Newly installed Ulster County executive Jen Metzger has put her dissatisfaction with Central Hudson Gas & Electric on the record in a letter to the New York State Public Service Commission, calling for Central Hudson’s shareholders instead of its customers to pay for the company’s failures, Metzger puts herself in the company of recent interim county executive Johanna Contreras, state senator Michelle Hinchey and congressmember Pat Ryan, all of whom have called for the same.
With at least 11,000 customers adversely affected by the company’s changeover to a new customer information system, dissatisfaction with the Hudson Valley utility is par for the course.
“At the same time that our residents and small businesses continue to be burdened by crushing utility and energy costs and a broken utility billing system,” said Metzger, “Fortis/Central Hudson shareholders have enjoyed uninterrupted profits and increasing dividends.”
Metzger’s letter comes on the heels of a state report released in December, which found overcharges, delayed bills, and incorrect or illegal withdrawals of funds from customer bank accounts. More recently, a February 4 ice storm saw more than 47,000 residents of Ulster County without power in below freezing temperatures for days.
Metzger says that debt relief for moderate-income customers and small businesses are in order, with no costs passed on to already overburdened ratepayers.
A statewide program to assist customers struggling with unpaid utility bills due to economic hardship caused by the pandemic was authorized by the Public Service Commission on June 16, 2022. The most vulnerable of utility customers were to be prioritized for utility debt relief in the first phase of the arrears program. The second phase would extend forgiveness to moderate-income households and small businesses struggling with significant arrears.
The question of who funds these arrears – the utility shareholders, ratepayers, or a combination of the two – has not yet been decided. The only fair and reasonable path forward, argued Metzger in her letter to the PSC, was to assign shareholders the responsibility for the cost of second-phase relief measures.
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