As General Assembly leaders and their analysts poured over financial data provided by Constellation Energy this week, late Friday House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas Mike Miller appeared to move closer to agreeing with many of their members that a special session was needed to replace the Public Service Commission.
The PSC threw a new wrinkle into the situation Friday afternoon by not appealing a judge?s decision and refusing to hold new hearings on an electric rate reduction plan negotiated by the governor. The commission, a majority appointed by Gov. Robert Ehrlich, reinstated a rate plan that was the subject of intense negotiations and legislative maneuvering in late March and early April.
“Today?s action further eroded the public?s confidence in the PSC,” Busch and Miller said in highly unusual joint statement. “The court ordered the commission to re-examine its earlier decision, and to stand up for the citizen rate payer. Once again, they failed.”
The legislative leaders charged the PSC members “are acting in the best interests of utility companies, rather than in the best interests of consumers. ? They chose to side with increasing the profits of BGE.”
Busch and Miller said the PSC should hold hearings “immediately” to improve their March 6 plan. “Otherwise, it?s time for members of this Public Service Commission to be replaced,” they said.
Legislators tried to do just that in late March, allowing Assembly leaders to name four out of five commission members. Ehrlich vetoed the measure.
Ehrlich blamed Friday?s PSC action not on his appointees, but on Baltimore City and Mayor Martin O?Malley for filing a “naïve, politically tinged” lawsuit against the rate reduction plan the governor negotiated after the session was over. Ehrlich said, “Only one credible plan has been put forth to protect working families from overnight 72 percent increases in their electric bills.”
The governor can call a special session, but he has said repeatedly he will do that only if he is presented with a better plan to reduce rates. A majority of both houses of the General Assembly may call themselves back into session, but that provision of the constitution has never been used.
All the committee chairs and party leaders of the House and Senate are scheduled to get together on Tuesday in a meeting of the Legislative Policy Committee, their first meeting since the legislature adjourned April 10.
