Armstrong brings ApCo fight to WCC

By MARK SAGE/Staff

The same stories keep repeating themselves, Delegate Ward Armstrong said Saturday.
They’re the stories of people trying to make ends meet on reduced salaries being shocked by a $500 power bill. It’s the story of the woman wearing hats and gloves indoors to keep heating bills down, even as the bills continue to climb, taking 60 percent of her income. Or the one of the woman choosing to cut back on medicine. Or the woman who owns an unoccupied rental, using very little electricity to speak of yet still getting hit with a bill north of $300.
Armstrong, the House’s chief Democrat, was outside his district, holding town hall forums in Bluefield, Va., Abingdon and Wytheville because, he said, the issue cuts across Southwest Virginia.
“If we don’t bind together on this issue and speak as one voice, it isn’t going to get addressed,” the delegate from Martinsville and Carroll and Patrick counties said.
Armstrong, wearing a “no rate hike” sticker on his black sweater vest, said he was there to speak, but also to listen.
Like many in the audience, Randy Lilly of Grahams Forge laid a big portion of the blame at Appalachian Power’s feet.
“They skim off every dollar they can possibly line their pockets with,” he said, noting that he knows the company has “cut the guts out” out of its maintenance department while increasing costs for consumers. His bill, he said skyrocketed a couple months ago to $340.
However, Lilly reserved some blame for politicians.
“I really question if there is the political willpower to do anything about it,” he said, noting that the legislature has been “in bed” with Appalachian Power for 10 years now.
Grant Graybeal of Pulaski sounded a similar belief. He said no one begrudges a company a decent profit. If the profits are indecent – Armstrong said Appalachian Power’s profits were up 27 percent last year – he said you have to look at what enabled it. Thirteen times, he said, the State Corporation Commission agreed to higher rates for Appalachian Power. The agency, he said, needs to be refocused and restaffed. 
Ed Testerman of Speedwell wondered why the SCC couldn’t allow residents here to shop around.
The trouble, Armstrong said, is it’s been tried. In the 1990s, the General Assembly deregulated the power companies, hoping to spur competition, even though consumers would still be stuck with ApCo’s lines and infrastructure, that never came. However, all the regulations were thrown out. The regulations, he said, date back to the early 1900s, when the General Assembly controlled railroad rates. Constituents back then, he said, tired of having politicians in the pockets of the railroad and demanded change. So the SCC was born. A few years later, he said, as electrification strung the mountains, the SCC was given the responsibility, in the 1920s and 1930s of setting rates. Competition was out, he said, because it was too expensive for more than one company to string lines. In the 1990s, still regulated, this region enjoyed some of the cheapest electric rates in the nation, he said.
Armstrong’s aim is to get back to those 1990s regulations, and hopefully rates. To that end, the Democrat filed H.B. 639. In a subcommittee of the House’s Commerce and Labor, the bill passed on a 7-2 vote.
“The next day the lobbyists started walking the halls of the General Assembly,” Armstrong said.
Two days later, he said, the bill died in full committee on a 21-1 vote. Delegate Joe Johnson Jr., who represents parts of Smyth and Washington counties, was the lone yes vote, he said.
Armstrong, not ready to give up on his bill, took the fight to the House floor, going the unusual route of asking for the committee’s decision to be discharged. In fiery speech before the whole House, he said “a backroom deal” had been cut as “dark suits descended on the General Assembly building.”
His measure lost 74 to 25.
Delegate Anne B. Crockett-Stark’s name is on the list of 74; however, she said it’s not a vote against the bill. The Republican delegate said she co-patroned the bill with Armstrong but would not vote to ignore the committee just because one piece of legislation got killed. Though she said you may not like the rules, you have to work within their structure.
Delegate Bill Carrico said his vote on the House floor was a procedural one as well. The process works, he said, and is the only way to get work done in Richmond.
“Either you believe in the process or you don’t,” Carrico said.
It’s a process all get caught in. Carrico said he has bills killed in committee and doesn’t always agree, but it’s something he has to accept.
Crockett-Stark, who hosted her own telephone town hall meeting Tuesday evening, said she doesn’t necessarily like the budget, but she as to accept it and take responsibility for it.
Carrico questioned whether the bill would have helped anyway. He said the SCC has said it has as much power now as it did pre-1999. The Republican from Smyth, Wythe and Grayson counties said he wants to make sure everything is fair, noting that from 1983 to 2005, there was little or no change in electric rates despite how everything else, from fuel to milk, went up. Carrico also took issue with Armstrong’s characterizations of a “back room deal,” saying he’s been fighting unfair rate increases since 2005. He said he didn’t understand why Armstrong seems bent on stirring up controversy.
Armstrong, who vowed on Saturday to keep fighting, even if he’s the only one doing so, said he feels “very much like a voice in the wilderness.” Johnson joined him in Abingdon; however, Crockett-Stark and Carrico were absent from the Wytheville meeting.
Crockett-Stark said she wasn’t invited to the meeting at the college and was only made aware of it the day before. Other commitments kept her away, she said, but she wished she had known earlier. Carrico also said other commitments kept him from attending.
Armstrong said he felt he’d be starting with a solid base in this region and wouldn’t have problems till further down the road, closer to Richmond.
On Feb. 24, Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a pair of bills that strip away a 12.5 percent interim rate increase imposed in December. The legislation was part of a flurry dealing with power company introduced at the start of the session, Armstrong said. He compared the signed bills to putting a Band-Aid on an amputated arm. The delegate said the SCC told him eliminating the interim rate hike would save the average customer between $15 and $20 a month. He said lawmakers felt the need to go home having done something about the rates and yet didn’t want to do anything to make ApCo mad.
Crockett-Stark said the issue is important to her and the other 15 delegates who have worked to get ApCo to amend its ways. Crockett-Stark said what the power company is allowed to do legally and what it should do morally are different issues. Just last week, Crockett-Stark said she met with ApCo leaders and suggested some changes, including a discount program for those who meet certain requirements. The delegate suggested that all the lawmakers in Appalachian Power’s footprint need to sit down and craft a good, strong piece of legislation this summer.
“At the end of the day, it’s about money,” Armstrong said.
It’s about the power company getting more money, which is why some people, those who lost electricity in December or January, got a bill for power they never used, he said.
And it’s about other people’s money. On a telephone town hall in Franklin and Floyd counties last week, Armstrong said half the 5,400 listening said they had had to make a choice between paying for electricity or some other necessity. Sixty percent said they had dipped into savings to pay their bills.
The rates will also put people out of work, Armstrong said. He said businesses from the region recently came to Richmond to meet with the governor. While there, Galax furniture-maker Vaughan-Bassett said its power bill is $100,000 a month. The company asked how it can pay that kind of money and keep workers, Armstrong said. The delegate said the school superintendent in Bluefield also questioned a doubling in rates to $100,000 a month, saying six teacher may soon find themselves out a job.
Armstrong warned those at the meeting that they may be in for a long fight. It’s not over, he said, “just because we have a town hall meeting.” He asked those at the college to sign a petition and to tell friends and neighbors how to sign one online, at http://www.wardarmstrong.com, that would push the lawmakers to design meaningful regulations.
Contact Mark Sage at 228-6611 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).