Pepco will have difficulty improving its service because of Maryland regulators’ decision to deny the electric company the majority of its requested $68 million rate increase, the company announced in a statement Tuesday.
Region President Thomas Graham said Pepco will have to find cuts in other parts of its budget to keep up with the improvements mandated by the Maryland Public Service Commission.
| ‘Their core business is reliable service and customer service. If they can’t figure out how to do that, then they really need to think about getting into another line of business.’- Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner |
“This decision is counterproductive to our goals to improve our customer experience.”
The Maryland PSC approved $18 million of the company’s $68 million request on Friday, with residents expected to pay $2.02 more a month.
But Pepco is legally required to make improvements to its system, said Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner, D-Bethesda. “They don’t have the discretion to not improve their system, and if they think they do, then we need to have a very different conversation because that was the whole point of having new reliability standards.
“Pepco needs to improve its system, and one of the laments of the Public Service Commission and of our community was that they have taken care of their shareholders at the expense of providing high-quality service,” he continued.
“Their core business is reliable service and customer service. If they can’t figure out how to do that, then they really need to think about getting into another line of business.”
