Lawmakers Scrutinize APCo Rates

The anguished cries generated by Appalachian Power Company’s bills last month are reverberating around the halls of the General Assembly. The lawmakers could be on the verge of doing something about lowering the bills, but the legislative process is anything but certain.

Legislators from the western part of the state, which is primarily served by APCo, have told stories about constituents who are having to choose between paying their electric bills or for their food and medicine.

A retired teacher who said she lives frugally saw her electric bill skyrocket from $145 in December to $580 in January. That story has been repeated often throughout the region, including Lynchburg. Part of the cause, in addition to the 12.8 percent interim rate increase, was the extraordinarily cold winter weather. That weather has not let up since the record-setting snowfall in mid-December.

Delegates and senators have heard the pleas from stressed-out ratepayers and have moved toward getting the utility to suspend or reduce the rate increase.

APCo officials, meanwhile, took the offensive by agreeing to suspend the rate increase until August if the legislature will kill any other legislation that would impose tougher rules on the company. They are calling that a compromise. Some folks may want to call it something akin to bribery.

Lawmakers had filed nine pieces of legislation that would regulate the company more strictly. Dan Carson, a spokesman for APCo in Richmond, said the company’s offer to suspend its latest rate increase was good only if lawmakers drop all but one of the nine pieces of legislation that could affect APCo and the way it is regulated by the State Corporation Commission.

One of those measures attracted the attention of the Virginia Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, which held a hearing last week on the proposals. That bill would halt the utility’s practice of collecting new rate increases before the SCC has approved them. That’s a reasonable approach to establishing new rates that surprisingly hasn’t been considered before.

The House of Delegates approved legislation Tuesday that would suspend the interim rate increase and provide homeowners and businesses with some short-term relief from their rising electric bills. APCo customers who use 1,000 kilowatt hours a month could see a decrease in their bills of about $15 monthly until August under the measure.

But a House subcommittee also kept alive a bill that would return Appalachian to an old state regulatory scheme and affect its ability to seek future rate increases. Carson said that bill could undercut the compromise that led to suspension of the interim rate increase.

The House bill now heads to the Senate, which is considering a nearly identical measure. If the House measure were approved by the Senate and signed by the governor, it would immediately stop APCo from collecting the December rate increase.

As it stands now, the future of the rate increase between now and August is caught in a legislative squeeze between the House bill that has passed and another bill pending in the House that would return APCo to regulatory standards that existed in the mid-1990s before deregulation.

Whether APCo’s ratepayers end up saving anything on their rising utility bills remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the skyrocketing electricity rates have the undivided attention of the state’s lawmakers. That could be good for the ratepayers in the long run.