Connecticut Helping Lead Effort To Reduce Energy Utility Corporate Greed

By Joe O’Leary

December 20 @ 5:00 am

A recent report from the Energy and Policy Institute found that Connecticut is leading a national effort to rein utility providers utilizing their customer revenue to fund questionable expenses — a practice most prominent among electricity providers.

The institute’s report found that even as regulators around the United States approved more than twice as many electric rate increases in 2023 compared to 2022, significant slices of resulting revenue are supporting everything from lobbying and advertising efforts to the gold-star treatment of executives.

The institute compared those circumstances to growing financial strain on the American people, reflected in a U.S. Census report finding as many as one in four households struggle to pay their electricity bills.

There’s a long, frustrating history of gas companies charging customers for work they’re performing in their own best interests. California’s SoCalGas tried to charge customers for lobbying and public affairs costs; Virginia’s Dominion Energy did a similar thing, trying to get $5.3 million in lobbying expenses from customers.

While a federal law limited the amounts utilities could charge customers for advertising, and states have tried to strengthen similar laws, the Energy and Policy Institute found numerous companies spending tens of millions on such ads, highlighting where advertising bleeds into public relations and self-promotion.

Further, in examples of overzealous spending, Indiana’s Duke Energy spent more than $5 million in ratepayer funds on executives’ private jet trips in the 2020s, Dominion South Carolina tried to pull nearly $1 million from ratepayers to cover memberships at golf courses, and Nevada’s Southwest Gas tried to collect ratepayer funds to cover employee massages.

However, states are working to counter and limit these expenses, with Connecticut one of three states passing legislation in 2023 directly targeting their use.

In Senate Bill 7, spearheaded by Senate Democrats and passed into law after development in the Energy & Technology Committee, Connecticut lawmakers prevented companies from using ratepayer funds for expenses like membership in business or industry associations, lobbying activity, marketing and advertising. Other prohibited expenses included corporate executives’ entertainment and travel costs.

Under the law, companies cannot use ratepayer funds to support rate proceedings, and must provide the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority with lists of costs related to these items.

These bills are bearing fruit. The report found that PURA disallowed more than $500,000 in prohibited costs from a gas rate case brought by Connecticut natural gas provider Avangrid. Preliminary reports also found these policies cut back more than $600,000 of spending from Eversource and Avangrid just in late 2023. Similarly, in Colorado, a rate case led to more than $750,000 in costs being stripped from a proposal by Xcel Energy directly related to that state’s law.

WFSB reported in November 2024 that PURA denied more than $617,000 in requested funds that were specifically prevented by Senate Bill 7’s provisions.

“In a complicated energy marketplace, this kind of spending is over-the-top, adding to the pressure faced by many households and contributing to high power bills,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, the Connecticut Senate Chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. “In 2023, legislators took action to limit these kinds of expenses in Connecticut, and it’s rewarding to know the law has made a difference in the short time since its passage.”

New FTC Rule To Ban Junk Fees, Provide Greater Consumer Transparency

By Joe O’Leary

December 19 @ 5:00 am

The Federal Trade Commission recently announced its finalization of a new rule that would prevent hotels, rental properties and live event ticketers from springing “junk fees” on shoppers that spike overall costs right before they check out.

Under the FTC’s new rule, which is slated to go into effect in the spring of 2025, these sought-after, often-expensive items cannot advertise one price, then bait-and-switch the buyer at the last minute. The rule prevents sellers from notifying buyers of “convenience” fees, cleaning costs and other costly fees right before a purchase is finalized; instead they need to be advertised upfront in the overall cost of the product in question.

Increasing outcry over junk fees has boiled for a few years now. The Biden administration started focusing on the issue in 2022, and after widespread frustration when tickets for Taylor Swift’s billion-dollar “Eras Tour” went on sale, the issue inspired lawmakers nationwide, and various state legislatures have imposed laws to ban junk fees.

In Connecticut, Senate Democrats proposed new rules related to junk fees as part of Senate Bill 3, which passed the state Senate but was not raised for a vote in the House. The bill would have ended the practice of junk fees by requiring an approach similar to the FTC’s new rule, though it would have included more businesses.

“Last year, we came so close to preventing junk fees from frustrating Connecticut consumers,” said Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff. “I’m heartened to know the FTC is focused on this issue as well. Junk fees waste time and money for people who are just trying to make a simple purchase. They should be outdated, and thanks to this important action, they will be.”

According to U.S. News and World Report, junk fees take a variety of forms, with concert tickets, hotels and vacation rentals representing just some of the most common examples. Other forms that have drawn ire in past years include fees charged by airlines to seat families together and the all-too-common out-of-network ATM fee. These fees are usually revealed at the last moment, when a consumer is about to make a purchase, with the assumption that the consumer will accept the additional costs in the process of completing that purchase.

Under the FTC’s new rule, the only fees that can be disclosed later are taxes, shipping and fees for optional goods and services selected by a consumer. It will also apply to business-to-business transactions.

