New York state senator Michelle Hinchey’s bill to restrict electricity providers like Central Hudson from the practice of estimated billing won unanimous support in the State Senate on March 23.
Hinchey’s bill also unanimously passed the senate in the 2021-2022 term, but the companion assembly bill in that year never made it out of the Assembly Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee. In the interim between senate terms, much has changed in the landscape for gas and electricity providers.
A damning Public Services Commission (PSC) report released last December alleged a litany of blunders committed by Central Hudson Gas & Electric under the direction of then-president and CEO, Charles Freni. Just days after being castigated on national television by freshman congressman Pat Ryan, Freni resigned.
The bill was introduced this January in the Senate’s Energy and Telecommunications Committee, where it obtained swift passage.
While not an outright ban of estimated billing, the bill would institute a number of reforms. Responding to reports that alternating months of estimated billing appears to have been Central Hudson’s de-facto practice, Hinchey’s bill would limit the number of times a year a utility bill could be estimated to a maximum of three billing cycles, down from six.
Also codified into law would be the rule that all utility companies in New York must perform an actual meter reading when not prevented from doing so by circumstances beyond their control. Extreme weather would be an acceptable excuse.
The bill will also for the first time force utilities to disclose their estimated billing formulas to the public. “Utility companies are using estimation formulas that are not based on past usage,” said Hinchey, “making it impossible for New Yorkers to afford, let alone trust, their utility bills.”
If the companion bill can make it out of the Assembly this session, the governor’s signature would start a six-month countdown during which each utility corporation and municipality would be required to submit a best-practices model procedure for the calculation of estimated bills to the PSC. The PSC would then complete a comprehensive review of the estimated billing procedures used by all utility companies serving New York State.
Out of this process would be created one industry standard estimation formula to rule them all.
“No matter who you are,” said Hinchey, “a single parent or a senior on a fixed income, you should be able to budget effectively from month to month, not have your savings account unexpectedly drained by an inaccurate utility bill as we’ve seen happen to countless Hudson Valley community members.”
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