Power play

Imagine it's summer. It's 109 degrees. The neon is melting. Heat waves blur the landscape -- the hotel-casinos, the stucco strip malls, the surrounding mountains. Like any sensible Las Vegan, you are holed up in your apartment or house. The AC is churning. The power bill is, once again, triple figures. You just can't afford it. Not along with all the other rising bills. So Nevada Power dispatches a man in a funny uniform to your apartment or house. He cuts off the power and cracks an evil grin. The AC falls silent. Now what are you going to do?

While this scenario may seem far-fetched, it could become more common in Southern Nevada if the state Public Utilities Commission has its way.

On Dec. 28, the commission presented a new regulation that would change the temperature limits at which utilities can cut off service. Currently, utilities cannot be cut off if the forecasted temperature is lower than 15 degrees or higher than 105. The proposed regulation would change the limits to 25 degrees and 110 in Southern Nevada, possibly exposing more people to extreme heat during the summer.

The Legislative Committee to Review Regulations sent the proposed regulation, without recommendation, to the Legislative Commission. The commission is expected to review it in February.

"I had a number of basic questions about the regulation," said Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, a member of the Legislative Committee to Review Regulations and chair of the Legislative Commission. "Who is this going to help? Who is it going to hurt? If, say, 5,000 people are protected from termination of service in a given year under the current regulation, how many people will be protected under the new regulation? I had a lot of questions about the numbers and I wasn't able to secure all the answers."

Added state Sen. Randolph Townsend, a member of the Legislative Committee to Review Regulations: "We didn't see the justification for the new regulation, because we didn't know what the problem was with the current regulation. In other words, you usually change a regulation as a result of the need to do one of two things: address a problem or catch the regulation up to the current marketplace. We didn't see either one of those things. We weren't quite sure what the necessity was for the change."

According to Bob Cooper, regulatory analyst with the state Bureau of Consumer Protection, the PUC began looking at the issue of utility cutoffs in 2001. In December 2004, it established temperature limits. Then in February 2005, it decided to review the regulation -- prompted, said Cooper, by new medical data on the health risks of utilities being cut off.

But Carol Marin, Nevada Power's executive of customer care, suggested her company requested the review.

"Our concern is that there are so many days in the summer in Las Vegas when the temperature falls between 105 and 110 degrees," said Marin. "Customers do get pretty big bills in the summer compared to other months, and they have a harder time making their payments. If they don't make any payments during those summer months, we don't really have the opportunity to help remind them that they need to make payments by cutting off their power."

Marin admitted profits are part of the reason why Nevada Power wants to change the regulation. But, she insisted, the company is also looking out for customers who pay their bills on time and end up supporting delinquent customers.

Marin added the proposed regulation provides better protection for the disabled, senior citizens and children. The temperature limits for these "vulnerable" customers in Southern Nevada would be 30 degrees and 103.

However, these protections weren't enough to convince AARP Nevada to support the regulation.

"In some ways, it does offer greater protection to a certain population. It changes the threshold for them," said Barry Gold, AARP's advocacy director. "But a very large concern is that it would increase the 105 temperature threshold to 110 degrees. So what it will do is adversely affect a majority of Southern Nevada citizens who are power users during the summer by making it easier for Nevada Power to shut off their utilities."

Gold and others were also concerned about how these "vulnerable" customers would be determined and how they would be notified of their exemption status. These questions, said Buckley and Townsend, weren't answered sufficiently at the Dec. 28 meeting.

"Agencies love trying to sneak stuff by us, because they think we don't pay attention in the interim," said Townsend, adding that neither the PUC nor Nevada Power has contacted him since the meeting. "Well, some of us do pay attention. I'm not saying that something nefarious is going on here. I just think that we need a simple explanation why we are doing this."

Matt O'Brien is CityLife's news editor. He can be reached at 871-6780 ext. 350 or obrien@lvpress.com.