An Ohio agency is celebrating a half a century of championing fair utility prices.
The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel is the only government agency whose sole mission is to advocate for consumers. In 1976, the state legislature created the counsel office to represent Ohioans in legal battles against utility companies.
Agency director and counsel Maureen Willis said the office was founded at a time when utilities were frequently asking for rate increases and expenses were rising.
“Even though the issues that we face have changed dramatically since 1976, we find that the client hasn’t,” Willis said. “We're representing residential utility consumers. Those are the people that ultimately pay the bill and have to figure out how to afford it.”
Landmark cases
Since its start, Willis said the OCC has won many battles for consumer protections.
Winter disconnections were one of the very first issues the office took on. Before 1980, there were few legal protections prohibiting utilities from shutting off a customer’s heating if they were behind on bills or hadn’t made payments.
The OCC changed that – requiring advance notice and direct communication with consumers.
“Sometimes you see these cases and they may seem somewhat esoteric, but really what it comes down to is trying to make sure that the consumers are able to afford [their] bills and that they're not paying more than absolutely necessary for their utility service,” Willis said.
More recently, Willis said the agency has taken on the issue of submetering – when an apartment owner or other organization purchases a utility service and resells the electric, gas or water back to consumers.
“For many, many years they were operating as, we considered it, a public utility, but not being subject to the rules and protections that other public utilities are subject to that are really essential for consumer protection,” she said.
This year, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a submetering company, Nationwide Energy Partners, qualified as a public utility and would have to be regulated as one.
The future of utility prices
Utility prices remain a hot topic of conversation among Ohio consumers: Electric bills are at record highs for many Ohioans.
Yet, the OCC is limited in its resources. The agency’s staff was halved back in 2012 and remains at a reduced level.
“We hire outside lawyers, outside experts and then we work with other consumer groups to sort of coordinate our efforts,” she said.
Even short-staffed, the agency is getting more involved in federal proceedings, as data centers drive up energy demand.
Willis said the industry’s demand is unprecedented and causing supply prices to increase. She said the industry’s growth is one of the biggest utility issues consumers are facing.
Her office is advocating for data center companies to pay their “fair share... not necessarily saying that data centers are good or bad, but saying, ‘Data centers are here. So how do we protect consumers?’"
