Consumers' watchdog in Ohio is disgraced, why waste
our money?
11/08/2003
The man Ohioans have paid $130,000 a
year to protect their consumer interests in utility matters
resigned this week. Don't bother with a going-away present.
Robert Tongren, Ohio Consumers' Counsel,
since 1994, quit amid a public uproar after it was revealed
that he'd ordered the shredding of a $579,000 taxpayer-funded
utility study, never made public, that could have saved
FirstEnergy Corp. electricity customers like us billions of
dollars.
Instead, Tongren apparently sat on the report
while state utility regulators allowed FirstEnergy to charge
customers to recoup $8.7 billion for its nuclear power plant
construction costs in exchange for freezing electricity rates
as Ohio moved toward deregulating the power industry. The
shredded study said consumers should bear no more than about
half that $8.7 billion amount.
Tongren tried to claim
that he went along with the $8.7 billion deal because he
thought it was the best that could be expected without a
costly legal battle. The study was shredded under normal
policy for discarding records after a period of time, he
cooed.
If that's a consumer watchdog, the only trick he
knows is to roll over and play dead when the utilities
whistle. The Ohio Consumers' Counsel is supported by money the
utilities must kick in to a fund. The utilities then are
allowed to pass that cost to their customers. About 4 cents
for every $100 on your utility bills goes to pay for the Ohio
Consumers' Counsel.
It's up to State Attorney General
Jim Petro to name a new consumers' counsel. Whoever he picks
had better be a live wire when it comes to protecting the
interests of consumers in utility matters before the Public
Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Then again, this is a
good time to re-evaluate whether Ohio even needs a Consumers'
Counsel with a $9 million budget, essentially to watch over
the PUCO, which also supposedly exists to watch out for
consumers in utility matters. How many utility agencies do we
need to take our money only to fail us? How long are we going
to put up with blind, toothless watchdogs?
Some state
legislators are demanding that FirstEnergy consumers be paid a
rebate and that a committee probe the dark side of Ohio's
utilities deregulation story. That sounds good, especially the
rebate
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