Politics & Government
Harding dismayed that electric rates keep rising
Legislator says 1998 deregulation bill has been ineffective
By Scott Benjamin
BROOKFIELD – State Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) says the deregulation of the electric utilities approved a generation ago has failed to lower costs.
In early November the two major utilities in Connecticut announced plans to boost rates to the point that the average consumer would pay $83.09 more per month, according to the state attorney general's office.
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CT News Junkie recently reported that Eversource and United Illuminating have stated that “the main reason for the supply-rate increase is the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has caused higher prices for oil and natural gas.”
Harding of Brookfield, who will become the new state senator from the 30th District on January 4, said addressing the proposed January 1 increase is his “top short-term priority.”
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Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) announced November 28 before a special session of the General Assembly that the two utilities have agreed to partially reduce part of the increase and provide $13 million in shareholder profits for energy assistance, according to CT News Junkie.
Harding said in a November 19 interview that the overall decision on the rates is in “the hands” of the state Public Utility Regulatory Authority, which may not be able to change it.
For more than a generation, state officials have encountered obstacles in addressing high electricity costs.
Gov. Ella Grasso (D-Windsor Locks) said she would lower costs through a revised regulatory structure when she was campaigning for her first term in 1974, and even with those revisions electricity costs didn’t decline.
Then the legislators and Republican former Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) signed a deregulation plan in 1998 that would immediately trim costs by 10 percent, and it didn’t happen.
Deregulation has been in place for nearly 24 years. Has it been effective?
“I think that history has shown that it hasn’t,” Harding commented.
When he was campaigning for governor in 2010, Dannel Malloy (D-Essex), the former mayor of Stamford, said that Connecticut’s electric rates were the highest in the nation after Hawaii.
During Malloy’s first year in office, in 2011, the state established PURA to replace the Department of Public Utility Control, which Grasso had established more than 35 years earlier. Rates continued to go up.
Harding said his next top priority other is extending the suspension of the 25-cent per gallon gasoline tax that began earlier this year as inflation reached levels not seen in more than 40 years.
He said he wants the suspension, scheduled to expire November 30, to be continued for “at least another six months.”
In the November 8 election Harding annexed 55.2 percent of the vote in the 30th District against Democrat Eva Bermudez Zimmerman of New Milford, a union organizer and child care advocate.
Republican State Central Committee member John Morris of Litchfield, who has served on the committee since 1991, said he is impressed with Harding’s “energy,” noting that, for example, he was the top vote-getter in Litchfield.
Morris commented that with 18 towns and cities, Harding will represent more than 10 percent of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities. The district runs from Brookfield to Salisbury.
Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston recently wrote, “The results of the 2022 midterm election offer a lesson for both political parties: Despite the intensifying partisan polarization of the past two decades, swing voters still exist, and they pay attention to parties’ selection of candidates and issues. Mobilization of the party faithful is necessary but not sufficient; persuasion of voters who see the strengths and weaknesses of each side is essential."
Harding agreed, saying that “The swing voters were critical to our election’s success. We would not have prevailed without the majority of those voters connecting with our message and campaign.”
The Democrats won the governorship for the fourth consecutive election and the state Senate, which was 18-18 following the 2016 campaign, is now 24 Democrats and just 12 Republicans. The Democrats also will control 98 seats in the state House 53 for the Republicans.
“I don’t think that our message is resonating enough,” Harding said in explaining why the Republicans’ fortunes have declined over the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections.
On another topic, he said despite the $5.8 billion that has been utilized in the last two years to pay down the state’s pension debt, it is still the second highest in the country after Illinois.
However, during the recent state Senate campaign Harding said he opposes making revisions in the benefits for any state employee who has already retired.
About a decade ago when she was state treasurer of Rhode Island current U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, sought adjustments in the cost-of-living increases for state employee retirees and a hybrid plan for the current workers and then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a Democrat, signed that legislation.
In 2017, under Malloy, the General Assembly approved having subsequent hires to the state work force receive a hybrid benefits plan.
Harding said even though the state has been “irresponsible” in some decisions on pensions, he insists, “When you make a commitment you have to uphold your commitment” regarding benefits for retired employees.
Former Connecticut state Comptroller Bill Curry of Farmington told Patch.com in 2018 that he was surprised that following prolonger budget deliberations in 2011 and 2017 that little progress was made on reducing the costs on health insurance for state workers.
“The biggest problem is not pensions, but health care,” Curry said at the time. “It’s the part that goes up the fastest, but it also is the one with lowest hanging fruit.”
Harding said that he believes that reductions in costs would be made that “wouldn’t hinder the health care plans that the state employees have.”
On a separate subject, he said over recent years he has spoken with electrical and plumbing contractors who can’t find enough qualified employees.
Harding noted that there is value in getting a college degree, but added that more people should consider that “another path is all right.”
He said he agreed with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, who wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column that “employers should stop requiring college degrees for jobs that don’t need them. In Maryland, we’ve led the charge by announcing that thousands of state jobs will no longer have such requirements. If more states follow our lead, the trend could spread to the private sector.”
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that nationwide there are more job openings than there are unemployed people seeking work.
Harding added that colleges in Connecticut should offer more internships and cooperative education options.
For example, he said despite his extensive classroom experience in law school, it wasn’t until he was actually handling cases in a court room that he learned how to effectively operate as an attorney.
What was it that Harding learned in high school or college that has helped him in a career in government that began nine years ago when he was elected to the Brookfield Board of Education at age 26?
He said in his undergraduate program at Albertus Magnus College he benefitted from the Philosophy courses that he took and from meeting people in New Haven - Connecticut’s third largest city.
At Brookfield High School, Harding pointed to the Current Events class his senior year that was taught by Walter Bayer, who later served as a Democratic member on the New Milford Town Council.
Harding commented, “That was something that very much shaped my liking for government and which I enjoyed.”
Resources:
https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2022/11/17/connecticut-electric-rates-to-increase-nearly-50/
Interview Stephen Harding, Patch.com, November 19, 2022.
Interview John Morris, Patch.com November 26, 2022.
https://rollcall.com/2016/04/25/gina-raimondos-pension-reform-draws-cheers-and-jeers/
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/curry-says-malloy-didnt-address-what-needed-be-repaired
