You know that lifeline program that helps poor people pay their electric bills if they can't afford them?
News flash: in Vermont, it doesn't exist.
This is a surprise to a lot of people, but unlike every other New England state, Vermont doesn't have a program like that. The Public Service Board is holding a proceeding right now to consider whether and how to create such a program. It's been a long struggle by a lot of low-income advocates, and thanks to the AARP and the Vermont legislature there is now a chance that it will actually happen.
But guess who doesn't like the idea: the electric companies and the Douglas-Dubie administration. In fact, the utilities and the Douglas-Dubie administration are so chummy that the Public Service Department has taken to lifting passages wholesale from the utilities' filings. Two whole pages from a six-page brief filed by the Publilc Service Department were lifted right out of a brief from the Vermont Electric Co-Op and a group of municipal utilities.
According to the Free Press, Vermont Law School professor Brian Porto calls that plagiarism.
I'm not that concerned about plagiarism. I'm much more concerned about the fact that the agency charged with representing the public appears to be lining up against the public and with the electric companies.
In my years litigating major cases in the Public Service Board, I was involved in at least one case in which the state had to hire a private advocate for the public to avoid any conflict of interest.
Maybe it's time to consider that again. With all the money the utilities pour into these cases, shouldn't someone be speaking for the people?
When will be adopt some meaningful guidelines and penalties with regard to conflicts of interest? Simple monetary gain is not the only way conflicts of interest play out in the real world. While it is true that a certain amount of cooperation between service providers and regulators is necessary to ensure efficient delivery of services, what we get in reality is a degree of intimacy that goes well beyond simple cooperation. The smell of corporate influence pedaling hangs like a pall over the PSB.