Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Public Utilities Commission of Ohio

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The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) is the public utilities commission of the U.S. state of Ohio, charged with the regulation of utility service providers such as those of electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications as well as railroad safety and intrastate hazardous materials transport.

Contents

There are several ways by which the Commission attempts to do this:

  • Enforcement of laws against service deemed unfair or unsafe
  • Hearing disputes between utilities and residential, business, and industrial customers, as well as between competing utilities.
  • Assuring availability of residential, business, and industrial utility services
  • Providing consumers with relevant information about their rights and responsibilities
  • Regulating rates for utility services in which there is little to no competition (i.e. electricity and natural gas services)
  • Periodically creating and changing Ohio Administrative Code that is related to its mission
  • Acting in some manner to relate the relevant Administrative Code to the regulated and deregulated commercial utility activity

    • Following the move toward deregulation of retail energy during the 1990s, the Ohio legislature set forth provisions for allowing competitive retail energy suppliers, in addition to the main distribution utility companies.

    Commissioners

    There are five commissioners (one of whom serves as chairman) as well as approximately 320 agency employees. Each commissioner is appointed by the residing governor to a five-year term. Current commissioners are:

  • Andre T. Porter (chair), through April 2020
  • Lynn Slaby, through April 2017
  • Asim Z. Haque, through April 2016
  • Thomas W. Johnson, through April 2019
  • M. Beth Trombold, through April 2018

    • EPA Clean Power Plan

    In February 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Clean Power Plan" pending judicial review. The plan is a federal program with the goal of decreasing carbon emissions from power plants. To meet its goal, the EPA created targets for reducing carbon dioxide, with the levels varying state to state. Each state must develop its own plan to meet the EPA targets, which begin in 2022.

    PUCO has litigated against the Clean Power Plan on the grounds that it violates the Federal Power Act and violates states' rights. Despite the state's opposition to the plan, PUCO said that Ohio is prepared to plan for implementation of new rules and regulations in the event that the plan survives legal challenges (PUCO's Division of Air Pollution Control is responsible for the implementation). PUCO's chairman, Asim Hague, said that the commission analyzed how much the Clean Power Plan would cost Ohio consumers and that "we believe those costs to be hefty."

    On May 18, 2016, Ohio House of Representatives passed a bill, House Resolution 29, by a vote of 71 to 22 that would "effectively nullify the Clean Power Plan in Ohio" by not allowing Ohio to implement regulations per the Clean Power Plan.

    References

    Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA