A Fairfax County supervisors committee has joined the fight against a proposed re-regulation of electricity in Virginia, arguing the change would drive up electric bills and translate to huge profits for the commonwealth’s primary power company.
The Board of Supervisors’ Legislative Committee is the latest group to enter the highly contentious, extremely complicated argument over how Virginia should regulate Dominion Virginia Power, which supplies electricity to a large majority of the state’s residents. Critics have blasted the bills, which are set for a full vote in both chambers this week, as corporate welfare hastily pushed through the legislature.
“Special interest legislation has been drafted in such a way that local rate payers would automatically be charged up to an additional $300 per year,” wrote Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly in a statement prepared for a rally Monday.
The bill, according to Connolly, “will eviscerate 100 years of regulation practices that have served us well in the commonwealth.”
Proponents, however, say the measure would do exactly the opposite. Del. Clarke Hogan, R-South Boston, who introduced the house’s version of the bill, said it would reinstate government oversight of Dominion’s profits and rates through the State Corporation Commission. He said the SCC has “no oversight at all” under the current electricity deregulation, which the General Assembly put in place in 1999 in a failed attempt to encourage competition for Dominion.
“Under this bill, the utilities cannot add one dime of cost to electricity unless the SCC finds it just and reasonable,” Hogan said.
Among the many provisions, the bills would move forward the expiration date of a rate cap from 2010 to 2008. The measure would also provide incentives for the construction of new power stations.
A Dominion spokesman said any rate increase as a result of the bill would be “negligible.”
