Marylanders just got another reminder of how utility monopolies operate: Pepco wants a $133 million rate hike in the state, sticking the average customer with nearly $12 more a month starting next year. This comes on the heels of BG&E’s latest hikes. It’s a treadmill designed never to stop, unless the public forces it to.
Brooks Schandelmeier said it plainly in The Baltimore Banner: People are paying more and getting little in return. Utilities swear these hikes are about “reliability,” but if that were true, Maryland would have the strongest grid in America by now. Instead, we have working families who can’t catch a break while monopoly utilities and their Wall Street owners rake in the profits.
A new Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study confirms what our organization has been saying for over a year: Despite all the reasons some claim, the main culprit in these rate hikes is infrastructure spending chosen by the utilities themselves. Poles, wires, trucks, concrete, equipment nobody asked for. Because, thanks to state law and their monopoly status, the more they spend, the more profit they’re guaranteed.
This is the same racket we’ve warned about with parent company Exelon and its utility subsidiaries across the region. They bury consumers in capital projects because those projects mint money for shareholders, not because they make electricity cheaper or service better. Marylanders see the bill. Wall Street sees the returns. Only one side is winning.
Consumers across the country are struggling. Nearly one in four Americans reports being unable to pay a utility bill in the last two years. At the same time, utilities are lobbying aggressively to expand their monopolies, not rein them in. Some are even pushing to own and operate the power plants themselves, which would give them the power to charge customers for every bolt, turbine, and concrete slab they decide to buy. If they get it, bills will skyrocket more.
Maryland doesn’t have to tolerate this. Massachusetts just launched a full-scale review of its utility system to bring down costs and hold monopolies accountable. That’s what leadership looks like. Maryland’s leaders could do the same right now. They could stand with families instead of utilities. They could stop rubber-stamping rate hikes, demand full transparency on spending, and force utilities to prove that every dollar actually improves affordability and reliability.
The stakes are simple: Are we going to keep letting monopoly utilities treat Maryland families like a revenue stream they can tap at will? Or are we finally going to demand a utility system built for consumers, not corporate profit pipelines?
Common Sense America stands with ratepayers in Maryland and across our country who are fed up. This is the moment to push back, loudly and unapologetically, before the next wave of rate hikes hits and the cost of doing nothing becomes even higher.
