MONTPELIER, Vt. -
The 21 million dollar question still does not have an answer.
21-million is the amount of money Green Mountain Power customers paid to help keep the utility from bankruptcy. Now that GMP and CVPS are planning to merge, those customers want that money back. Vermont lawmakers hope to answer some of those questions this week.
But before any kind of decision on the merger between CVPS and GMP can be approved, Vermont lawmakers want to understand how we got here. "The very first form of utility regulation was regulation of railroads, that was about the mid 19th century- and there was a railroad commission appointed by the supreme court."
Members of the Legislative Council gave a history lesson Tuesday - on New England's electric utility regulation over the past few hundred years. "I'm looking forward to later hearing from other witnesses who were there when the decision was made to separate the board from the department," State Representative Bill Botzow said.
Once the past is understood, perhaps the present will reveal a solution because ratepayers who bailed GMP out of a bad power deal eleven years ago want to know when and how the 21 million dollars will be returned. "They want it to be fair, but they also don't want it to disrupt our government system and that is probably the balance that we're looking at," Botzow said.
The utilities want to invest the 21 million into weatherization and other energy efficient programs - but a proposed amendment could require the utility to write 76 dollar checks to each of the 130,000 CVPS customers who helped in the bailout. "I don't fully expect that either one of those pathways would be the final outcome," Representative Botzow said.
State representatives are scheduled to make their case for the proposed amendment Wednesday and get one step closer to answering the 21 million dollar question. But with just two weeks left of the legislative session, it's unknown... even after this week-long discussion whether or not a decision will be made.
