Citizens' Utility Board pushes for more protections for Cleveland residents
CLEVELAND -- "A consumer protection group is calling on Cleveland City Council to do more to protect residents from rising utility costs.
The Citizens Utility Board of Ohio (CUB) told council members on Tuesday that Clevelanders are the ones who end up paying, literally, for Cleveland Public Power’s (CPP) bad contracts.
CPP rates are now higher than FirstEnergy’s, said Sandy Buchanan CUB member and executive director at the Institute for Energy, Economics and Financial Analysis. CPP contracts with the American Municipal Power (AMP) group to purchase its power, Buchanan said, and those contracts are costing Cleveland residents far more than they should.
'Our organization estimates that these two contracts alone have cost CPP ratepayers $106 million more for power than customers would have paid if CPP had bought the electricity from regional wholesale markets,' Buchanan said."
-- Taylor Haggerty, NPR's Ideastream