The conversation surrounding our skyrocketing electricity bills shows no signs of slowing down. Rep. Vincent Candelora (R- North Branford), the House Minority Leader, explains why Republicans in the legislature started a petition for a special session and why they believe Governor Lamont has been hesitant to take action.
Mike Hydeck: You know, from groceries to medications, we are paying more for almost everything these days. So when state regulators approved two hikes on our electric bills in two months, state lawmakers got an earful from ratepayers. Now both Democrats and Republicans say they want to do something about it. But where do we go from here? Joining me now is Republican leader in the House, Vincent Candelora, good to see you, Representative. Welcome back. So complaints about high electric bills continue. We know that we've heard them. Connecticut has been among the highest in the nation for a long time now. A protest is planned at the capitol in September. Your party has some thoughts on how to at least mitigate some of this. What are they?
Vincent Candelora: Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of programs that cost ratepayers money that they just shouldn't pay for. One is the electric charging stations. That's $80 million that was put on the bills. Another one was the moratorium that was put in place for four years because of covid. And then there's another.
Mike Hydeck: So when people couldn't pay their bills?
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Vincent Candelora: They just didn't have to pay it.
Mike Hydeck: Right, and we all paid it as a result.
Vincent Candelora: And then there's a third program for low income individuals that can't pay their bills. All that adds up to almost $400 million; and that's something that just shouldn't end up on people's electric bills who are already struggling to pay all the other bills that they have.
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Mike Hydeck: So how would you like to see that mitigated?
Vincent Candelora: So we do have some ARPA money. Back in February, we asked for the ARPA money to be used to offset all of that. The Democrats allocated most of it to higher education, but there is some that could be left over to be utilized. I think we should be looking at surplus dollars and any other means that we have out there. It's hard to tell the public we have surplus after surplus, but we can't give them rate relief.
Mike Hydeck: Right. So the governor says he's willing to talk to leadership in the House and Senate. Are there any plans to make that happen? Or is that a hollow promise, in your opinion?
Vincent Candelora: I think it's fairly hollow. I think the Democrats want to hold on to as much money as they can going into next budget cycle, and they're hoping this just goes away. The problem with the public benefit charges is it's a percentage of your bill, so the more energy you're using, the more public benefits you're paying. And so people really felt it in July. They're going to feel it again in August because you're consuming a lot of electricity that time of year.
Mike Hydeck: So should the public benefits portion of the bill be restructured? Senator Ryan Fazio thinks maybe it should be rolled into the budget.
Vincent Candelora: Yeah. I mean, that's part of the conversation. If you put it in the budget, there's more transparency to these programs that are being implemented. We never voted for electric charging stations. PURA just added that onto the bill. If you put it in the budget, there's more transparency, there's a public hearing process, the legislators would have to vote. Those are long term fixes. In the short run, we've got to subsidize this.
Mike Hydeck: So the Democrats say the plan, whether it's surplus money or other kinds of money that we can move to try to help rate payers, it's largely just nibbling around the edges. We should do more to that. They feel like this is more political, considering we have an election year coming up. What are your thoughts on that? And should there be a bigger fix than maybe just this fix?
Vincent Candelora: Yeah. I mean, they dropped the ball, and frankly, I think they're caught with their pants down. We asked for these fixes in February. They can't now say it's political. We knew this was going to be a problem. They ignored it, and now they're caught holding the bag. Anything will help. So I think the short term subsidies would help the ratepayers. Long term, we've got to invest in gas, we've got to invest in nuclear, we've got to invest in hydro. And this administration and previous administrations don't have a good track record of supporting sort of the traditional fossil fuel energies.
Mike Hydeck: Now we revealed a clean diesel plant, I guess down on the shoreline yesterday. They actually talked about it the other day this week. Is that part of a larger, you know, fix?
Vincent Candelora: I mean, I guess…
Mike Hydeck: I mean, just, you know, using a bunch of different things to transition maybe more towards the electric vehicle situation.
Vincent Candelora: The problem is that all those programs add to clean air and their renewable programs, laudable goals. I mean, there's a goal we have, like, 40 percent reduction in emissions in the very shortcoming. The problem with it is there needs to be costs associated with it. There has to be a cost benefit analysis. The State of Connecticut is not going to solve our global climate change issues. And yet, you know, the Democrats continue to push these proposals of of wind and solar without balancing it more. And so, you know, we're going to have a wind turbines going online. It's going to be 15 cents a kilowatt. You know, right now we're paying five cents for Millstone. Ratepayers are going to freak out when they're going to be paying 15 cents.
Mike Hydeck: When it goes up again. Yeah, so that's in the beginning, and they believe longitudinally, it'll come down, but it'll take a long time for that. So you actually set up a website to try to get a special session, right? Because it takes a certain amount of votes to get a special session. You guys are trying to edge other lawmakers into voting for a special, if the governor doesn't call for it.
Vincent Candelora: Right. We need a majority of members. So we need Democrats to sign this petition. It's, so the website is specialsessionct.com. And we ask people to go there and sign the petition to get these members on board, to sign up to have this dialogue.
Mike Hydeck
Do you feel like you're going to have any kind of dialogue with the governor and/or Democrats in the next week or so on this? Because it seems like the pressure is mounting to get a special session. At the very least, you're going to have a leadership meeting?
Vincent Candelora
Clearly, the only way we're going to have this happen is with the public support and pushing for it. The Democrats and the governor don't seem to be interested. We don't have a leadership meeting scheduled. The governor is scheduling a meeting with the Energy Committee chairs and ranking members, but there's no leadership meeting to address this crisis that we're in right now.
Mike Hydeck: Representative Candelora, we have to leave it there. Thank you, sir. Good to see you.
