Carcieri’s compassionate gambit (continued)

RAYMOND LEVESQUE of North Smithfield, has seen both volunteerism and government at work on the shutoff issue.

A retired manager of the credit department for Blackstone Valley Electric Company (now part of Narragansett), the 72-year-old Levesque has volunteered for the last two years as a member of the Catholic St. Vincent DePaul Society, helping shutoff families to get their utilities turned back on.

He and his wife, Florence, have been making home visits to scores of households from Woonsocket to Pawtucket, before cobbling together money from churches and other sources to help families put together down payments. It’s not that much different from what he did as a utility official, Levesque says, in that he and his staff worked to fashion payment plans for customers, ordering shutoffs only as a last resort.

One effort that seemed to work well while he was at Blackstone Valley, Levesque says, was a "percentage of income program" that operated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Customers were expected to pay only a percent of their income for utility bills. "The same customers that were shut off, we would see them in the office making payments," he recalls. "This was a whole different ballgame, and the shutoffs went down."

Because payments were affordable, customers paid on a regular basis. Federal subsidies paid the balance. When the federal money dried up in the mid-1990s, the program ended.

"It was a great program," Levesque says, "but it’s always the funding."

THE COMMITTEE organized by Carcieri hasn’t looked far enough into long-term solutions at this point to agree on a solution.

Holt says the panel is studying methods used by other states, an exercise that energy expert Howat says could pay local dividends. "On of the exciting things about what’s going on in Rhode Island is there is an opportunity to look at best practices on a component by component basis from around the country," he says, "and to design a utility program to become a national leader in this area."

In the end, however, a solution will inevitably entail finding the necessary dollars.

The earlier plan rejected by the Public Utilities Commission had a price tag of about $22 million, of which half might have come from federal and other existing subsidy sources. Howat estimates that more than $11 million in new money would have been needed.

A new plan might be even more expensive. For example, the earlier plan was aimed at the about 25,000 households enrolled in the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides annual grants to low-income households. But many more households are actually eligible for LIHEAP grants, which can go to homes with incomes up to 60 percent of median incomes. This year, a family of four earning $40,588 is eligible, says Matteo Guglielmetti of the state Energy Office.

Further, the previously proposed program didn’t cover homes heated by oil, which unlike gas and electricity, is not rate-controlled by the state, and not subject to the winter shutoff moratorium. According to the state Energy Office, one-third of LIHEAP-eligible households use oil heat.

Still, the financial hurdles are not infinite, and, to a large degree, taxpayers and ratepayers already subsidize a good portion of bills that the poor aren’t able to pay.

Narragansett writes off $5.1 million in unpaid bills annually, an amount picked up by other ratepayers. And the electric company offers discounted rates to low-income households, a $3.9 million cost also covered by ratepayers. Similarly, New England Gas has substantial write-offs for bad debts and contributes $1.6 million annually for a 25 percent match to LIHEAP grants. Finally, Rhode Island this year will receive $13.8 million in LIHEAP funds — supplied by federal taxpayers here and in the rest of the nation.

All of this happens in a very disorganized manner, in what Shelton, the antipoverty advocate, describes as a "broken system" that unsettles the lives of thousands of Rhode Islanders ever year.

In 2003, for example, 21,446 households in the state had their gas or electricity shut off for nonpayment of bills, sometimes for short periods, in other cases for months. That’s as if every house, every apartment, in East Providence had its electric or natural gas service turned off at some point during the year. "How big the problem is extraordinarily complicated," Holt says, shaking his head at how hard it is to pin down even the basic elements of the issue. "We know significant numbers of people are affected. We don’t know what we mean by significant."

The governor himself is cautious about whether the committee will succeed in fixing the shutoff issue. At the very least, he says in an interview, the committee will bring a variety of groups together to better coordinate their ongoing efforts. Carcieri says that ultimately, solving problems like this depends on a better economy, and the ability of workers, through improved skills and education, to get higher paying jobs.

"I know it sounds like I’m beating a drumbeat, but I believe in my heart that the real solution is, we need to lift people’s incomes," Carcieri says.

A reporter asked the governor whether there are similarities between the shutoff issue and problems in the medical system. Hospitals offer free care to uninsured patients, with those expenses ultimately covered by patients with insurance. The unpaid bills of low-income energy users are paid in part by other utility ratepayers.

"There are some parallels," Carcieri says, adding that there might be a better way to handle the issue than an endless cycle of shutoffs and restorations. "We are paying for it ultimately," he says, "and so why not acknowledge that and then figure out just a smarter way to do this?"

It’s unclear whether the process set in motion by Carcieri will result in effective recommendations, and approaches that legislative leaders and the governor himself will embrace.

Holt, the chair of the panel, says he doesn’t know at this point what the outcome will be. "Everything needs to be on the table," he says. "People of good will need to figure out how to do something that is fair to all, and that protects the most vulnerable people in society."

Brian C. Jones can be reached at brijudy@cox.net.