Public Notice: Other People’s Money Actually, it’s yours. Do you know where it’s going? NICK BARBARO, FRI., AUG. 4, 2017, The Austin Chronicle
Last week I wrote about The Austin Environmental Directory 2017-18, a ninth-edition resource recently released by utility and consumer watchdog Paul Robbins. This week Robbins is at it again, releasing another long-awaited follow-up report, titled Misguided Charity, charging that money from Austin Energy’s Customer Assistance Program (CAP) – those voluntary contributions that utility customers can make to defray costs for the needy, (*but also a percentage of every utility bill you pay) – is in some cases going instead to wealthy property owners, and to subsidize wasteful consumption.
In this new report, Robbins makes two major policy recommendations: First, that the program should “verify that customers who live in properties with high improvement values really do have low incomes. Council unanimously budgeted money for this in August of 2016 … This could be enacted in a matter of weeks.” Second, and perhaps even easier, would be for AE to eliminate the CAP discount for high-volume electricity users – specifically the fourth and fifth tiers of consumption. “This is just wrong!” Robbins said in a separate email. “The practice encourages waste, while at the same time depriving the average CAP participant of additional discount money.” He estimates this move alone could save the utility some $2 million a year, enough to “increase the average electric discount of $250 a year by about $60.”
Appendices include a “Parade of Homes” – photos and stats on luxury homes that were receiving the CAP discounts as of this January – plus a list of some 56 “CAP Customers With More Than $1 Million in Real Estate Assets.” The report is being distributed to Council and others today, Aug. 3, and will soon be available for download at www.environmentaldirectory.info.