UI "Shocks" Ratepayers With Another Jaw Dropping Increase Request!

Press Release From Yahoo Finance

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Connecticut utility United Illuminating files rate increase application with state regulators.

"NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Electric utility The United Illuminating Co. has filed an application with Connecticut authorities seeking a rate increase.
If approved by the Department of Public Utility Control, electric bills for residential customers using 700 kilowatt-hours per month will rise by about $6.60 per month. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, says he will fight the increase.

United Illuminating says it understands that rising energy costs are creating difficulties for consumers, but the company needs to increase its electricity distribution rate because of higher expenses, lower sales and increased capital costs.

Blumenthal says UI must tighten its belt and make do with less.

UI serves more than 323,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in the greater New Haven and Bridgeport areas.

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In Summary UI alleges profits are up in some areas down in others and maintain that conservation and delinquent accounts are costing them dearly. UI has also indicated that customers are more hostile and are planning or considering a system that remotely shuts off non paying customers. This will save UI money by eliminating jobs, and avoiding their hostile customers, vicious dogs, and inaccessible meters.

Conference Call Second Quarter 2008. [Click HERE] Scroll to middle of audio clip for conference call to begin. It starts after the music on hold.

Special point to add to this "shocker" is that shortly after the DPUC got slammed with this UI request our Spanish owned gas provider got caught over charging Milford for gas. They are now being forced to give us some money back, up to $9.00 per month.

H.B. No. 7432 Amann Introduces a Bill Rewarding UI

H.B. No. 7432 Was introduced by My opponent and Speaker of the House Jim Amann. This bill is a Dream Bill for UI our electricity nightmare company now soaking us again and again with rate hikes that defy understanding or explanation. UI's profits soared and our Speaker Amann who also opposed the "windfall Profits Tax" that Blumenthal so passionately wanted to protect Ct's consumers, also voted to soak us again on electricity.

So many of us cut down on our usage of electricity because the rates were so high. Just today my friend at the local gas station was telling me how his wife and children all sleep in one bedroom of their house to battle the unaffordable high cost of electric heat. Do our politicians care? Apparently not because House Bill 7432 punishes you the consumer for conserving electricity. It makes the little electric you do use even more ridiculously expensive by kicking back the lost profits to the Big UI energy company.

How does this outrageous practice work? Well to explain I will quote a note from the house critic of it State Rep. Robert Megna who said "customers of CL&P and UI who are conserving energy will have to pay both the $5 million annual conservation fund bonus and the additional profits section 107 provides. Needless to say" he "voted against the bill."

Representative Megna represents the 97Th district in New Haven he is a member of the Environment, Insurance and Real Estate and General Law Committees."

This is once again another slap in the face by our House Speaker and State Representatives who continues to plunder Milford's residents of their diminishing cash. Of every person I spoke to in Hartford about this bill, no one, not one representative could give me a financially beneficial reason to us the consumer. The fact remains that this bill does not help a single CT resident, it instead punishes us the consumers and rewards UI and CL&P investors with more Wall Street profit.

Ref. [Reference Article]