A months-long ban preventing utilities from shutting off non-paying customers is coming to an end.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission finally broke its deadlock on Thursday and voted to end the moratorium on Nov. 9 for most customers.
But the commission carved out a “protected” class for whom the ban would remain in place until March 31, 2021. Customers at or below 300% of federal poverty guidelines — i.e. a single-person household with annual income of $38,280 or a four-person household making up to $78,600 — are considered protected, provided they apply for “all available assistance programs.”
PUC Chairwoman Gladys Brown Dutrieuille introduced the motion to end the ban by saying “the pandemic and economic situation has evolved,” and so it’s time for the commission’s response to also evolve.
The ban was first imposed in mid-March following Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency declaration and shelter-in-place orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
It was meant to give consumers, many of whom had lost jobs or income because of the pandemic, one less thing to worry about during the ubiquitous upheaval of the pandemic.
Since then, several attempts to end the restrictions, which utilities claimed were hampering their ability to reach customers with mounting unpaid bills, had failed.
Ms. Dutrieuille, with her successful motion on Thursday, was trying to reconcile several conflicting interests that prevented consensus over the past few months.
“My goal is to put customer protections in place that can work for the short term,” she said.
This includes requiring utilities to issue an extra pre-termination notice to customers at risk of losing service, waiving fees for protected customers, relaxing income proof requirements and making long-term payment arrangements available to small businesses.
Ms. Dutrieuille promised to “revisit these protections during the first quarter of 2021.”
“We must also convene a stakeholder process to consider whether longer-term options may be needed, and whether today’s actions are serving the public interest,” she said, throwing a bone to consumer advocates who urged a comprehensive public debate on the moratorium before it would be suspended.
The chairwoman herself proposed such a stakeholder process in a motion that failed this summer.
Protected customers
By last count, which is now several months old, about 800,000 utility customers across the state would be at risk of termination if the ban were lifted.
In southwestern Pennsylvania, about one in eight households is behind on utility bills because of the pandemic, according to Alison Alvarez, whose data analytics firm BlastPoint crunches numbers and choreographs customer outreach strategies for utilities, including Peoples Natural Gas and Duquesne Light. That number that been steady for the past several months, she said, although the average balance owed decreased in September — a rare good metric.
Still, the sheer number of customers at risk of termination and the continuing spread of COVID-19 with its trail of economic destruction prompted Gov. Wolf, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania AARP, the state’s Consumer Advocate and Small Business Advocate to lobby the PUC against lifting the ban.
PUC Commissioner David Sweet, the lone dissenting vote on Thursday, agrees with them.
He was particularly concerned that the commission has already picked a date to end the moratorium even for “protected customers.”
“I only wish that we had more than a hope that things will be fine on March 31, 2021. And that this action will end up making sense,” he said. “But in today’s world, I find it difficult to urge thousands of people to share that hope and, more importantly, to rely on it.”
Eschewing a public comment process also means low-income advocates were left scrambling on Thursday to decipher the PUC’s order and how to prove their clients fit the definition of a protected customer.
The commission, as has been its custom for motions related to this moratorium, made no documents available before Chairwoman Dutrieuille introduced her motion and regulators voted on it on Thursday.
Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, recognized the “good intent” in allowing households under 300% of the poverty line to avoid terminations, but she was confused about the caveat that those households must prove they’ve applied to all available assistance programs.
“Does it mean they have to apply for food assistance? Child-custody assistance?” she wondered.
Even assuming the PUC wants customers to exhaust all utility-related programs, that could still send people down many different directions and it’s not clear how they can prove they’ve applied in just the next few weeks.
“We’re very concerned that it’s going to cause more chaos in November, a month before we get to the real winter months,” Ms. Marx said.
Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1455.
First Published: October 8, 2020, 7:03 p.m.
