New Haven Independent

New Haven Rep. Bob Megna, who first won office on a clean energy platform, was at the Tuesday night meeting in City Hall of the citizens group Fight the Hike when he told members that other legislators have noticed their efforts.

Those efforts include attendance and testimony by many of their members at a marathon 14-hour hearing March 7 before the Energy and Technology Committee, which endorsed three bills the group supports. Their key bill (H.B. No. 5819) would create a Connecticut Energy Authority. The authority would, in essence, re-regulate the electricity market in the state. Since deregulation went into effect in the late 1990s — a move that was supposed to reduce costs through competition — prices have gone steadily up.

Another bill (H.B. No. 5783) limits the profits companies can garner to “a reasonable rate of return.”

These bills are among 19 that were heard by the committee. “We’ve been warned that some of them may come become unrecognizable by the time they get through the legislative process,” said Paula Panzarella, one of the leaders of Fight the Hike.

To keep the pressure on, and try to ensure that bills do come out as close as possible to how they went in, activists have been putting pressure on their elected officials and legislative leaders. For instance, Frank Panzarella said members of the group had leafleted in Milford, home of Speaker of the House Jim Amann.

“Everywhere we’ve gone and leafleted we’ve gotten overwhelming response. I’d say over 99 percent of the responses we’ve got have been adamant and angry about electricity. But, like so often on many of these things, people are not active and not doing things about it, except complaining about it.”

One item on the meeting’s agenda was to broaden the outreach, Panzarella added. “We need to reach out to as many organizations around the state as possible, to as many legislators directly through constituents as possible, to put as much pressure as we possibly can in such a small space of time.” Some of those at the meeting offered to call a group of people on Fight the Hike’s contact list, while others said they would contact people they already knew in various towns to try to build momentum.

In addition to Megna, other New Haven pols who have supported the bills include Reps. Toni Walker and Pat Dillon and Sen. Toni Harp.