Boscola

            HARRISBURG, April 9 - Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission today refused to give their approval to a controversial proposal by PPL to increase their electric rates in mid-2008, two years before their rate caps expire.

            “Officially, PPL’s plan to charge customers more has been postponed indefinitely,” Senator Lisa Boscola said.  “In reality, PPL’s attempt to raise rates right away is dead on arrival.  That’s good news for 1.4 million electric customers in Pennsylvania.”

             Boscola said today’s “oral postponement” by the PUC did not specify when PPL’s “settlement” would or could be reconsidered by the Commission.  Nor did it indicate whether or not the energy company’s so-called “Rate Stabilization Plan” would even be considered by the PUC.  PPL had planned to start collecting higher rates from its customers this coming July, she said.

            “The PUC came to Bethlehem last week, they listened to 250 people oppose PPL’s plan, and this proves they got the message loud and clear,” Boscola said.

            Prior to today’s action by the PUC, the Commission held a “standing-room-only,” overflowing public input hearing in Bethlehem last week that lasted four hours.

            “I know exactly why the PUC refused to even hear this proposal,” Boscola said. “It’s because they heard 250 people screaming at that hearing!  The credit goes to everyone who stood up and joined me to fight back.  Our voices in the Lehigh Valley were heard loud and clear in Harrisburg!  And the sheer power of that roar shook up a lot of people all across the state.”

            Boscola characterized the PUC’s decision as just one of many “tipping points” that will expose electric deregulation as “a fraud, a phony promise, and a figment of the power industry’s greed-driven imagination.”

            “People all across the state heard about what happened in Bethlehem,” she said.  “From the Governor's Office to every local coffee shop in places like Bloomsburg, Wilkes-Barre, State College and towns in between.  We demand fair and reasonable rates.  That word is out and the fight is spreading.  We’re no longer a tiny, little voice trying to fight against giant corporate greed.  We’re a force to be reckoned with and this fight has just begun.”