CT utilities seek cellphone data, other correspondence from PURA chief in rate decision appeal

Yahoo

26-03-2025

Two state utilities have asked a judge to order Connecticut's chief regulator to produce cellphone data and other materials that the companies say could show that a rate decision slashing their revenue last year was tainted by bias and other procedural irregularities.
Among the records the two companies want are anything that elaborates on text messages between chief regulator Marissa Gillett and a friendly legislator — an exchange of texts that suggests she collaborated anonymously on a news opinion column, or op-ed, accusing the state's biggest utilities of misconduct.
The request for cellphone records is part of a broader document request made by Avangrid subsidiaries Connecticut Natural Gas and Southern Connecticut Gas. The gas companies have gone to Superior Court to appeal rate decisions by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority late last year that reduced their revenues to levels below what they had been six and seven years ago.
The Courant reported the text message exchange between Gillett and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Westport Democrat, in February. The two talk about dodging public record laws before referring to an op-edit in which Steinberg and State Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, co-chairmen of the Legislature's Energy and Technology committee, imply that local utility companies are colluding with international ratings agencies to undermine PURA.
'I finished my draft and am waiting for Theresa (PURA Chief of Staff Theresa Govert) and others to put eyes on it,' Gillett wrote, among other things.
'Not to put you on the spot,' Steinberg wrote. 'I'm at UI in the morning but should be able to review release/op Ed.'
Because the text messages were not part of the record in the year long rate case, the gas companies need an order from Judge Matthew Budzik in order for the materials to be produced as part of the pretrial discovery process in the appeal. Budzik has said he will allow a hearing on the request but has yet to set a date.
Gillett and PURA are fighting disclosure. In legal filings, they say that under the law, materials outside the rate case record must have 'extraordinary' value in order to be ordered produced during discovery and 'the scattershot grab-bag of grievances they raise either miss the mark entirely or do not merit additional factual inquiry even if reviewed.'
The gas companies contend materials they are looking for may be outside the record but, if they exist, could support appellate claims of bias and procedural irregularity.
'Here, the reasons for allowing proof outside the record are extraordinary indeed,' the gas companies argue in legal filings. 'In order to ensure that these issues can be fully and fairly litigated, this Court must permit discovery into the serious claims of procedural impropriety that these appeals raise.'
The sharp exchanges in court are another sign of months of deterioration in the relationship between PURA, under Gillett's leadership, and the utility industry at a time when rates continue to rise. The companies claim they are being unfairly penalized with adverse rate decisions for market forces beyond their control. Needleman, Steinberg and other Gillett backers say she is bringing to account utilities that for years have valued stock holders over customers.
In addition to the anti-utility bias, the gas companies contend is implicit in the op-ed and related text message exchange, the companies are arguing in court that the rate decisions should be invalidated because of procedural errors by PURA over the year-long inquiry that ended in the rate cuts.
In particular, the companies argue Gillett violated procedure and law by making scores of substantive decisions herself, without the participation of her two fellow PURA commissioners. Eversource and United Illuminating make the same allegations and have made the same claims in a separate suit.
PURA and others, including Gov. Ned Lamont, who has nominated her for a second term, insist Gillett has consistently acted within her authority.
The gas companies also allege that Gillett engaged in an improper, ex parte conversation with a party to the rate case. As an ostensibly neutral arbitrator who is subject to the same constraints as judges, such conversations by a PURA commissioner are considered improper. PURA has dismissed allegations of such a conversation in a decision signed by the authority executive director.
Much of the argument concerning discovery turns on the text message exchange and the op-ed. The op-ed appeared in the on-line CT Mirror just days after the rate decisions and almost immediate credit downgrade imposed on the two gas companies by the independent rating agencies S&P Global Ratings and Moody's Ratings.
According to a legal filing by the gas companies: 'Immediately after the rating agencies had announced these downgrades—and again, before CNG and SCG had even filed their appeals—a remarkable opinion piece appeared in the Connecticut Mirror defending PURA and rejecting as 'nonsensical' any suggestion that the rating agencies' downgrades were 'independent or objective.''
'The utilities, the piece speculated, were probably in cahoots with the rating agencies and were just 'crying wolf' to 'provoke a downgrade in pursuit of [their] grander strategy' to undermine PURA and its Chairperson.'
The Courant obtained the text message exchange through a request, made under state public record law, to Steinberg, who said he and Needleman 'take full responsibility for the editorial.'
Needleman responded to a similar request by producing copies of six news articles, all but one on energy related subjects, and a copy of an invitation to lunch at the Essex Yacht Club addressed to Consumer Counsel Claire Coleman. Of the news articles, two copies of the same article were emailed to the office of U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney. It was unclear where the others went.
After the Courant reported on the Steinberg-Gillett text message exchange, Republicans in the state House of Representatives made a similar records request to Gillett. The response from PURA did not include Gillette's exchange with Steinberg, leading critics such as House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford to question her committment to Freedom of Information law.
'We don't have full disclosure from FOI,' Candelora said Tuesday. 'Rather, what we have is an agency that is manipulating FOI and using it to paint them in a certain light. And at the same time using it as a shield to prevent information from coming out that night be unflattering to them.
'I think any court needs to begin looking past these rate decisions and start looking at the individual. Because I have never seen a commissioner be mired in more controversy with every entity that she is interacting with. And I think at some point you have to look at whether she is the problem.'