Baltimore City Hall. Photo: Jonmallard, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Baltimore’s City Council leadership wants state regulators to turn down Baltimore Gas and Electric’s latest request to raise electricity rates, and it is asking residents and business owners to show up and say so in person next week.
Council President Zeke Cohen stood with Comptroller Bill Henry, seven other council members and a few business owners at City Hall on Monday to urge the Maryland Public Service Commission to reject BGE’s bid for a $156.1 million increase in its electric distribution rates. The council is introducing a resolution asking the commission to deny the increase and to cut the profit margin BGE is allowed to earn, Fox45 reported.
“Local businesses are going under because they can’t afford their BGE bill,” Cohen said at the news conference. Nicole Evanshaw, co-owner of Silver Queen Café, was among those standing with him.
The proposal would add about $100 a year to the average customer’s bill, according to Fox45.
What the state’s consumer advocate found
The council’s position tracks closely with the one taken in September by the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the independent state agency that represents residential utility customers. In testimony filed Sept. 24, OPC’s experts told the commission to reject the increase and instead lower BGE’s electric distribution rates by $43.9 million.
About a quarter of the requested increase comes from BGE’s push to raise its authorized return on equity, the figure that largely sets how much profit it can earn for shareholders, from 9.5% to 10.4%. OPC recommends dropping it to 7.3%, which it estimates would save electric customers about $82 million a year, or roughly $110 per customer. That 7.3% figure is the same one in the council’s resolution.
OPC also wants the commission to deny about $80.5 million in costs tied to BGE’s 2023 agreement with the city to upgrade the city-owned underground conduit system. The commission approved that arrangement in BGE’s last multi-year rate case, and OPC is appealing that decision in court. People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said customers will pay far more over the long run under the deal.
Other changes OPC is asking for include:
- keeping the fixed monthly residential customer charge at $10 instead of raising it to $11;
- rejecting a “storm rider” that would let BGE raise rates automatically when storm costs run higher than expected;
- making sure residential customers don’t pick up costs tied to large users such as data centers;
- cutting IT and corporate costs that mainly benefit Exelon, the Chicago-based company that bought BGE in 2012.
If BGE gets the full increase, OPC says its electric distribution rates will have gone up 58% since 2020 and 129% since the Exelon purchase.
How to weigh in
The commission’s public comment hearing in Case No. 9888 is Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 6:30 p.m. in the Frank O. Heintz Hearing Room on the 16th floor of the William Donald Schaefer Tower, 6 St. Paul St. The hearing was originally planned as a virtual session and was moved to in-person in October. Anyone who wants to testify has to register by emailing kimberly.schock@maryland.gov by noon on Monday, Nov. 16, according to the commission’s Nov. 6 notice. The hearing will also stream on the commission’s YouTube channel, and no registration is needed to watch.
Evidentiary hearings in the case began Nov. 6. The commission also takes written comments until the record closes and is expected to rule in early 2027, with any new rates showing up on bills around the same time.
Helen Ashbury covers Baltimore for Voice of Baltimore.
