The Senate Communications, Energy and Utilities Committee moved a bill forward Tuesday that authorizes the Florida Public Services Commission to create standards of reasonable and reliable service for investor-owned water and sewer utilities and penalize the companies when they violate those standards.
SB 1104 expands the powers of the PSC to allow it to require investor-owned water and sewer companies to record their outages and the time they take to recover from them. The bill, which passed the committee unanimously, also allows the PSC to set standards of reasonable and reliable service for electric utilities.
The bill would allow individual customers who claim electric, sewer and water utilities failed to meet standards can be reimbursed for no more than $100. The utilities would be charged no more than $5,000 every day they violate their new standards -- a penalty electricity utilities already face.
Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, told the committee he receives hundreds of calls from around the state and from constituents in his district about undrinkable water. The vocal critic of utilities said the problems have given arise to an additional need for regulations that would hold utilities responsible for their failures.
Mark Futrell, public utilities supervisor for the PSC, said Fasanos legislation is similar to much of the PSCs existing regulations for electric utilities. The PSC already requires power companies to record outages, their duration and how long it takes to recover. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection records event-related water outages, Futrell said.
Futrell and Fasano said the PSC had not given any input on the bill.
Terry Deason, a lobbyist for Floridas four largest investor-owned electric utilities, told the committee that there was no need for added regulations. He said the commissions existing regulations for electrical utilities were basically the same as Fasanos.
The commission has all the authority it needs in this area, and the customer complaints do not indicate its getting worse, said Deason, who lobbies for Florida Power & Light Co., Progress Energy, Gulf Energy and TECO Energy.
FPL and Progress Energy were both denied dramatic base rate hikes early this year.
Deason said the four companies he lobbies for serve 7.1 million customers. He said the companies only receive 40 total customer complaints a month, and they received about 492 last year. He said the companies received 74 complaints in the first two months of the year, meaning the complaints are going down.
Fasano may have struck another blow with Tuesdays bill, but his efforts to reform the PSC's ethics have been endangered by a proposed House committee bill. The bill would make off-the-record communications between PSC staff and utilities illegal in an attempt to ensure the PSC makes its decision free of influence. The bill passed the Senate but has stalled in the House
A proposed bill from the Energy and Policy Committee would make changes that would put the PSC regulatory staff under control of the Legislature, require that commission members have utility or professional experience and put in place other requirements that Fasano feels clash with his bill.
Its so pro-utility, its laughable, Fasano said.
Contact Alex Tiegen at atiegen@sunshinestatenews.com, or at (561) 329-5389.
