Identities of retail energy suppliers selling to energy-assistance households should be public, OPC tells State agency
BALTIMORE –The Public Service Commission should deny a pending request to prevent public disclosure of the names of retail suppliers that must comply with reporting and monitoring requirements related to sales to energy-assistance households, the Office of People’s Counsel said in a filing today.
“The suppliers’ names are not competitively sensitive, and the public’s interest outweighs any reputational interest that retail suppliers are seeking to protect,” said Maryland People’s Counsel David Lapp. “The supplier groups have failed to provide any valid reason that records should be exempt from public disclosure, and the public is entitled to know the names of the retail suppliers that provide information to the Commission for the preparation of its legislatively required report.”
The retail supplier reporting requirements originate from legislation passed in 2021 that bars retail suppliers from selling to customers enrolled in Maryland’s energy assistance programs unless the Commission has approved their offer. The prices in those offers cannot be higher than the rates those customers would pay if they did not choose a competitive supplier. OPC’s filing points out that the law intends to protect energy assistance customers from exorbitant energy bills from high-priced contracts and to get the most benefits from the public’s spending on energy assistance.
To satisfy reporting requirements under the law and ensure compliance, the Commission requires retail suppliers and utilities to file specific information. A trade association for retail suppliers, the Retail Energy Supply Association, and NRG Energy, Inc., which owns several Maryland-licensed retail suppliers, asked the Commission to keep the identities of individual retail suppliers confidential in those information filings. OPC’s filing responds to that request, explaining that the law limits confidentiality designations to competitively sensitive information, a designation which does not apply to the names of retail suppliers.
The 2021 legislation responded to evidence that some retail suppliers target low-income customers with contracts that significantly exceed their local utility’s price. Sometimes, customers are misinformed or even misled into signing such contracts. When these customers have limited economic means, those higher costs cause significant harm because it leaves them with less money to pay for other essentials such as housing, food, or medicine. Maryland’s energy assistance programs are designed to prevent customers from needing to choose between paying their energy bills and meeting other critical needs, and the new legislation is intended to prevent suppliers from frustrating the goals of those programs.
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is an independent state agency that represents Maryland’s residential consumers of electric, natural gas, telecommunications, private water and certain transportation matters before the Public Service Commission, federal regulatory agencies and the courts.
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