Puc

Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission investigators on Thursday filed a formal complaint seeking to revoke the license of Glacial Energy of Pennsylvania, Inc. for allegedly omitting information in its 2009 application to be an electric generation supplier. The complaint is the PUC's first attempt to put a supplier in Pennsylvania's robust competitive electricity market out of business. The PUC's Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement alleged that Glacial Energy did not report that its chief executive, Gary Mole, had an ownership interest in Franklin Power Co., an electricity supplier whose license was revoked in Texas in 2006.

The Public Utility Commission has properly denied Philadelphia Gas Works' unreasonable request for a surcharge on its 500,000 customers ("Gas Works surcharge request is denied," July 9). However, both at the PUC and in the state legislature, PGW continues to make its customers the scapegoat for its own collections failings by calling for the gutting of PUC's customer service protections. These protections have worked effectively and fairly for many years for all utilities across the state.

Bell Atlantic-Pennsylvania announced yesterday that it had agreed to changes suggested by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, clearing the way for the phone company to begin wiring the state for the information superhighway. Last month, the PUC approved a new rate structure for Bell Atlantic, but only if the company would speed up its plans to build a broad-band telecommunications network in rural parts of the state. The PUC had ordered Bell to complete wiring 20 percent of its rural territory by 1998, instead of 7 percent, as proposed.

Philadelphia Gas Works and a branch of the state Public Utility Commission would like to kiss and make up in a dispute over how much control the state can exert on the city-owned utility. The gas works and the PUC's law bureau filed a tentative settlement agreement with the PUC yesterday. The commission will likely rule on the request later this month, Thomas Knudsen, PGW's interim chief financial officer, said. In the settlement, PGW accepts the $11 million rate increase proffered by the PUC last November, but the settlement eases some of the PUC's conditions, which PGW and the city said were unreasonably harsh and in violation of state law. For example, PGW was required to submit its selection of a permanent executive management team to the PUC for approval.

A multiplication error produced a $56 million goof in a rate-increase ruling by a Public Utility Commission hearing officer this week, agency officials confessed yesterday. The slip-up led them to revise downward a recommended rate increase for customers of Philadelphia Electric Co. Administrative Law Judge Joseph P. Matuschak, in a recommendation to the full PUC, said PE should be allowed to raise an additional $301.6 million a year in revenue by increasing electric rates an average of 12.06 percent, officials said.

A West Kensington woman's complaint that Philadelphia Electric Co. was not tough enough on neighborhood residents who illegally connected their homes to electric feeder lines - and thereby created a safety hazard - was dismissed yesterday by a Public Utility Commission (PUC) administrative law judge. Judge Sheldon Farber ruled that the woman, Dolores Montague, did not have legal standing to bring the case because she now lives in an apartment building, where she is not a Philadelphia Electric ratepayer.

A dispute over who should pay to replace a dilapidated bridge over railroad tracks in Berwyn, Chester County, could affect the safe maintenance of thousands of railroad crossings nationwide, according to a state Public Utility Commission attorney. At a hearing Monday in Philadelphia, John Gallagher, assistant counsel in the PUC rail division law bureau, asked a three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court ruling that the PUC cannot require Amtrak to pay 20 percent of the $2 million tab for the Cassatt Avenue bridge near the Berwyn train station.

Major changes are in the works for utility customers in Pennsylvania, and the public can be the beneficiary. The state Senate is expected to act tomorrow on a sweeping overhaul of the Public Utility Commission. Under consideration is an amended version of a bill passed by the House last year. There is no mistaking the intent of the legislation. It is meant to beef up the PUC's authority to regulate utilities, especially electric utilities, and particularly Philadelphia Electric Co. The proposed reforms would ensure that PE and other Pennsylvania utilities cannot automatically balance their books on the backs of ratepayers.

Consumers in Pennsylvania should be able to continue not only to make but receive telephone calls from public pay telephones, a Public Utility Commission administrative law judge recommended yesterday. In all but a few cases, Bell Telephone Co. of Pennsylvania should be required to furnish the two-way service on its public phones, the law judge, Larry Gesoff, advised the PUC. Bell of Pennsylvania has asked the PUC for approval to convert some pay phones to outgoing-only service.

An administrative law judge has recommended to the state Public Utility Commission that Media Water Co. receive a 12.6 percent rate increase, not the 31.8 percent increase requested by the water company. If approved by the PUC, the lower rate increase would represent $486,604 in additional revenue. The 31.8 percent increase requested by Media Water would have generated about $1.2 million. The average annual residential bill for water company customers is $204. That would rise to $229.