LETTERS

Let’s all pay payable utility bills

Posted 9/13/22

To the Editor,

Must your electric bill go up this winter an extra $50/month?

Or will our PUC (Public Utilities Commission) stop punishing some of us for being poor, and stop protecting RI …

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LETTERS

Let’s all pay payable utility bills

Posted

To the Editor,


Must your electric bill go up this winter an extra $50/month?

Or will our PUC (Public Utilities Commission) stop punishing some of us for being poor, and stop protecting RI Energy’s near-10% profit?

Let’s look for a minute at the big picture: PUBLIC UTILITIES – what a great idea!

Legally guarantee one company a monopoly -- and a reasonable profit -- in exchange for its reliably supplying a service (such as water or gas or electricity) that’s essential to everyone in a certain geographic area. That’s why almost everyone in RI gets electricity if not gas from what is now known as RI Energy. (They bought out National Grid.) We can’t switch to another supplier.

Yes, prices are now inflated but does that monopoly need a 50% rate hike?

No, because our PUC has gradually near-doubled its profit margin to over 10 percent. (How much interest does your investment or your savings account pay?) Why, moreover, just hold our breath awaiting this huge rate hike’s social tsunami?

This 50% rate-hike request offers RI the perfect opportunity to replace our current impracticable-because-unpayable system of a few meager rate reductions, winter moratoriums, and shutoffs. Now more than ever, our PUC needs to enact PIPP: the Percentage of Income Payment Plan.

How well I remember one lady’s response when I explained to her that she’d be expected to pay each month a reasonable percentage, say 10%, of her then-$600/month income: “I could PAY that! I could budget it!”

And I can pay it too. For less than the price of a cup of coffee each month, I’ll gladly enable human dignity in Rhode Island.

Our PUC is holding a public hearing in Warwick this Friday at 9 a.m. at 87 Jefferson Blvd. Your voice matters: by email now (PUC/PublicComments@PUC.ri.gov), or by zoom or in person.

And what a great time it is to serve on RI’s Public Utilities Commission!


Marie Hennedy

East Greenwich

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Comments

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  • umpwuggly

    PIPP: the Percentage of Income Payment Plan sounds similar to a plan Karl Marx had. It went like this; "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". There are many Communist countries that will welcome this thinking of Government or Government sponsored entity over site on how to distribute and individuals labor aka wealth.

    In the U.S. assisting our neighbors should be left to donations through our churches, community groups and charities where wealth is given freely, not taken through taxation at the muzzle of a gun pointed at the Citizens.

    Saturday, September 17, 2022 Report this

  • Straightnnarrow

    What a great comment and notice that this comment has a "REPORT THIS" link attached. The arbiters of truth will not tolerate any deviation from Party principles and this letter is deviant, hence it will be reported to the Ministry of Truth. A few years back, comments like this were welcomed and there were many which made reading them fun and interesting. Not any more.

    Christian socialism requires that charity be given at the end of of gun barrel, but that is not charity and it is not Christian; it is socialism.

    Thursday, September 29, 2022 Report this