PRC COMMISSIONERS DECIDED THAT PRIVATE CORPORATIONS BUYING AND SELLING MONOPOLY ACCESS TO CAPTIVE RATEPAYERS DON'T HAVE TO BENEFIT THOSE RATEPAYERS AS PART OF THEIR DEALS! AND PROJECT JUPITER HEARING EXAMINER FOLDS UNDER PRESSURE FROM NMED TO FAST TRACK PROJECT JUPITER | |
Dear Friend, On Wednesday at 4:23PM we published an email commending the Hearing Examiner on the Project Jupiter Air Permit hearing for ignoring their false "emergency" claims and reaffirming the planned October 19th hearing date during a Monday procedural meeting. Then at 4:38PM an NMED lawyer filed a request for positions on a proposed alternate schedule - a September 14th hearing date - that violates the due process rights of intervenors, making the timing for dispository motions, discovery filings and responses, and adequate preparation of testimony based on those responses impossible. At 4:51PM the Hearing Examiner issued an Amended Scheduling Order changing the hearing date to September 14th in contravention of the decision announced to intervenors on Monday. NMED is not supposed to be communicating with the Hearing Examiner unless all other parties are present - that is ex-parte communication and violates the rights of all other parties. You be the judge: is this mere coincidence? NMED, it must be noted, has failed to produce an administrative record necessary for the hearing and just published the draft permits on Wednesday, which are necessary to developing responsive testimony, leaving the parties just 28 days to prepare expert testimony for a complex hearing about an enormous power plant based on a technology that has never been deployed at this scale anywhere in the world. | |
YESTERDAY TWO PRC COMMISSIONERS VOTED TO ALLOW THE SALE OF NM GAS COMPANY IN CONTRAVENTION OF 25 YEARS OF PRECEDENT AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST. NEW ENERGY ECONOMY TODAY FILED OUR NOTICE OF APPEAL  At the PRC yesterday Commissioner Aguilera presented a detailed defense of an alternative Order rejecting the BCP buyout, noting that none of the intervenors supported the merger agreement. He laid out his objections clearly, including: - The modest benefits offered by BCP - a $3.29 per month rate credit for one year are "outweighed by risk and uncertainty." Beyond that credit, and another $7 million to go to the HeatNM fund, the remaining supposed benefits remain "minimal, theoretical or speculative." Those include a rate freeze that will be in effect for just two months and an expensive proposed IT system, touted as a synergy, that BCP failed to prove would provide any direct benefit to its customers.
- The Board of Directors will have only three "disinterested" directors and all will be selected by the company. There is no enforceable mechanism to ensure that customers interests are fairly considered.
Those carefully reasoned arguments fell on deaf ears. Commissioners O'Connell and Nibert voted to approve the deal without any meaningful deliberation on the substantive issues raised. Commissioner O'Connell announced his support for the buyout and declared that the six-factor test to determine whether a merger is in the public interest and delivers a net public benefit "can't be applied in every case," this despite the fact that it has governed mergers and acquisitions in New Mexico for three decades. Nibert agreed, declaring that the "Net Public Benefit" standard is not statutory, just a Commission precedent, and that at least "the status quo remains" for customers. Long story short, Commissioner O'Connell and Nibert unilaterally decided that when a private company buys exclusive, monopoly access to captive utility customers, they do not have to provide any meaningful benefit to those customers. Apparently the only metric that matters is corporate gain, so long as the utility's buyer can maintain the status quo. Not mentioned - BCP has essentially no utility management experience, a disqualifying fact. Also not discussed at all: the Hearing Examiners redacted warnings to the PRC that their oversight capacity may be undermined because the new private investors who will take ownership of New Mexico Gas Company remain unknown, hidden behind layers of private equity funds and subsidiaries. NEW ENERGY ECONOMY TODAY FILED OUR NOTICE OF APPEAL AT THE NM SUPREME COURT The Commission abandoned its longstanding requirement that utility mergers produce a net public benefit, replacing it with a far weaker standard that merely maintains the “status quo.” New Energy Economy argues that this unprecedented change in legal standards violates New Mexico law and undermines the Commission’s fundamental duty to protect the public. In the words of Zephyr Jaramillo of Isleta and San Felipe pueblos, who spoke at the hearing on Thursday: "Stewardship is a responsibility, not an investment strategy. You don't inherit something simply to extract as much value as possible before moving on. You inherit it because you're responsible for what the next generation receives. Essential public infrastructure deserves that same ethic because when the lights go out, when people can't afford their bills, when service declines, investors can move on to the next acquisition. New Mexicans cannot move on to another gas company. They're captive, and that's why this commission exists — not to make private equity deals possible, but to make sure that the public isn't asked to bear risks that they never agreed to." Utility regulation is not supposed to be an experiment. New Mexico families should not be the test case for whether a newly formed private equity utility operator can successfully manage our state’s largest gas utility. The law requires proof of public benefit before approval—not hope that things will work out. When the Commission lowers the legal standard and ignores compelling evidence of risk, the courts must step in to restore the protections the Legislature intended. | |
