CT Senate GOP: “Let’s work together to bring down electricity costs”
July 26, 2024
Senate Republicans respond to Lamont’s PURA appointment
CT Inside Investigator
Republican lawmakers released a statement yesterday in response to Gov. Lamont’s announcing the retirement of Public Utilities Regulation Authority (PURA) Vice Chairman John Betkoski III, and Lamont’s appointment of David Arconti Jr. as PURA Commissioner. Senator Ryan Fazio (Greenwich), Ranking Senator on the Energy and Technology Committee, and Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding (Brookfield), called for a restructuring of PURA in the name of bipartisanship, among other things.
“Arconti’s appointment only exacerbates the Authority’s already imbalanced partisan makeup, with three Democrats and just one Republican,” read the statement. “Either we should reduce the total membership to three under state law or the governor should fully appoint five members, three Democrats and two Republicans, to the commission.”
Currently, the only Republican sitting on PURA is former Assistant Republican Leader Michael Caron. Arconti, who currently serves as vice president of state government relations for United Illuminating, previously served five terms as a Democratic representative for his hometown of Danbury. Senators Fazio and Harding went on to say that having four sitting members is also impractical because of the lack of a tiebreaker. Their stated issues with PURA’s organization did not end there, however.
“Connecticut must restructure the state bureaucracy to reflect common practices in other states by separating the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), the policy-making agency, and PURA, the adjudicatory agency,” read the statement. “We need checks and balances.”
Calls for PURA to be brought out from under DEEP’s umbrella are not new. The two agencies were first merged in 2011 at the request of then-Governor Dannel Malloy. In 2015, PURA commissioners wrote Malloy a letter asking for the merger to be undone, saying it created “an inherent and insurmountable conflict of interest.”
Although DEEP can not overrule any decisions PURA makes, it does control the agency’s budget and staffing.
Fazio and Harding also called for the agency to continue working on reducing the cost of electricity across the state.
“Irrespective of the merits of today’s staff changes, we still need to address the underlying policies that Republicans have repeatedly highlighted in order to bring long-term rate reduction and stability for consumers,” read the statement. “Let’s work together to bring down electricity costs, give consumers confidence in our regulatory structure, and ensure we have a reliable electric grid for decades to come.”