Council Reacts to Pepco’s Request

Seven members of the Montgomery County Council today issued a statement in response to Pepco’s request for a rate increase. Council President Roger Berliner, Vice President Nancy Navarro and Council members Phil Andrews, Marc Elrich, Valerie Ervin, George Leventhal and Hans Riemer endorsed the statement.

The complete text of the statement:

 “We oppose Pepco’s request for a rate hike. We believe Pepco’s financial fortunes should be directly tied to its performance and that performance does not justify an increase in its rate of return. As it is, shareholders have fared a lot better than ratepayers.

 “We also do not believe that Pepco should be able to avoid a review of the prudence of its expenditures in return for expediting their reliability work. Rather, we believe that Pepco owes it to this community to expedite its reliability work using the traditional ratemaking process that ensures that Pepco can only recover from ratepayers costs that the Commission finds are just and reasonable. We fully expect that our County will fight this suspect, unwarranted, and unjustified request, and that the Commission will, as it has recently, protect Montgomery County ratepayers that have suffered for far too long.”

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