Ratepayers got a break last week when the Mississippi Supreme Court rolled back Mississippi Power's 2013 and 2014 rate increases. The Clarion-Ledger reported:
The Mississippi Supreme Court has invalidated the rate increases related to Mississippi Power Co.'s Kemper County coal plant, and ordered refunds to the utility's 186,000 ratepayers.
In an opinion handed down Thursday, the court ruled that the rate increases the Mississippi Public Service Commission approved via split vote for 2013 and 2014 be refunded. The utility, through the use of Construction Work in Progress funds, was allowed to recover $125 million via increased power bills in 2013, and $156 million in 2014. Rates jumped 15 percent in 2013, and another 3 percent in 2014. The court ordered PSC to mandate Mississippi Power refund that money. Justices also ordered the PSC to provide notice to Mississippi Power ratepayers before any proceedings in which rate increases were on the agenda. "The increased rates on 186,000 South Mississippi ratepayers fail to comport with the (Base Load) Act or, otherwise, with our law," presiding justice Mike Randolph wrote in the majority opinion.
A Hattiesburg resident had asked the court to invalidate the increases. They were granted under the Base Load Act, a law enacted in 2008 that allows utilities to pass to ratepayers the cost of building power-generating facilities. The court took issue with the particular mechanism the PSC employed, called "mirror construction work in progress funds," in which the revenue from the rate increases is held in a regulatory liability account to offset rate increases that otherwise would occur after the plant was in operation. Without mirror CWIP, the rate hikes will occur over a smaller time period.
"It was basically a way to try to minimize the rate impact," said Central District Commissioner Lynn Posey, whose district includes the plant.
The ruling would seem to put the method Mississippi Power has used to pay for the construction of the plant in jeopardy, at least until prudency hearings are held. The PSC uses prudency hearings are used to determine if costs utilities pass on to consumers were "prudently incurred," according to the Base Load Act's language. The court ruled that ratepayers' due process rights had been violated because notice was not given before hearings and because prudency hearings had not been held before rate increase were approved. The PSC last summer delayed prudency hearings indefinitely.
The court's opinion also declares unenforceable a 2013 settlement between the PSC and Mississippi Power in which the utility agreed not to charge ratepayers more than $2.4 billion for the cost of the plant. The opinion excoriates the PSC for negotiating the settlement in private, saying "the public has a right to see and hear its business being conducted."..... Rest of article.
7 comments:
Thank you Ms.Supremes for a decision that helps the ratepayers. The politicians did not give a damn when they pushed thru the Base Load act/legislation. Kemper is a complete fiasco that must be the responsibility of the owners for the financially disaster they have created due to total incompetence. Ed Holland, the Ms.Power CEO, spins their lies in a manner that not one educated person would believe. They are now working towards a 7 billion $$$ price tag and do not know yet if the technology will work when they finish in 20?????.The damage to low income families is where the hurt is the greatest. Haley Barbour still travels the state, as their lobbyist, preaching his snake oil sales talk, about how great Kemper is. Enough of this robbery by the Ms.Power monopoly.
Mississippi sure as hell can't afford any more Haley Barbour.
Gee Haley, does that dough mean so much to you that you became a traitor to your people?
Haley should have had more regard for his own legacy and reputation than to continue to take Southern's money for speaking to civic groups trying to justify Kemper, as he has as late as last year. Speaking fees or not, he has only one reputation to blow. Just like the folks at Southern and MPC, Haley has only demonstrated he did not know when to cut his losses and to stop trying to excuse the inexcusable before the personal cost became permanent. Now Phil Bryant, Phil Gunn, and Tate Reeves need to cut their own losses on Kemper by repealing their gift to Southern of the $1 Billion Bond bill that ratepayers will have to repay in addition to whatever the PSC gives them. Of course common sense eventually may prevail if it is all found imprudent by the PSC except for the $800 million or so spent on the natural gas plant included in Kemper that is operating today just fine at lower cost. SO needs to write off the remaining $5+ Billion spent on the lignite syn gas portion of the plant, and our Republican leadership needs to get out front and give Southern the bad news that Mississippi rate payers will not be stuck with the cost of their experiment.
Hey, let's make some oil out of pine trees! Whaddya say Haley?
Stan Flint @ 11:0) - appreciate your thoughts about the evils of speaking fees. Just wondering: Are the fees you get from all your 'public interest groups' for writing on blogsites just as 'horrible'?
Hey anonymous @ 7:36,
You don't have enough courage to use your name in this blog, but want to hide in the woods and wrongly defame others. If you have an ounce of guts or a scintilla of ethics, you will respond to this posting by coming out from behind your Mommy's skirts and putting your name where your mouth is. BTW, it is very easy to determine when I post a blog here. It will have my name attached to it. Whadya say? No guts, no glory. Here is my bet for all the readers, you will continue to be a gutless, anonymous critic, who, BTW is wrong on top of being a coward.
Post a Comment