News
Contact
Abolish the OCA? Residential Ratepayers Advisory Board to Discuss
Public Meeting on January 13 at 2:00 p.m.
The Residential Ratepayers Advisory Board, tasked pursuant to RSA 363:28-a with providing advice to the Consumer Advocate and his staff, holds its next regular quarterly meeting on Monday, January 13 at 2:00 p.m.
As the Advisory Board has long planned, the main item on the agenda of the meeting is upcoming legislation not being introduced at the request of the Office of the Consumer Advocate. (Potential bills to be introduced at the request of the OCA were the subject of the Advisory Board's October meeting.) At the top of the list is a bill being introduced in the House that would either eliminate the OCA altogether or absorb the job of ratepayer advocacy into some other state agency.
"I look forward to the opportunity to explain, publicly, why the Office of the Consumer Advocate should continue to exist, and I am pleased that the process will start with a meeting of my office's Advisory Board," said Consumer Advocate Donald Kreis. "Even if the General Court ultimately decides to abolish the OCA, or to end its long history of independent advocacy on behalf of the state's residential utility customers, I want to make sure legislators proceed from a correct understanding of what we do and why."
Other bills on the Advisory Board's agenda for January 13 concern the future of default energy service, ratepayer-funded energy efficiency, nuclear power, the possibility of New Hampshire withdrawing from the regional grid operator ISO New England, the future of the statewide utility customer data platform authorized by the General Court in 2019, and the possibility of "consumer regulated electricity" not provided via the distribution network of a utility regulated by the Public Utilities Commission.
The January 13 meeting of the Residential Ratepayers Advisory Board takes place in Hearing Room B of the New Hampshire Department of Energy at the Walker Building, located at 21 South Fruit Street in Concord. The Consumer Advocate's memorandum about pending legislation is here and his quarterly letter, describing significant developments since October, is here.