespread power outages and tens of thousands of people in the heat and dark for days.
Nearly 2,400 have signed on to the petition since it launched Friday at noon, Riemer said Monday night, speaking at a meeting of the Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Board. By Tuesday morning, nearly 2,700 had signed on.
“It’s time for the governor to act and replace those PSC members and give us a regulatory agency that will get the job done,” Riemer told the citizens advisory board.
Maryland Public Service Commission chairman Douglas Nazarian told The Washington Post this month that regulators “did not have a sense that Pepco stacked up that poorly with other companies” and should have realized sooner that Pepco’s performance was seriously lacking.
Regulators asked Pepco two years ago how its performance in keeping the lights on and restoring power measured up against its peers, The Gazette reports.
Analyses have shown Pepco ranked near the bottom nationally.
“Pepco has been in the bottom quartile for years, and that our own regulatory agency didn’t know is a stunning, stunning admission of failure,” Riemer said Monday.
In response, O’Malley’s office has released this statement, according to WTOP:
"While the Governor understands the frustration and anger of those citizens and businesses that have suffered repeated and prolonged outages, he reminds everyone of both the steps that have been taken in the recent past to hold utility companies liable and the deliberative process currently underway to evaluate, based on the data, the performance of the utilities' during the recent derecho outage."
Should O'Malley fire and replace members of the Maryland Public Service Commission? Tell us in the comments.
Woodside Park Bob
8:03 am on Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The members of the Public Service Commission should be evaluated individually to see whether they have been vigorous in defending the public interest. There may be some who should not be replaced.
A better solution would to be replace Pepco with a publicly-owned coop, a public power district, or some other similar arrangement so we would use money that otherwise would go to profit to bury power lines and take other steps to improve reliability. Making the County Council and County Executive ultimately responsible for the power system's reliability would provide the proper incentive at the ballot box to keep the power on and restore it quickly if there is a problem. With Pepco, the incentive for executives is to maximize profit and their bonuses by scrimping on the infrastructure and putting saving money ahead of quick restoration when there is a big storm.
Based on published figures on the number of outages and crews working,
PEPCO had 1 crew member working to restore power for every 150 customers without power. BGE had 1 crew member working to restore power for ever 54 customers without power. Dominion had 1 crew member working to restore power for every 43 customers without power.