Maine Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee Gets Earful of Consumer Complaints

At the 28 October 2013 public comment session on OPEGA’s (Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability) report on the Maine PUC,  both OPEGA and the MPUC were reamed by all dozen or so members of the public present.

The comments were largely related to smart meters, but I described 5 or 6 MPUC cases to provide evidence of the commission making up law, ignoring law, and their perceived or actual (though not necessarily financial) conflict of interest

Legislative members of the Government Oversight Committee receiving the report were definitely sympathetic to our comments and instead of endorsing the report in their work session, they have held it up for the time being. Violins were played for the MPUC commissioner when he said how discouraged he was hearing the public’s comments. Click here to read/listen to Maine public radio’s story about the session.

—Ed Friedman, 28 October 2013