By: KFOR – Three former state legislators are calling on current lawmakers to investigate the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for what they’re saying is “deliberate misinformation” regarding the plans to charge Oklahoma ratepayers more money, in an effort to recoup billions of dollars in energy costs from the 2021 winter storm.
“They should have warned everybody, turn your thermostats down because the price of power is going to go up massively. Did they do that? No,” said former Oklahoma legislator Mike Reynolds.
“People that didn’t even have their power on during that outage will get to pay that [extra money] for 28 years,” he added.
First reported by OK Energy Today, the letter from former Oklahoma representatives Porter H. Davis, Mike Reynolds, and Mike Ritze requested an “immediate investigation” into “deliberate disinformation” by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), also saying say the public utility misled legislators into supporting securitization after Winter Storm Uri in 2021 which could cost Oklahoma upwards of two billion more dollars.
“It’s not because the fuel costs have gone up, it’s because of the mismanagement of these stock traded companies and how they have worked secret deals with the legislators, corporation commissioners, to pass this off to the ratepayers – because they figure, hey, they can’t fight back [but] it’s put Oklahoma taxpayers on risk for billions of dollars of bond debt,” stated Reynolds in an interview Wednesday with KFOR.
The request follows other recent actions in the state’s effort to fuel the cost recovery process, including a notice to state leaders that the OCC didn’t file a timely decision on the recent OG&E fuel adjustment clause request, and a dissent from Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony regarding the ongoing fuel recovery effort.
Previous KFOR reporting confirmed that it is against Oklahoma law for utility companies to profit from fuel cost adjustments under OCC regulations.
In the dissent from November 22nd, Anthony stated said “threat, coercion, administrative irregularities and withholding information” have impacted his Constitutional duties to protect Oklahoma consumers.
Threats, coercion, administrative “irregularities” and withholding information have hindered or obstructed my efforts to perform my constitutional duties as an Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner and to investigate billion-dollar charges to public utility customers, including credible evidence of public corruption and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
OKLAHOMA CORPORATION COMMISSIONER BOB ANTHONY IN HIS NOVEMBER 22 DISSENT
On Tuesday, the OCC approved a $19.6 million dollar rate hike request by Oklahoma Natural Gas.
It will cost most customers about two dollars a month in additional charges.
