Senate Dems Back “Wholesale Extinction” Of Competitive Suppliers

Part of “Hat Trick” Including New Requirement For Home Insurance Policies

Senate Democrats passed legislation Thursday to crack down on the competitive electric supply market and shield residential consumers from potentially expensive contracts, overcoming opposition from Republicans who offered reform measures for the fraught industry.

The branch passed the bill, initially filed by Sen. Brendan Crighton with Attorney General Andrea Campbell, on a 34-4 vote, with Republican Sens. Peter Durant, Ryan Fattman, Patrick O’Connor and Bruce Tarr voting no. Electric suppliers would be barred from enrolling new residential customers should the bill advance through the House, which has not taken up the policy in recent sessions.

“Each year, the broken and predatory residential competitive electric supply industry harms consumers across Massachusetts – particularly in low-income communities and communities of color and fails in its promise to consistently provide consumer savings,” Campbell said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “I now urge the House to take up and pass this legislation so that Massachusetts residents are protected from this deceptive and harmful industry.”

Senators rejected an amendment by Tarr — who voiced concern over the “draconian proposal” to eliminate consumer choice — that would have installed more barriers for competitive suppliers to enter the market and provided the attorney general with more oversight authority.

“I would say if there was just about any other industry that we were subjecting that wholesale extinction to, there would be an outcry across the commonwealth of Massachusetts that would be so loud that we couldn’t ignore it,” Tarr said. “I’m not sure that we serve the interests of our consumers by taking one entire category of choice off the table and retreating from the initiative we started in [1997] to have a robust competitive market for the supply of electricity.”

Sen. Mike Barrett, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, said the amendment used “lousy language” that also appears in a House bill. Barrett signaled competitive suppliers have not added value to their product, despite having 25 years to prove themselves in the marketplace.

“There’s nothing redeemable about this particular option. It’s too bad. I think a lot of us were very optimistic in the late ’90s — this should have worked,” Barrett said. “Turns out that the product was absolutely fungible. These middlemen don’t have lower costs, they have higher costs.”

The Senate passed the electric supplier bill Thursday as part of a “hat trick” of consumer protection legislation, as Sen. Michael Rodrigues put it — a trio of bills that also included measures to require that home insurance policies cover remediation for accidental heating oil leaks, and to update laws around used car sales. The auto bill would increase the used vehicle warranty to 150,000 miles, and give purchasers seven days from date of delivery to have a car inspected and seek recourse if it fails the inspection, rather than the current seven days from date of purchase.  Both of those measures passed without opposition.