Supreme Court approves injunction against PUC amendment

Light bills will not go down… at least for now and that is because on Wednesday the Supreme Court approved an injunction against the Public Utilities Commission’s Amendment to the June 2008 Final Decision. In the Amendment the P.U.C., on February sixth, reduced the mean electricity rate by seven cents to thirty-seven point five cents per kilowatt hour. In a release to News Five late this evening, B.E.L.’s position was that it is not reluctant to lower electricity rates and according to the utility company, the opportunity to lower rates is a direct result of the work and investments that it has made over the past five years. B.E.L. says that even at current oil prices, cost of power would have been significantly higher than the current costs if it had not done certain things over the last five years. B.E.L. squarely blames the P.U.C. and says that if the Commission had not refused to grant an increase in the rates in June of 2008, B.E.L. would have maintained financial health. B.E.L. said it filed for the injunction on the Amendment because had the P.U.C. been allowed to proceed with the amendment, the company would have soon experienced cash flow problems and they would have returned to the position they were in July of 2008, when government had to pay their loans.