Electric discount fund gets attention

By R.A. DYER

STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU

AUSTIN - Hundreds of millions of dollars paid by Texans to reduce electric bills for their poorest neighbors remain unspent in state coffers, and a group is organizing a phone-in campaign to Gov. Rick Perry's office.

"This is just wrong," said Bob Jackson, AARP Texas state director, noting that Perry declined a request to address the problem during this year's special legislative session. The governor also signed off on state budgets that rerouted the money.

But a spokesman for Perry said the governor submitted budgets to the Legislature that included funding for the low-income discount program, and the Legislature rejected them.

The spokesman, Eric Bearse, also said Perry has since called upon utilities to pony up their own money to fund similar programs and agrees with the AARP that the shortfall could get addressed before the Legislature returns in 2007.

"He has been supporting this funding for low-income Texans all the way through the process," Bearse said.

At issue are fees collected under a low-income discount program created as part of the state's 1999 electric deregulation. The fees are still collected with residential electric bills, and at one time they provided discounts of 10 percent or more to more than 500,000 low-income ratepayers.

But in 2003, and then again in 2005, the Legislature began rerouting that money; top lawmakers said it was needed to defray budget cuts elsewhere.

AARP says that the Legislature failed to allocate $256 million, which the group says languishes unused in the state treasury. Less than $10 million of it was spent on unrelated administrative costs at the Texas Public Utility Commission, the AARP says.

AARP advocacy director Amanda McCloskey also said that the governor's office ignored its inquiry about the funding issue during this year's special session. "We sent the governor a letter asking him to put it on the call of the special session, we never got a response," she said.

But Bearse said the governor was then focused on school finance. He said Perry supports AARP's calls to use the special budget authority of the Legislative Budget Board to restore the funding.

The board, which is controlled jointly by the Texas House and Senate, can make spending adjustments when the Legislature is not in session. "We have an outstanding request, and we're hoping the legislative leadership will agree to meet," Bearse said.

Officials at TXU and Houston's Reliant have said they have since created their own low-income discount programs for customers in their respective service territories.

AARP has set up a toll-free phone number where supporters can get more information and phone in their comments to the governor.

So far, more than 700 have done so, AARP reports.

"This is the latest in a series of broken promises," Jackson said. "Customers have continued to pay fees in their electric bills ... but the Legislature took that money saying it was needed to make ends meet. Now we find out that the money wasn't needed after all."

Environment Texas advocate Luke Metzger said the fund transfer is similar to others authored by Texas lawmakers -- such as those relating to specialty license plates -- under which Texans pay fees for one purpose and discover later that the money was never allocated for that purpose.

"Voters are rightly outraged," he said.