KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS NEWS Power to the People A PROPOSED BALLOT MEASURE WOULD REQUIRE XCEL ENERGY TO PAY A PERCENTAGE OF ITS OWN RATES. BY CATIE CHESHIRE Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, calls Xcel Energy the “corporate antichrist of Colorado,” and he blames state government and the Colorado Public Utili- ties Commission for helping the company achieve that title by giving it a virtual mo- nopoly in metro Denver. The devil’s in the details. The PUC was established in 1913 to regu- late electric street lights and telephones, among other utilities, replacing what had been the Railroad Commission. In the de- cades since, it’s evolved into its current confi guration. Headed by director Doug Dean, a former lawmaker, the PUC has three commissioners appointed by the governor to four-year terms: John Gavan, who was ap- pointed in 2018 by John Hickenlooper, and Eric Blank and Megan Gilman, who were appointed in 2020 by Jared Polis. The commissioners work full-time to oversee the rates, service, safety and infra- structure of utilities ranging from telecom- munications to energy and transportation by enforcing regulations designed to ensure that they operate legally, successfully...and in the best interest of Coloradans. Xcel is one of those utilities. Its parent company, Northern States Power, acquired Public Service Company of Colorado in 2000. That same year, NSP formed Xcel, taking it public with an initial stock offer- ing that included Public Service Company of Colorado and other utility companies in states across the Midwest and Southwest. That’s how a Minneapolis-based company became the only option for Denver resi- dents interested in having access to gas and electricity. As a result, Xcel enjoys risk-free profi ts while regular Coloradans struggle to af- ford their energy bills, Caldara charges. In 2021, Xcel made $1.6 billion in profi t. Public Service Company of Colorado was the com- pany’s most profi table entity, delivering $1.22 per share to shareholders. At the same time, many consumers reported that their Xcel bills had skyrocketed. “It’s substantial,” says Theresa Cullen, 6 program manager for LEAP, which helps low-income households cover those bills. “It’s staggering for people.” For LEAP mem- Consumers could pay the price for Comanche Generating Station going offl ine. bers, natural gas prices are up about 34 per- cent over last year, electricity prices up to 50 percent more, and propane up 57 percent. Caldara thinks that Coloradans can’t afford to sit back and watch Xcel’s profi ts rise in tandem with their energy bills. But he also thinks that any company in Xcel’s position, with a similar lack of regulation, would behave the same way. “If I was Xcel, I would love this arrange- ment,” he says. “I would never suggest we treat captive customers with respect.” To help captive customers break free, Caldara has come up with a citizens’ initia- tive that he hopes to get on Colorado’s ballot this November 2022, which would require that gas and electric utility companies pay a percentage of energy rates themselves. Caldara and his colleagues at the Inde- pendence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, are no strangers to using the ballot to change policy, having successfully pushed a measure in 2020 that reduced the state’s income tax. Caldara also sponsored some highly discussed but unsuccessful measures such as Fix Our Damn Roads, an infrastructure measure, and the Colorado Healthcare Amendment, which aimed to ensure that Colorado wouldn’t be subject to federal actions like the Affordable Care Act. According to the latest Caldara proposal, “Investor-owned utilities that supply electric or gas service or both in Colorado shall pay a percentage of all rates from their profi ts as determined by the Public Utilities Commis- sion; such percentage shall be at least fi ve percent of the total rates approved.” If the measure makes it to the ballot and passes, Xcel would have skin in the game whenever it wanted to raise rates, taking on 5 percent of the increase itself and paying that amount back to customers out of its profi ts. The proposal is one way to deal with the company having a monopoly on the market. “There are a couple of other ways to settle this,” Caldara notes. “The PUC could go back and have a least-cost guiding principle. That would be incredible. Or we could deregulate and break up the monopolies so that people can choose what power company they want.” When Xcel Energy’s 1.4 million Colorado customers receive their energy bills each month, everything they see — from the de- sign of the bill to the rates they pay — has been approved by the PUC. But that’s small consolation when consumers are seeing such big increases in their bills. Every two to three years, Xcel tells the PUC how much energy generation it needs to serve its customers, how it thinks its customer base will grow, and how it will need to adapt its current systems to serve those customers. The commission has to approve every aspect of that plan, including the companies that Xcel will contract with for construction and how much of those costs can be charged back to customers through energy bills. In between those offi cial planning peri- ods, Xcel can ask the PUC to hear rate cases on specifi c items. Recently, Xcel asked the PUC to raise rates for natural gas by $188.6 million over three years. Although the cost of natural gas has already risen, the company is seeking approval to make up those costs rather than adding the cost to bills as the price fl uctuates; if the PUC agrees, the average consumer’s monthly bill would be per- manently increased by over $7 a month. Currently, Xcel is also asking the PUC for the okay to raise electricity and natural gas rates temporarily this year to make up for losses from a 2021 snowstorm. According to Rebecca Quintana, deputy director of the PUC, the Energy Section of the commission reviews requests from utility companies to be sure they meet fi nancial, en- gineering, legal and economic requirements. “The Public Utilities Commission’s stat- utes mandate that the PUC must fi rst give paramount consideration to the public interest,” Quintana says. “This requires constant attention to achieve the appropri- ate balance between the needs of Colorado customers for safe and reliable utility ser- vices at reasonable rates and the needs of utility service providers to earn a reasonable profi t and to sustain a reliable utility infra- structure throughout Colorado.” But the PUC isn’t close to achieving the appropriate balance, Caldara says; he blames a 2021 bill passed by the Colorado Legislature that transformed the Offi ce of Consumer Counsel into the Offi ce of the Utility Consumer Advocate for making an already broken system worse. After several earlier attempts to address concerns about rate increases for customers, the Offi ce of Consumer Counsel (OCC) was formed in 1984 through legislation intro- duced by Republican lawmaker Cliff Dodge. The original counsel was Ron Binz, who served in that role from 1984 until 1995 (and won a Best of Denver continued on page 8 APRIL 21-27, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com MIKE LEWINSKI/FLICKR
