Outrageous!
Unitil Billing and Behavior Creates Turmoil
First in a series: By Lunenburg Ledger Staff (April 1, 2022)
LUNENBURG-FITCHBURG-TOWNSEND-ASHBY:
By Ledger Staff
“I live in a trailer in ___Park. My Unitil bill this month was $459, which is more than I pay for my lot fee and most of my other bills put together. I have never understood why this bill is so high and no one can do anything about it. We have a lot of trouble paying this bill as I am on disability but don’t qualify for the discount because I’m not on food stamps or MassHealth. I really hope that bringing attention to this can help solve the issue. I’m constantly scared that we are not going to be able to afford it. My mother who lives with us has just been put on oxygen 24/7 and all I can think about is how much the bill is going to go up and if it gets shut off what will we do about her health needs? Thank you for trying to bring attention and hopefully relief from this outrageous cost.”
This is one of dozens of messages that we at the Ledger have received from residents and businesses in the towns of Lunenburg, Fitchburg, Townsend and Ashby. These towns are in the exclusive service area of Unitil Incorporated, a New Hampshire privately owned utility. To protect those who have come forward with information, data, or personal hardship from any retribution or retaliation from Unitil, The Ledger will be redacting names, specific locations, or any other potentially identifying information.
While residents and businesses in the Unitil service area continue to see unprecedented rate increases, experience business disruptions or resident service shut offs (without warning or notice) the CEO of privately owned Unitil continues to receive massive bonuses. In 2020, Unitil CEO Thomas P. Mercier Jr received compensation of 4 million dollars, including a salary of $597,000, an incentive plan of $314,000, stock awards of $338,000, a change in pension value and deferred compensation of $2,445,349, and “other” compensation of $281,621. Meanwhile Unitil workers such as linemen and meter readers are paid lower wages than those in surrounding towns and other service areas, while Unitil charges the highest rates in Massachusetts. Workers are pushed into unsafe working conditions including operating bucket trucks in high winds, or forced to shut off electrical service in dangerous neighborhoods without the protection of security. Repair and upkeep projects, which are supposed to be earmarked as overtime as an offset to underpaid Unitil employees, is instead subcontracted out, with the costs of this passed onto us, the ratepayers by the subcontracting costs being used as justification for rate increases.
An area resident tells us: “I’m a single parent of two special needs children, and I have a chronic condition that makes it hard to regulate my body temperature, making it so that I need to keep a steady home temperature to avoid a flare-up. This is very costly during the less temperate months, but prevents me from being totally disabled. My electric bill has jumped even since last summer. My January electric bill used 1755kWh and was $565, while just in August I used 1723 kWh and the bill was $456. I don’t qualify for any subsidies, but this puts me in a very bad predicament.”
From a Fitchburg business: “Our Unitil bill has been nothing but outrageous. It's been so bad throughout the pandemic -- and now in this current economy -- that we've had to reduce [business operations] from 4 days per week to just 2. Our bills have ranged from $600 per month to sometimes as high as $1200. We have never missed a payment with them and they recently shut us off for an $1100 balance, which is literally less than a month in the winter months. We just had to pay them another $1600, which means we've paid $2950 in 3 months. They're a horrific company who is running a monopoly in the city of Fitchburg.”
What can be done about this? In the short term, little to nothing. In the longer term? We can’t be sure, and judging from the past twenty years of struggle with state government, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU), and Unitil itself, we can’t be too optimistic.
Let’s start with the Department of Public Utilities. Here is their mission statement from their website [https://www.mass.gov/orgs/department-of-public-utilities]
“The Department of Public Utilities (DPU) is an adjudicatory agency overseen by a three-member Commission. It is responsible for oversight of investor-owned electric power, natural gas, and water utilities in the Commonwealth. In addition, the DPU is charged with developing alternatives to traditional regulation, monitoring service quality, regulating safety in the transportation and gas pipeline areas, and the siting of energy facilities. The mission of the DPU is to ensure that consumers’ rights are protected, and that utility companies are providing the most reliable service at the lowest possible cost. [emphasis ours] The DPU oversees the public safety from transportation and gas pipeline-related accidents, and the energy facilities siting process. The DPU seeks to promote safety, security, reliability of service, affordability, equity, and greenhouse gas emission reductions.”
While this sounds pretty good, in reality the DPU doesn’t even come close to matching Municipally owned utilities, (or ‘Munis’ ) in rates, efficiency, and time needed to restore power during outages. We will see it is quite the opposite. Electricity is distributed along what’s known as the grid, and distribution areas are determined by the DPU. 15% percent of our state’s residents receive their power from Munis, with the towns of Groton, Sterling and Ashburnham being the closest in our immediate area. The other 85% of our state’s electrical service is provided by Investor owned Utilities; ironically known as IOU’s. The IOU’s in Massachusetts are: Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil. Unitil is by far the smallest IOU in Massachusetts, yet charges the highest rates. Take a look at the table in the insert to get a complete and comparative view of the average billing for residential electricity rates for 500 kilowatt hours (kWh) from the years 2003 through December 2021. Additionally, in comparing Unitil’s rates and increases against the other privately owned for-profit IOU’s in Massachusetts, Unitil’s rates are the highest of them all, although they are actually a much smaller company compared to National Grid and Eversource.
