Municipalities want the authority to negotiate electricity rates for residents

Carroll County (Map, News) - Municipalities throughout Maryland, including some in Carroll County, want the power to negotiate their own electricity rates for residents.

“We’re trying to find alternatives in this era of rising energy costs to better serve our constituents,” Hampstead Mayor Haven Shoemaker said in an interview Thursday.

The Maryland Municipal League, which represents 150 cities and towns across the state, presented “electrical aggregation” as one of its legislative priorities for the upcoming General Assembly session at a meeting Wednesday in Hampstead with leaders from Carroll’s eight municipalities, the county and state.

The bill would allow municipalities to negotiate lower rates with electricity providers in the same way towns lock in the best costs for providing water and sewer services to residents, said Westminster Councilman Gregory Pecoraro.

“State legislation that passed in 1999 deregulating the electric industry prohibited local governments from aggregating on behalf of their residents unless the Public Service Commission determined there was no competition in the residential market,” according to information MML presented.

“As we all know, true competition currently does not exist in the residential market in Maryland.”

But some residents have expressed concern with the legislation’s “opt-in” approach, which automatically enrolls people unless they request otherwise, said Del. Susan Krebs, R-District 9B, who serves on the public utilities work group for the Economic Matters Committee in the House of Delegates.

“Everyone agrees that aggregation is a good thing and allows a town to pull people together to bid on a certain block of energy,” she said Thursday. “But opt-out forces everyone in unless you choose to be out.”

Krebs also questioned whether small towns could handle the extra administrative costs and work associated with the billing and collection of “being your own little electric company.”

State lawmakers heard testimony during the last legislative session predicting how the bill could force electricity companies to charge residents who live in the unincorporated areas surrounding municipalities more because providers would lose their economies of scale with fewer customers.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com

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