Senate Democrats propose significant changes to Michigan’s automatic power outage credit

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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News of Sorrow

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

After severe weather knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents, Senate Democrats introduced six bills that would replace the state's flat daily outage credit with hourly payments starting at $5 and rising to $25 an hour after 72 hours without power.

The package also proposes credits for customers hit by four or more outages a year and reimbursement for local governments and renters covering spoiled food costs. It arrives days after the Michigan Public Service Commission separately raised the existing daily credit to $44 for repeat-outage customers.

An identical bill package introduced by Republicans in the state House earlier this year has remained in committee without action. Consumers Energy said it is reviewing the new bills while noting Michigan and New York are the only states requiring automatic outage credits at all.

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✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Two parties wrote nearly the same fix and only one chamber has bothered to move it, which tells you the holdup was never about ideas. Utilities keep raising rates and keep having outages, and the customer is still the one buying the generator and the hotel room. A credit of a few dollars an hour is a nice gesture, but it won't fix a wire that keeps falling down.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: News of Sorrow · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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