According to Patrick Mehr, of the Massachusetts Alliance for Municipal Electric Choice (MAMEC), who provided us with this table, “Since 2003, Unitil has consistently charged more than Massachusetts’ 41 existing municipal electric utilities (including in nearby Groton, Ashburnham or Sterling) for 500 kWh per month–between +29% in 2003 to +88% now, and for notoriously worse service (more outages, longer service restoration, etc). The Massachusetts DPU has consistently refused to look into how municipal utilities can be so much more efficient than Unitil–charging far less for better service. If it did, DPU could require Unitil to emulate the ways municipal utilities operate, so as to reduce sky high rates.”
From this information, we can draw this conclusion: Despite what the DPU claims in its Mission Statement “to ensure that consumers’ rights are protected, and that utility companies are providing the most reliable service at the lowest possible cost” this is flat out false. Instead, the DPU is protecting the profits and interests of the IOU’s. Here’s another example of how the DPU lies in its protection of the IOU’s as opposed to us consumers.
We are in possession of several emails from a Mr. Myrtho Merisma, Administrative Secretary of the DPU, that agency that claims to protect us, the consumers. One is in answering a complaint from a customer whose bill is astronomically high and has had their power shut off. The second is from another customer, who asked the simple question: “What has happened to Unitil’s old building on John Fitch Highway, do they still own or lease it, and if sold, where did the money go and and how much did it cost to build a new building and why?” Each of the emails that we have ask very specific questions, yet each gets precisely the same response, word-for-word, copied and pasted. While we do not have enough space here to quote the entire reply from Mr. Merisma of the DPU, here is a summary. In the first long paragraph is an explanation about how energy commodity markets are influenced by many factors, including weather, supply and demand levels, and of course the COVID-19 pandemic. He states that the DPU does not regulate the supply costs picked up by the utilities that are ‘recovered’ by the utilities for the costs of supply delivery. Fair enough, the utilities are allowed to charge us consumers the costs of obtaining the supply that generates our electricity, or the wholesale purchase of electricity. He also mentions that the DPU does regulate what the utilities can charge for delivery, and these costs include the costs borne by the utility companies, “ including plant and infrastructure, labor, taxes, metering, customer service, account maintenance, infrastructure costs and upgrades”. While on the surface this may also seem fair and reasonable, we can return to the quote from Patrick Mehr from earlier in this article and ask the DPU: How is it that all of the municipally owned utilities, which are by and large unregulated, can manage to deliver electricity at a cost on average 88% cheaper than Unitil? Why does the DPU refuse to force the companies that they regulate to emulate the Muni’s operational practices and structures and deliver electricity more efficiently and cheaply? We intend to ask these, and other questions of the DPU in future articles.
Before we turn from our examination of the DPU’s treatment of us consumers that they say they are protecting, and how much so-called “oversight” they are exercising over the utilities that they are supposedly regulating, we’d like to share two other quotes from Mr. Merisma’s cut and paste email, that is both telling and galling. “Gas and Electric Companies do not profit from the sale of gas or electricity.” This appears near the end of the first paragraph. We’d like some further explanation of how this is so, and if these companies do not profit, how is it that the CEO of Unitil, Thomas P. Meisner, Jr earned $4 million in compensation in 2020? Most outrageous of all is the closing paragraph: “The DPU recognizes that this has been a difficult winter due to high energy costs (supply). We asked [emphasis ours] the companies to offer their customers payment plans or budget billing and refer customers that are having difficulty paying their bill to [fuel assistance]...
“We asked the companies???” Here’s another question that we will be asking the DPU: How is it that the DPU which is charged with regulating the utilities and protecting us consumers is asking the utilities that they are regulating to give us more fair treatment in paying bills, while instead, Unitil is shutting people off with no notice?
Unfortunately, with all of these words, we are only beginning to scratch the surface. Before we conclude, let’s take a moment to look at the history of efforts in our communities to allow our cities and towns to purchase the plants and infrastructure of the IOU’s and take over the sale and distribution to us residents and taxpayers. There have been several attempts over the last 10+ years to introduce legislation called “Municipal Choice” that would force the privately held IOU’s to sell their plants and infrastructure to our communities at “fair market value.” These so-called “Muni Choice bills have been repeatedly filed, and died in committee, been quashed by the (former) Massachusetts House Ways and Means Chairman, (former) Speaker of the Massachusetts House, and (former) Senate President, and even voted down by one of our (former) state reps that introduced one of the iterations of Muni Choice. Yes you read that right, he voted against his own bill!
Just over a year ago we reported on the filing of a Muni-Choice bill by our Senator John Cronin and State Rep Michael Kushmerek now known as H.3331 (https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H3331)
By checking this link we’ve got the current status of this bill: It was assigned to the committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy on 3/29/21. There was a hearing on the bill in June of 2021, and reporting the bill out of committee has been extended to May 2, 2022.
There is so much more that we have received and uncovered for this article that requires follow-up in subsequent articles. In future articles we hope to:
Catch up with Senator Cronin, Representative Kushmerek, and our other elected officials to check on the status of Muni Choice legislation Examine the corruption of former state legislators and elected officials in quashing Muni Choice and see if perhaps the newer leadership will be more cooperative in advancing Muni Choice
Look more deeply at why the DPU is more in servitude of the utilities
Share some stories of former and current employees of Unitil around their mistreatment by the company and unsafe working conditions
Share more stories from Unitil customers who have had or continue to suffer from these outrageous bill increases and other mistreatment
There is one more important point that we need to make in concluding this first article. Please don’t blame the hard working and underpaid Unitil workers who are doing their very best to provide us with the best they can with an understaffed and overworked work crew. They are the most visible and most vulnerable, and are doing their best to support their families under very difficult circumstances.
Do you have a story to share or a question you’d like us to ask of our elected and appointed officials? Contact us at Lunenburgledger@gmail.com