New Haven Independent

The draft decision, issued Tuesday, would cut residential ratepayers’ average bills by 30 cents a month.

The DPUC draft decision scored UI execs for grabbing bigger salaries as they cried poverty to regulators.

UI’s request for approval of $51.4 million in additional revenues was the subject of heated public hearings.

A hearing on the draft decision is scheduled for Jan. 29. The DPUC’s final decision is expected Feb. 4.

The draft follows two years of intensive organizing by the New Haven-based group Fight the Hike.

“People always win when they organize the grass roots,” Paula Panzarella (at right in the above file demonstration photo), one of the group’s leaders, said Wednesday. “It just takes a while.”

Execs & Hard Times

Tuesday’s draft decision said regulators were “disappointed to discover that UI had granted higher executive incentives and hired more employees than authorized in the last ratecase driving down their rate of return.”

The draft decision would cut UI’s permitted rate of return from 9.75 percent to 8.75 percent. It called for UI to “cut payroll and executive incentives.”

The state can’t spare UI from the same hard times that are hitting its customers, the draft went on to argue: “[R]egulators cannot insulate utilities from all the factors that may impact their earnings. Rather, it is the task of management, with the balanced support of regulators as reflected in this Decision, to manage its way through a challenging economic climate.”

Click here to read the draft decision.

Click here and here to read Independent coverage of the combative public hearings over the proposed hike.

UI spokesman Al Carbone said it’s too early to tell whether the utility will file exceptions to the draft decision and try to get it changed.

“We just got the 136-page document yesterday. People are going through it,” he said.

More Action To Come

Fight The Hike is going through the decision, too, poised to return to action if UI decides to try to sway the DPUC to change the decision this month.

The group spent two years collecting names on petitions, holding rallies, building email and phone lists, to pressure the state and the DPUC to rein in UI and prevent rate hikes. It lobbied local governments in Branford, West Haven, Hamden, Milford, North Haven to pass resolutions against hikes. It lobbied the state to create a new energy authority aimed at reversing deregulation, promoting clean energy, and lowering rates.

“You go and ask people, ‘Do you want to pay higher electric rates?’ — you’re not going to find a lot of takers for that,” Paula Panzarella said.

After hearing from more than 1,000 citizens, “The DPUC lived up to their mandate to protect the public,” she said.

Panzarella said Fight the Hike will return to Hartford this year to push the energy authority proposal again.