Sen. Somers Calls for a Complete Overhaul or Elimination of CMEEC

Somers Calls for a Complete Overhaul or Elimination of CMEEC in 2019 Legislative Session

 “CMEEC is an organization that has lost its way.”

In the wake of five federal indictments of upper management and current and former Board members at the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative (CMEEC), Senator Heather Somers (R- Groton) today called for a complete overhaul of CMEEC’s “enabling statute” which lays out CMEEC’s purpose, authority and reporting requirements.

“These indictments make clear that what I’ve feared is true – CMEEC is an organization that has lost its way,” Sen. Somers said.  “Since CMEEC is a creation of the Legislature, I’m asking the Energy and Technology Committee to take a closer look at the entire CMEEC statute to clarify its role and include much more substantial controls and reporting requirements on this nonprofit, public agency.”

Sen. Somers said she will ask the Committee to legislate measures which limit CMEEC’s business model and institute oversight of CMEEC on behalf of the ratepayers, including:

• Making all CMEEC documents – including all agreements and contracts – subject to the Freedom of Information Act, without redaction, once such agreements and contracts are executed
• Requiring that CMEEC’s budget and rates be reviewed and approved by PURA (i.e. rate case) at least every two years
• Making the Attorney General and Office of Consumer Counsel parties to CMEEC rate cases
• Requiring that any “margin” revenues exceeding power supply obligations be returned directly to every member municipal utility annually
• Temporarily freezing CMEEC’s ability to invest in projects until all past projects have undergone thorough audits and no fiduciary mismanagement is found
• Eliminating CMEEC’s ability to bill any customer for costs that exceed the actual cost to provide such products and services
• Eliminating CMEEC’s ability to supply power or otherwise provide services to entities outside its members’ municipal utility service territories
• Limiting CMEEC to a power procurement agency for the municipal utilities in Connecticut, removing all other functions and business enterprises.

Since CMEEC’s inception, wholesale electric markets were created and have had time to mature. These changes mean there are options for procuring electricity for municipal utilities that simply didn’t exist before.

“I hope the Energy and Technology Committee will seriously weigh the need for CMEEC altogether, allowing current member utilities to freely exit the organization without burdensome financial penalties,” said Sen. Somers. “Another municipal utility in Connecticut found procurement services at a much lower cost than member towns pay CMEEC. We owe it to CMEEC’s captive and abused municipal utility ratepayers to lay out the range of options that exist for procuring energy.”