Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ROCKVILLE, Md. – (WMAL) The Maryland Public Service Commission is holding a public hearing Tuesday night on the latest rate increase request from Pepco, which would cost the average customer about $13 more a month. The request doesn’t come as a surprise to anti-Pepco activists, who say it was inevitable following the approval of Pepco’s merger with power giant Exelon.
“It wasn’t a shock, it was just a question of when it was going to come,” Abbe Milstein with Power Up Montco told WMAL. “The whole pretense for this merger was that it was going to improve reliability and people would see a reduction in rates, allegedly. Clearly, not only have we not seen reliability improvements, but we’re also seeing a rise in rates.”
The Maryland Public Service commission is tasked with approving the rate increase request from Pepco based on the public’s best interest. Milstein said that objective is far from what is really happening.
“There’s no punishment. Everything goes (Pepco’s) way. The Commission doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to them and say, ‘Enough is enough,'” Milstein said. “The Commission itself is basically a function of the utilities. It’s not a function of the government. It’s only acting on behalf of the utility’s best interests. That’s not why they were set up. That’s not following the law. That’s not why they exist.”
The public hearing is set for 6:30pm Tuesday evening in the first floor auditorium of the County Executive Office Building in Rockville. A hearing in Prince George’s County, at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, is scheduled for Thursday night.
Copyright 2016 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (Photo: Pepco, Exelon)
