Politics & Government

Council Exploring Forming Public Power Company

Council members ask attorney about initial steps for switching to public power.

Eight Montgomery County Council members are exploring the possibility of forming a public power company.

On Monday, eight of the nine members of the council addressed a letter to county attorney Marc Hansen asking about preliminary legal steps that may be required to switch from Pepco to public power. 

Councilman Craig L. Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown was the lone council member not to sign the letter. Reached Tuesday, Rice said that he doesn't think that the council should be "spinning our wheels" looking at an option that may be cost prohibitive. Instead, the council should address Pepco not doing what it
needs to do, he said.

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The letter comes after increasing frustrations with Pepco and extended outages in the wake of the Jan. 26 snowstorm, which was the latest in a long history of storms followed by prolonged outages.

On Feb. 7, Pepco spent  about the utility's reliability. The council also heard testimony from the American Public Power Association, a trade association for utilities owned by municipalities and communities.

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Forming a public power company could mean local control and lower rates, but it would first require the county to purchase infrastructure from Pepco, Ursula Schryver, director of customer programs at American Public Power Association, told the council.

“We believe it’s incumbent upon our county to explore this option prudently and carefully as other communities across the country have done,” the Feb. 14 letter read. “Our residents have endured the total failure of both Pepco and the regulatory system that is supposed to protect us for far too long.”

The letter asked about any potential changes in state law that would be required, as well as any necessary approvals from the , legal issues that may arise in taking over power from an investor-owned utility and the process for determining the value of the electric distribution system.

“There are certain threshold issues to pursuing public power I think we would be well served to have the answers to,” Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac told Patch. “Most of those are statutory, legal and regulatory… I do think that a number of my colleagues are very interested in understanding this option and you need to understand it before you decide whether you are going to pursue it.”

A Pepco spokeswoman told Patch on Monday that the utility hadn't been forwarded a copy of the letter.

Read the full text of the letter in the PDF found at the top right corner of this article.

This article was updated to include comments by Councilman Craig L. Rice. The addition can be found in the third paragraph.


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