Seniors, unemployed fight ComEd’s rate hike request

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Betty Kenny, a 77-year-old retired nurse and South Side Kenwood resident, lives on $844 in monthly Social Security payments and little else, and so she struggles to pay her $60 to $70 monthly electric bill.

She was one of a dozen elderly and unemployed people who pleaded with the Illinois Commerce Commision at a hearing Thursday to reject Commonwealth Edison’s request for a rate increase and a pilot surcharge that, together, would add $5.25 to an average resident’s monthly bill of $86. Officials with the Citizens Utility Board and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office also testified against what they consider ComEd’s ill-timed and unsupportable requests.

“This is really going to be hard on us,” Kenny said before a room of about 35 AARP members who attended to show solidarity against ComEd’s requests.

The rate increase request for $326.3 million that ComEd says would add an estimated $5 to an average resident’s monthly electric bill. ComEd is seeking the money to reimburse $2 billion the utility says it has invested in maintaining and upgrading its electrical distribution system since it last got a rate case decision in 2007.

ComEd’s additional request for $35 million over two years, which would add another 25 cents to a monthly bill, would test a new approach to financing pilot programs. These include seven programs to help an estimated 300,000 low-income people in ComEd’s service territory pay their bills; refurbish mainline cable and manholes in Chicago, and test electric vehicles and their charging stations to see the impact they would have on the electric grid.

Ross Hemphill, ComEd’s vice president of regulatory policy and strategy, said the utility needs the money to maintain its distribution system and invest in the electric grid so that residents and businesses find Illinois an attractive place to live and work. He said the average residential electric bill in the Chicago area is less than half that of New York City’s.

Karen Lusson, a senior assistant attorney general in the public utilities bureau, said accountants and other experts told the Illinois attorney general that ComEd should give back $40 million to ratepayers instead of seeking the $326.3 million rate increase because of unsupportable accounting adjustments and fixed-cost increases included in ComEd’s proposal.

Lusson said that particularly troubling were ComEd’s request to impose enormous increases in the fixed costs of residents’ electric bills, such as a 145 percent increase in a single-family’s monthly “customer” charge — to $18.73 from the existing $7.64 — and a 40 percent jump in a multi-family resident’s “customer” charge — to $9.29 from $6.65, based on the experts’ calculations. The charge covers the cost of meter reading, some customer infrastructure and customer-support services.

ComEd’s proposal also would increase residents’ monthly meter charge, which pays for the meter, by $1, to $2.24.

“Low users will be particularly hard hit because these are increases in fixed monthly costs (as opposed to useage-based costs),” Lusson said. “This (proposal) goes against every notion of conservation and energy efficiency that public policymakers have embraced.”

Further, ComEd’s pilot surcharge request would have “no discernible benefits” at a time when 40 percent of ComEd’s residential customer base have household spending that exceeds their incomes, Lusson said.

Mia Lopez, a 39-year-old single and unemployed West Town resident, said, “Every month, my pocketbook is stretched to its very limit. If my bills go up, my income cannot.”

“This isn’t small change,” said Lopez, whose position running operations at a charter-school organization was cut when the organization didn’t get expected funds from the state. “I guess at some point I won’t be able to enjoy all of ComEd’s flashy and new smart meters because my electricity would have been cut off for lack of payment.”

William E. Kyle, a Lawndale resident, scolded the ICC and ComEd for failing to publicize the hearing so that more people could have expressed their opinions.

He suggested that ComEd put notices on people’s electric bills of future hearings.

“Electrical services are a basic need, yet almost all senior citizens are on fixed incomes,” he said. “(ComEd) has to be more cost-effective. Everyone is being asked to do more with less.”

Zenobia Baker, a retiree, said if ComEd wins its rate-hike requests, then assistance for the low-income to pay for energy should also be increased. That program is called Illinois Home Energy Assistance Program or IHEAP.

The ICC is expected to act on the rate-hike request on May 24 and the pilot surcharge request on May 28.