Posted on 03/17/2009 10:59:54 AM PDT by JZelle
Maryland lawmakers Monday became the latest to ask utility companies to extend a deadline for cutting electricity to delinquent customers.
They join officials in Massachusetts, Indiana and elsewhere who have been forced to extend deadlines to accommodate a record number of customers who have fallen behind on their bills, in part as a result of higher rates and the global economic crisis.
Maryland has more than 120,000 customers facing cutoffs after April 1, which marks the end of a winter moratorium on shutoffs for customers, usually three months past due.
Last week, the state's Public Service Commission extended the deadline "until further notice" so the commission can release a report April 7 on possible solutions for customers behind on their bills.
On Monday, Maryland utility companies' executives vowed to state lawmakers that they are trying to help customers - and themselves.
"A customer´s meter is our cash register," said Robert P. Behlke, of the Choptank Electric Cooperative, which serves roughly 50,000 customers on the Eastern Shore. "If we shut off that customer, we are shutting off our cash register."
"I´ll explain some of the reasons people´s bills are high, and they just look at me like I have two heads," said Sen. Katherine A. Klausmeier, Baltimore County Democrat and chairwoman of the General Assembly's state electric-service program work group.
She said the cold winter and changes in billing cycles also contributed to the higher bills.
Customers say they've done everything possible to be more energy-efficient, but the bills continue to increase.
Pepco customer Paul Hassler, 64, said in the winter of 2003, the energy bills on his two-story Rockville home was roughly $400 a month. He said that by 2009 the payments had increased to $1,259, though he consumed less energy by replacing heat pumps with those said....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I wonder how many have not cancelled their cable TV?
...we are so screwed....
Maryland is also in a regional scheme to cap and trade and our utility companies have to buy emmission permits at auction. Just started in the fall.
http://www.cier.umd.edu/RGGI/index.html
The business of making and selling nothing is is booming.
RGGI is setting up offices in NYC and hiring more bureaucrats. They have some spiffy web pages. I searched on some of the names of the peoplem PROFITING from this and found the typical bunch of well-connected 20-30 something Ivy League proletariat.
How’s that working for the consumer poor?
A reluctant state legislature finally agreed to let the companies raise their rates.
The raises occurred at the same time Obama was promising power users "serious relief" through the prohibition of coal! (LMAO) But nobody noticed the price had gone up may times until about the December billing cycle.
Not only has the price gone up as the price of fuel increased, it's gone up even more in the face of the loss of cheap coal, and more than that, all those years during the fat times where they forced down the rates, the companies are playing "catch up".
The power bills in Maryland are actually breaking people down financially and givng them a taste of what it will be like for everyone under Obama's Cap 'n Trade.
This situation is one to watch closely !
This is one crisis Republicans should be prepared to take advantage of inasmuch as Maryland is fully in the control of the Democrats and their running dog lackeys.
Didn’t the MSM and the libtards protest outside a coal fored power plant in the last month? Shut off the power and save the planet from Gorebull warming.....
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