A coalition of climate advocates, social justice groups and Democratic lawmakers ratcheted up their criticism of Connecticut’s for-profit utilities on Tuesday, in the latest salvo over the future of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and its embattled leader, Marissa Gillett.
Their argument: Gillett’s tenacious approach to dealing with the utilities has triggered a backlash from an industry concerned with its own profits and shareholders, rather than its ratepayers in Connecticut.
“The fact of the matter is that for the first time in a long while, PURA is actually holding the utilities accountable,” Charles Rothenberger, a climate and energy attorney for Save the Sound, said at a press conference Tuesday.
In response, the utilities have waged what advocates called a public “smear campaign” to sink Gillett’s pending reappointment to another four-year term at PURA and to force her out of a job.
“In my over 30 years of organizing here in the state of Connecticut, I have never seen a more egregious example of corporate bullying,” said Tom Swan, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group. “The actions by the utilities are immoral. They’re wrong and dangerous.”
Both of the state’s largest utilities — Eversource and United Illuminating — have pushed back against those claims and instead pointed the finger at Gillett, arguing that she is responsible for abusing her powers and creating a hostile regulatory environment.
“As we’ve said, we have no opinion on the makeup of PURA or who is appointed to serve — we simply want and expect the law to be upheld,” Eversource spokeswoman Jamie Ratliff said in a statement Tuesday. “We encourage strong, impartial regulation and work collaboratively with regulatory bodies that accomplish that in the other states we serve — to the benefit of customers.”
In a statement later Tuesday, a spokeswoman for UI pointed to the company’s investments in renewable energy, saying “to achieve these critical goals in Connecticut, we need regulatory partners that enable investments in our electric grid so that we can connect these needed renewable resources to the 345,000 customers we serve.”
A spokesperson for PURA declined to comment on Gillett’s behalf on Tuesday.
Gov. Ned Lamont reappointed Gillett to a second four-year term as a utilities regulator in January. Her term as chair of the three-person PURA board is separately due to expire in July.
Her nomination, however, was complicated by a lawsuit filed late last month by the utilities, which accused Gillett of placing herself in charge of hundreds of cases before regulators and issuing decisions without a full vote of her fellow commissioners. Gillett’s ties to sympathetic legislators have also come under scrutiny by her opponents in recent days.
Rob Blanchard, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said Lamont is continuing to meet and talk with a handful of undecided lawmakers on the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee, which is scheduled to talk up Gillett’s nomination in a hearing on Thursday.
One of those meetings was scheduled to take place Tuesday afternoon with state Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, who has raised concerns about Gillett’s leadership while also publicly expressing his own interest in being appointed to fill one of two vacant seats on PURA.
“It was a good opportunity for the senator and governor to meet, share ideas about PURA and Commissioner Gillett’s work,” Blanchard said.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Gillett’s supporters cast the fight over her reappointment in existential terms. State Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, said a failure to approve her nomination would have a “chilling effect” over broader efforts to regulate utilities and keep costs under control.
“Not just a chilling effect in Connecticut, but a chilling effect across the United States, because we have direct, deregulated utilities in many places,” Kavros DeGraw said. “And if we show the world that our regulator got bullied and then removed, we are going to have this seen in other places in the country.”
They also accused Republicans of hypocritically campaigning on the issue of Connecticut’s stubbornly high cost of electricity, while also planning to vote against Gillett’s reappointment after she dissented in several recent cases that resulted in higher costs for customers.
But House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, called Gillett’s votes against the utilities “politically calculated.” He added that they followed PURA’s decisions over several years to deny the utilities adequate recovery on their investments in Connecticut.
“She’s become the face of increasing costs in the state of Connecticut and a lot of the controversies surrounding that,” Candelora said.
Separately on Tuesday, United Illuminating announced that it was seeking approval for a $30.1 million rate adjustment from PURA for its electric customers in Connecticut.
If approved, the company said the increase would amount to an additional 26 cents on the average customer’s monthly bill beginning in May. The company said the increase was primarily driven by the cost of state-mandated energy assistance programs for low-income customers as well as contracts with nuclear power plants in Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Those costs appear on customers’ bills as public benefits charges that are separated from supply, transmission and distribution charges.
CT Mirror reporter Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.
This story was originally published in the Connecticut Mirror Feb. 18, 2025.
