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YOUNGSTOWN -- At the request of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel and the city of Youngstown, a Public Utilities Commission of Ohio administrative judge canceled a Monday hearing to hear arguments against a significant rate increase for downtown steam heat customers.
Instead, legal briefs will be filed by the OCC and the city in an effort to overturn the PUCO's June 24 decision to increase rates for SOBE Thermal Systems LLC's 23 customers, which make up most of downtown.
Jacky Werman St. John, the PUCO administrative judge who was to hear the case in Columbus, agreed to the OCC and city's request.
The OCC and the city will have until Monday to file legal briefs with reply briefs due Sept. 21.
Werman St. John will consider the arguments and draft an order to the PUCO as to whether to uphold, modify or reject the emergency rate increases. The PUCO on Aug. 19 agreed to the request by the OCC and the city to reconsider.
It is up to the PUCO to act on Werman St. John's recommendation.
In the city's July 24 motion to appeal, Law Director Adam Buente argued the PUCO's order "is unreasonable and unlawful."
In the filing, Buente raised six arguments: the PUCO didn't make sufficient findings to justify the emergency rates; the city questions the PUCO's authority to replace existing contractual rates; the proportional-share allocation methodology lacks evidentiary support because some customers don't have functioning meters; the commission failed to consider the impact of the emergency rates on governmental customers; the commission should require additional accountability regarding expenditures of emergency revenue; and the city asked the PUCO to clarify that the emergency rates are temporary.
John Finnigan, an OCC attorney, wrote in a July 24 motion to appeal: "The PUCO decided this case on a fast track, with no procedural schedule and no evidentiary hearing," and the OCC wants to "intervene in this case to give a voice to the residential consumers adversely affected by the PUCO's finding and order."
The OCC, the statewide legal representative for Ohio's residential consumers in matters related to utilities, contends the PUCO erred by failing to require an application for permanent rates and for failing to set an end date for the emergency rates, and that the PUCO should have required language that the increases were subject to refund.
For 13 of the SOBE's 23 customers, the emergency rate increase, effective June 30, is 93% with two at 92%, one at 91% and two at 36%. The five other customers are paying between 64% and 80% more.
That is for the nonheating season between May and October.
Between November and April, the rate will increase by another 162% for 14 of SOBE's 23 customers. One will pay 163% more during those six months with two paying 85% more. The six others will pay increases between 123% and 159%.
In a Sept. 2 report filed by John C. Collins, SOBE's receiver, with Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, he wrote: "It is the receiver's opinion and position that unless the emergency rate increases are affirmed by the commission and that the customers pay the new rates, that the business will not be able to pay its expenses after October."