Legislative committee to hold hearing Tuesday on bills stemming from Kentucky Derby controversy
The General Assembly's Energy and Technology Committee will hold a public hearing at 1 p.m. Tuesday on several bills that would affect the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative and municipally owned utilities, including one bill that would repeal a statute that created the cooperative.
The hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday in Room 1D in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
Most of the bills stemmed from the controversial strategic retreats to the Kentucky Derby CMEEC has hosted for dozens of board members, staff, municipal officials and guests over the past four years. The trips have cost more than $1 million collectively.
Other bills address failure of the cooperative to comply with state Freedom of Information laws concerning meeting agendas, minutes and other information. CMEEC officials have acknowledged some of those errors and recently have sent meeting notices and minutes to city clerk offices in member towns. But the cooperative continues to argue that much of its financial information is proprietary and not subject to state FOI laws.
Three of the bills to be considered Tuesday would expand the type of information CMEEC and municipal utilities would be required to make public under the state FOI law.
State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, submitted three bills, including one — Senate Bill 79 — that would repeal existing legislation that allowed the creation of CMEEC, and a second to allow municipal utilities in the state to create “joint purchasing agencies.” Somers submitted a third bill requiring municipal utilities to make their financial books open to public inspection.
Somers publicly has criticized CMEEC as a nonprofit that has “lost its way” by hosting the lavish trips to the Kentucky Derby that included no conferences, business meetings or presentations. Dozens of guests, including family members and municipal officials, including Norwich Mayor Deberey Hinchey, with little or no business affiliation with CMEEC have attended.
The bills are expected to be met with strong criticism from CMEEC and its member utilities.
The CMEEC board spent part of its January meeting outlining plans for a public educational campaign to the legislature to describe the financial benefits the organization has had for its members. CMEEC also owns and is developing several micro-generation facilities throughout the region to keep power on in key commercial, medical and industrial complexes during extended power outages.
Norwich Public Utilities officials do not plan to attend Tuesday's hearing, NPU spokesman Chris Riley said, but will submit written testimony on the relevant bills.
“NPU opposes Senate Bill 79 because disbanding CMEEC would result in higher electric rates for every single resident and business in Norwich,” Riley said in a written statement Friday. “Our customers pay lower rates when compared to investor-owned utilities as a result of our partnership with CMEEC. In 2016, CMEEC’s wholesale energy costs saved its six members nearly $30 million. Over the past four years, CMEEC has saved its members — and their customers — more than $127 million.”
Riley added: “These savings are reinvested into our communities year after year, creating and supporting thousands of jobs, local business and nonprofit organizations."
Somers, not a member of the Energy and Technology Committee, plans to testify at Tuesday's hearing. Somers said even if the General Assembly does not repeal the CMEEC statute, the public discussion about the operations of the six-member municipal utilities cooperative will be beneficial. Somers invited officials from CMEEC and all member utilities to attend the hearing or submit testimony _ Norwich Public Utilities, Groton Utilities, which also owns member Bozrah Light & Power, Jewett City Department of Public Utilities and two utilities in Norwalk. She also invited officials from Wallingford Electric Division, which is not a member but had a contract with CMEEC that is now in arbitration concerning financial charges.
Somers also has requested comparative electric rate information from the state Office of Legislative Research.
Four other southeastern Connecticut legislators submitted a bill with a stated purpose to “increase public awareness and provide transparency regarding municipal electric utilities and municipal electric energy cooperatives.” And Republican state Rep. Craig Fishbein, who represents Wallingford, submitted a bill that would require CMEEC to provide detailed, itemized expenses to “nonmember municipal electric utilities to which they provide services.”
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