Advocates target gas company spending as Ferguson tamps down bill savings expectations

A bill from Del. Elizabeth Embry (D-Baltimore City) wouldl rein in the STRIDE program, which advocates say hase been abused by utilities to do unnecessary infrastructure work and bill it back to ratepayers. (File photo by Danielle E. Gaines/Maruland Matters)

A day after he and other legislative leaders announced a package of bills to lower Marylanders’ electricity costs, Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) conceded Tuesday that the measures would provide very little short-term relief.

“There’s no one thing that’ll stop a $50-a-month increase … or a 40% decrease in prices,” Ferguson told reporters. “That policy just doesn’t exist.”

But Ferguson expressed optimism, as he did during a news conference with fellow lawmakers the previous day, that the package of bills, if enacted, would eventually overhaul Maryland’s energy landscape, increasing the amount of energy produced in Maryland, kick-starting the state’s clean energy economy, and eventually lowering ratepayers’ utility bills.

Ferguson on Tuesday also said he could see the legislature tinkering with other utility policies this session to save consumers money. The possibilities, he said, include tinkering with the EMPOWER energy efficiency and climate program, which helps homeowners, renters, and businesses save energy and money, and upgrading the STRIDE program, which incentivizes gas utilities to repair and replace pipelines and other infrastructure.

Adjusting the EMPOWER program, Ferguson said, “will have marginal impacts, several dollars per month, which, you know, everything adds up. And then we’re also looking through some potential changes to the STRIDE program, which has to do with transparency, for infrastructure, for the natural gas infrastructure, that we could potentially have some few dollars here and there monthly impacts.”

“So those are not incorporated in the bill as introduced, but we are looking to see if there are additional things that are immediate places,” Ferguson said.

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Around the same time Ferguson was sharing thse observations with reporters in Annapolis Tuesday morning, a group of elected officials, consumer advocates and environmentalists were gathered in front of Baltimore City Hall to argue for state legislation that would scale back the STRIDE program — and, they argued, lower utility bills in the process.

The group included Attorney General Anthony Brown (D), Baltimore…