Connecticut lawmakers revive special session on power bill measure
Jun. 12--The Hartford Courant, Conn. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
The Energy Independence bill is the state legislature's Frankenstein.
Now it's alive again -- jolted back to existence for the special session. It
is the only non-budgetary proposal on the four-item agenda of issues that
lawmakers consider too crucial to let die.
"There was a problem ... in the House and that's why it never got
passed," Senate Minority Leader Louis DeLuca said Friday.
The original bill encouraging conservation and power generation sought to
deal with inadequate electricity supplies and a looming $300 million federal
penalty for that shortfall, he said.
But a section to let public utilities back into generating power on a small
scale prompted a successful House push late June 8 to unplug that language from
the bill. In 1998, with deregulation, the major utility companies sold off their
generating facilities and began buying power for resale from independent
generators inside and outside Connecticut.
Its opponents said the power-generation clause guaranteed Northeast Utilities
and United Illuminating up to an $18 million profit.
So the bill was left to expire with the regular session. Minutes later, it
was on the call of the special session later this month. It comes back for
discussion in its original form, with no amendments.
"There is so much of importance in this bill and the opponents focused
just on one tiny aspect," Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, the energy
committee co-chairman, said Friday. "We literally had no time Wednesday
night to talk to people about it. There was no time for a counter-voice."
"Public utilities are easy, faceless, nameless targets," Fonfara
continued. "But if we do nothing to address the new [federal] fees coming
in 2006, it's going to cost the public." The bill, he said, "is
critical to the economy of the state."
An estimated $300 million or more in new electricity charges will be imposed
on the utilities on Jan. 1, 2006, when a federal pricing plan called "locational
installed capacity," or "LICAP," goes into effect. The financial
incentives in the plan are designed to encourage construction of power plant
reserve capacity in places where it is needed most, such as southwestern
Connecticut.
But having the bill back again, without any of the changes voted by the
House, angers those who backed the amendment striking out the power generation
clause.
"We just feel this [re-introduction of the amendment-free bill] will
energize the House," Rep. Vicki Nardello, D-Prospect, said Wednesday.
Nardello led the House charge. "It illustrates the power of the lobbyists.
We defeated this in a fair vote, and now it's back again on our agenda."
"This like nothing else talks to the need for election reform,"
Rep. Diana Urban, R-North Stonington, said Wednesday. She said she thinks
political tactics supplanted the voice of the electorate with the wishes of the
utilities.
On Friday, Connecticut Light & Power President Raymond Necci said state
law has for several years permitted public utilities to be paid fees to
reimburse them for the cost of buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
electricity to meet Connecticut's demand.
The language objected to by the House would extend an existing arrangement
and would have trimmed the reimbursement, tying it to the utilities' purchase of
lowest-cost power.
As for the public utilities' return to generation, Necci said, the 250
megawatts allowed under the bill would be small compared with the state's 7,000
megawatts peak appetite.
Connecticut business officials want something to be done to head off the
estimated $300 million in new federal electricity fees.
Joseph McGee, vice president for public policy at the Business Council of
Fairfield County, said the Connecticut legislature needs to make passage of the
energy bill a priority.
"They should get it done. If the only fight is over the issue of the
utilities and how you get them back in the generation business and be
competitive, that should be worked out," he said.
State Consumer Counsel Mary Healey, who represents ratepayers on utility
issues, said she supports the basic features of the bill that will reduce the
LICAP charges.
But the procurement fee had nothing to do with that purpose, and she was glad
to see it taken out.
By Bill Leukhardt and Stacy Wong
-----
To see more of The Hartford Courant, or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.courant.com .
Copyright (c) 2005, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at
(800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail
reprints@krtinfo.com. NU, UIL,