The FTC said the new rule will apply to all businesses, meaning tickets to concerts, sporting events, musicals and performing arts shows will be covered, as will rentals through platforms including Airbnb, VRBO, hotels and other rentals. It does not apply to long-term rentals.

FTC Chair Lina Khan told ABC News that the rule is intended above all else to emphasize transparency and honesty in the business environment. The FTC said that the final rule is expected to save consumers up to 53 million hours in time saved, as junk fees often spur shoppers to seek other tickets or products from other companies.

Study: Red Flag Laws, Originated in Connecticut, Effective in Preventing Suicides

By Lawrence Cook

December 18 @ 5:00 am

A recent study has found that risk protection orders – those so-called ‘Red Flag’ laws that temporarily remove firearms from a person who may be a danger to themselves or others – can be an effective and important suicide prevention tool.

Connecticut enacted the country’s first Red Flag law in 1999 following a devastating mass shooting at the Connecticut Lottery. The law established a legal procedure for police and attorneys for the temporary court-ordered removal of firearms from a person who may pose a danger to themselves or others.

Legislative Democrats led a 2021 update of law to allow family or household members, as well as certain medical professionals, to also apply for a risk protection order.

Since 1999, approximately 5,800 risk protection orders have been issued in Connecticut, and, according to a 2016 study by researchers at Yale, Duke, and the University of Connecticut, it is estimated that in the first 17 years of its existence, the Red Flag law has saved between 32 and 76 lives from suicide with a firearm.

State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said Red Flag laws have become a proven and popular method of preventing self-harm and harm to others.

“I’m proud that Connecticut was the first state in the nation to enact this law, and that we’ve updated it since to protect even more lives,” Duff said. “About 20 other states have followed our lead, too.”

A recent Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law study found that more than 800,000 lives have been lost to suicide in the United States in the past two decades, over half of them resulting from self-inflicted firearm injuries, and that “interventions that can effectively keep guns out of the hands of people at imminent risk of harm to themselves or others should be a key component of an effective public health effort to reduce the number of these preventable tragedies.”

“To the extent that extreme risk protection orders can help ensure safety for individuals who pose a risk of intentional self-injury with a firearm, for whatever reason or motivation, these legal tools offer a versatile and promising intervention to prevent suicides,” the study found.

In Connecticut, a state’s attorney, assistant state’s attorney, police officer, family member or medical professional can apply to a court for a risk protection order if they believe that a person poses a risk of imminent personal injury to themself or someone else. Those orders are issued based on ‘probable cause,’ including:

-Recent threats or acts of violence directed towards self or others;

-Recent acts of cruelty to animals;

-Reckless use, display or brandishing of a firearm or other deadly weapon;

-A history of use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force against others;

-Illegal use of controlled substances or abuse of alcohol; or

-Involuntary confinement to a hospital for persons with psychiatric disabilities.

New Partnership Erases Medical Debt for Thousands of Connecticut Residents

By Hugh McQuaid

December 17 @ 5:00 am

A new partnership between a national nonprofit organization and the state of Connecticut will reduce or eliminate medical debts owed by roughly 23,000 residents in the coming days, state officials announced Monday.

The group, Undue Medical Debt, has used public investments to negotiate with health care providers to eliminate bundles of medical debt owed by residents who fall under the income threshold of less than four times the federal poverty level or residents whose medical debt meets or exceeds 5% of their overall income, according to Gov. Ned Lamont’s office.

Allison Sesso, president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, explained the process during a late morning press conference in the state Capitol’s Old Appropriations Room.

“It is not magic, it is the market,” Sesso said. “Basically there is a for-profit debt market in which you can buy medical debt for pennies on the dollar and the reason why you can buy it for pennies on the dollar is, unfortunately, the people who owe it really don’t have the money to pay it. Our health care system has unreasonable expectations about what people pay out of pocket based on their income ”

The first round of the initiative involved a state investment of around $100,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, which Undue Medical Debt has been able to use to negotiate and acquire roughly $30 million in medical debt owed by Connecticut residents.

“This is all about making sure that health care is more broadly available, accessible and affordable,” Lamont said. “We want to make sure that nobody — nobody is discouraged from getting the check up they need, the preventative care they need, and making sure that our amazing hospitals here in our state can take care of you.”

Sen. Saud Anwar, a South Windsor Democrat who serves as Senate chair of the legislature’s Public Health Committee, said his panel would seek to address the affordability of health care more broadly during the legislative session that begins next month.

“This is probably a trillion dollar question at the national level, if not more. The reality is in our legislative session this year, we started to look at what are the various things we can do. In this upcoming session we will be discussing some of these aspects,” Anwar said, including looking at insurance companies. “What are they doing that is increasing costs to consumers? Another component is ‘how can we prevent this?’”

Residents who will be benefiting from relief under the first round of the program will receive a letter from Undue Medical Debt, which will outline the debts that have been eliminated. These letters will be delivered through the U.S. mail beginning on Dec. 23, the governor’s office said.