The D.C. Public Service Commission has ordered Pepco officials to attend a hearing on the utility’s response to power outages, a step by an oversight agency that some D.C. officials say is in the power company’s pocket. Officials in the District and Maryland have been attacking Pepco for its slow response to last week’s storm that pounded the region with heavy wet snow, leaving thousands of customers without power for as along as five days.
| The Pepco pile-on: |
| Jan. 4: D.C. Council bill introduced requiring Pepco to meet service reliability benchmarks. |
| Jan. 26: Storm knocks out power for more than 200,000 Pepco customers, about 25,000 in D.C. |
| Feb. 1: D.C. Council bill introduced that would make Pepco pay customers’ hotel bills when their power is out. |
| Feb. 2: Md. Public Service Commission announces investigation into Pepco’s billing practices; D.C. commission schedules a hearing on reliability. |
The D.C. commission’s announcement of a hearing late Wednesday came just hours after its sister oversight agency in Maryland announced an investigation into the public utility company’s charging thousands of customers during power outages over the past four years. But in the District, the outrage hasn’t only fallen on Pepco; the public service commission has been a target, too.
“I think our public service commission has been captured by the companies — and in particular Pepco — that they’re supposed to be regulating,” said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh. “It has been extraordinarily timid and entirely generous to the electric company.”
On Tuesday, Cheh sent a letter to Ward 7 Councilwoman Yvette Alexander asking her to hold a hearing on Pepco’s response to the power outages caused by the Jan. 26 storm. Alexander, who heads the council’s consumer affairs committee. has scheduled the hearing for Feb. 11.
Cheh called Pepco’s hearing “window dressing” that won’t amount to much if the commission doesn’t follow up with action.
D.C. Public Service Commission Chairwoman Betty Ann Kane said the agency routinely holds Pepco accountable. For example, she said, the D.C. commission ordered Pepco more than a year ago not to charge D.C. customers when the power goes out, the same issue Maryland’s commission has just begun investigating. Too often, Kane said, D.C. and Maryland are lumped together, but Pepco actually operates as two separate companies when it comes to regulation. The District commission is now rewriting Pepco’s reliability standards.
“I think people misunderstand how much we regulate,” Kane said. “We are concerned, and that is why we’re looking at making more stringent standards.”
The commission, however, has routinely failed to follow up on investigations, said D.C. Interim People’s Counsel Brenda Pennington.
“The commission has initiated some investigations, but they have not borne any fruit,” Pennington said. “It’s ridiculous that we suffer outages even when we have mild storms.”
