Press Release: OPC Scores Victory for DC Ratepayers Forcing Pepco to Honor a Commitment it Made to Lower Rates

News Release — DC Office of the People’s Counsel

February 7, 2020

DC People’s Counsel Sandra Mattavous-Frye today announced that the Office of the People’s Counsel was successful in ensuring Pepco ratepayers will receive $137.5 million in savings they are due as a result of a provision in a settlement agreement in the last rate case in which rates were lowered as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

In May 2019, Pepco filed an application with the Public Service Commission requesting to increase rates by $160 million over three years. Buried in Pepco’s 2,200-page application was a plan that would have Pepco renege on a deal that it had previously agreed to in an August 2018 rate case settlement agreement that the Commission approved. Because Pepco received a corporate tax cut as a result of the federal act, ratepayers also stood to benefit.
Subsequently, the utility agreed to return $137.5 million to ratepayers. However, instead of upholding that promise, Pepco sought to reduce the amount to $109.2 million. If approved, Pepco would have kept $28.3 million that it owed to customers.

As a result of OPC’s vigorous opposition, the customers won. The Commission issued an order Wednesday directing Pepco to revise its pending rate case application so that the entire agreed-upon amount of $137.5 million would flow back to ratepayers. The Commission found that Pepco’s proposal amounted to a breach of the 2018 rate case settlement agreement.

“Commitments made in settlement agreements must be honored. OPC closely monitors each commitment made to ensure consumers receive every single benefit included in every settlement agreement,” said People’s Counsel Mattavous-Frye. “With the Office carefully reading the fine print on every single page of every rate increase application, DC consumers can rest assured we are vigilant in our efforts to ensure ratepayers get all they have coming to them.

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Media Contact:

Doxie McCoy
Public Information Officer