Power play

Staff reports

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 electric bill. It’s the story of the woman 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, 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 Henry counties said.
Armstrong, wearing a “no rate hike” sticker on his black sweater vest, said he was there to speak, but also to listen.
Jean Greer owns Watauga Trailer Park outside of Abingdon. She said rents aren’t more than $400 and some tenants are now facing power bills that exceed their rent.
“Their power bills are now going above the cost of monthly rent,” Greer said. “None of them are able to absorb this kind of cost.”
Another man said, “The power bills are going up but our wages are staying the same and there’s more and more unemployment.”
Dennis Banks said, “Last month my bill doubled and I used 400 kilowatts less than last year. This is nothing but greed.”
In 1997, the General Assembly deregulated the power companies, hoping to spur competition, even though consumers would still be stuck with Appalachian Power Company’s lines and infrastructure, that never came. However, all the regulations were thrown out. The regulations, Armstrong said, date back to the early 1900’s, 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 State Corporation Commission was born. A few years later, he said, as electrification strung the mountains, the SCC was given the responsibility, in the 1920’s and 1930’s of setting rates. Competition was out, he said, because it was too expensive for more than one company to string lines. In the 1990’s, 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 1990’s 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 to discharge the committee lost 74 to 25.
Johnson said his vote against discharging the committee had nothing to do with whether he supported Armstrong’s bill to reregulate the power companies.
“I was the only one that stood up for him when it really counted,” Johnson said.
But still photocopies of the vote to discharge the committee so his bill could be heard before the House was passed out at the Abingdon’s Town Hall and Johnson’s nay vote was on it.
“People will pass this on and say Joe didn’t support this when I did when it really counted…. To me (this was) the only way we can have a proper process. I didn’t think it was a proper process…. (The committee vote) wasn’t even close…. Why waste taxpayers’ money?”
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.”
Delegate Terry Kilgore, who represents Lee, Scott and part of Washington and Wise counties, was absent from the Abingdon meeting.
Kilgore, chairman of the House Commerce and Labor Committee, said although he knew about Saturday’s town all meeting he didn’t attend because he didn’t feel like he would be welcome.
“What Delegate Armstrong proposed only got one or two votes in Committee,” Kilgore said. “We were looking for something that would give immediate relief to the consumer… and we did that. In fact what (Armstrong is proposing) hurts consumers because the 2007 legislation requires power companies, if they’ve overcharged, to give refunds and the traditional cost regulation did not.”
He said under Armstrong’s proposal to return back to pre-1997 regulations it would take two to three years before a rate case would be filed.
He also said Virginia is the fourth-biggest importer of electricity in the nation and those costs are passed on to the consumer but 2007 legislation give utility companies some incentives to build generation capacity in Virginia.
Kilgore said he doesn’t think legislative action needs to be taken right now.
“We had a hearing on power rates and asked the State Corporation Commission and Attorney General what tools they need to address problems with the high electrical rates and they said they had the tools to address (these issues),” Kilgore said.
Kilgore said he’s set up a meeting up with the Commerce and Labor Committees in the House and Senate and the State Corporation Commission on April 20 to “discuss these issues.”
“I’d like to see more immediate relief than getting a lot of folks hyped up when there’s not anything behind the curtain,” Kilgore said.
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.
“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.

Mark Sage and Caitlin Sullivan contributed to this report.