Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: That's so interesting. Yeah.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: I printed a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Sure. There's I probably have so much stuff on my printer. Sorry. Just

[Speaker 0]: Grab

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: my Okay. Thanks. Grab what looks like obviously might oh, we're live. And we're live. Sorry about that. Alright. Welcome back to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. We're continuing our conversations about H753 and act relating to utility service disconnections. I'm representative Kathleen James from the Bennington Ford District.

[Speaker 0]: Scott Campbell from Saint Johnsbury. Richard Bailey, Lamoille two. Chris Morrow, Windham Windsor, Bennington. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two. Christopher Howland, Roland Ford.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Graham Kleppner, Chittenden Thirteen, Burleshoot.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Alright. Gabriel Moniza, down draft from.

[Speaker 0]: Sam Barnett, Action Circles. Haley Perry with the Grassy Group. With Joanna. Jonathan Waltz with Premier Pfeiffer on behalf of Vetsa and Bram Kleppner.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Thank you. Alright. For the record, Scott, thank you for rejoining us today.

[Speaker 0]: Glad to be here, Chair James, members of the committee. Thanks for having me back to talk with you about H seven fifty three. I sort of feel like this is gonna be a bit of a redo of utility fiscal health that we talked about last time some respects because it is all related after all. But for the record, my name is Scott Johnstone. I'm the general manager at Morrisville Water Light and Hardwick Electric Department and also the interim manager at the Village of Hyde Park Electric. So I'll speak from really the municipal perspective of those three utilities today because that's what I know best, and I know Morrisville best of all because that's actually my home base. So what I would say is across those utilities, we work really closely with our customers because we actually have two consumer advocates. We have the one that you just heard from here a minute ago, and we have elected trustees or electric commissioners who are out in grocery stores and hearing customer input about how we are or not doing every day and the challenges that the community is facing. So we take these issues with our customers really well, and as a result, we work really closely with them. We understand the challenges that our customers are facing and juggling bills, and we understand also the concepts of energy burden, and that's not an abstract concept for our customers. It's a living relived reality for the people that we serve. So these are issues that we deal with every day. I'll I'll just address a question you had earlier. We see people with challenging energy bills across the economic spectrum. People in different spectrums occasionally find a challenging time for a number of reasons, the loss of a job or whatever issue.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: I just wanna clarify. We're talking about electric here and

[Speaker 0]: not water? I've I've also run two water utilities, but they're municipal water utilities, so they're not regulated by the Public Utility Commission. But I can speak with you about water utilities as well should you like. I didn't send you a testimony designed on that, but I can speak to you about it if you have questions. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Before turning to the three core provisions that at least I see in this bill, I did wanna note that, again, this is some of the fiscal issues that I just wanted to lay the table with. Really, for the last twenty five years or so, sales of the volume of sales of electricity in Vermont has remained essentially static. And if any other business was suggested that they should find a way to economically survive without the ability to grow their sales. They they have a challenging time. And so when you talk about fiscal health and and matters like, you know, how long can you wait for payment and how do you juggle things, That's one of the challenges that utilities face. It's not an excuse, but it's just a reality. It's all for good reason. There's been a lot of policies and regulation adopted in the state. Most of them I personally endorse, whether they're environmental or climate change or, you know, economic policies are actually good directions, we're not alone. As I said last time I was here, many other states are doing the same thing. But they do contribute to who pays and how we pay and all the other sorts of challenging dynamics that we have. It's also important to note the challenges that we have from a price structure because we've had a lot of rate increases of late, and I'm sure that's part of the driver for this. And mostly what you'll find from utilities, and this is again not an excuse to control the low hauling costs that we have, but most of the cost increases come from energy purchase and transmission costs, which come from ISO New England, and that drives most of the rising costs that you see. An example I'll give you over the last couple of weeks even, as short as that, is anyone that was on the open market for power, and most most utilities are for some percentage, the prices over the last couple weeks have been 30 to 50¢ a kilowatt hour, and none of us are selling it for much more than 20. So every time we're buying a piece of power, we're losing money. The the peak one hour cost was something like 92¢ a kilowatt hour, which was more than double the record ever set. Those costs are hard to ever recover because they're not a continuing cost, and so we're supposed to figure out how to just assimilate them. Now this, of course, doesn't make life easier for our customers, and and gonna I'm get to the bill. I'm just trying to lay it a little bit here for you. So these create all of these create lots of dynamics that make it hard to address these issues. And then there are other pieces of policy, again, most of which I support, so I'm not this is not me throwing bombs here, that do move cost basis around. I have a one of the early net meter solar systems, and I'm about to pay ten years later my first bill to the Mono Electric Co op. And that means my neighbors have been subsidizing my system. I'm not paying for the transmission distribution system whether or that gets fixed over years as today's net metering is better than yesterday's net metering in terms of sharing equitably sharing costs. Still not quite there, but it's getting better. And that's just one example. There are many. So what tends to happen is there's there's lots of activity. You know, you all talked earlier about during COVID, the the money to help with arrearages. So there's lots of money historically spent there and some subsidy on the more affluent side, the early days of Efficiency Vermont. All It's about market transformation. I ran Efficiency Vermont for nine years. And the first actors are always the more affluent people because they have capital and they can play. Right? So we've been subsidizing both ends of the spectrum, which just squeezes these cost spaces we're talking about right to the middle. Doesn't mean no one in the middle plays. I'm not here to suggest that. I'm just trying to help paint a picture of the dynamic we try to manage every day in interacting with customers on these issues. And then the last piece before I get into the specifics is one of the challenges we've had in Vermont for a long time, it's not a new topic in this room over the years, is that only one of the energy sources that contribute to energy burden is regulated. And so the first instinct is always to figure out how to use the electric system to solve the entire energy burden issue when the electric piece of that, depending on the person, tends to be 15% to 25% of a person's total energy bill is the electricity bill. So the trend is then to say, Well, they're regulated, so we can at least deal with that. Again, not to say you shouldn't do it, just to paint the picture of that sort of continually being painted into a corner of financial pressure that the utilities have seen. We're all making our way. We're all still swinging, you know, and we're still getting the job done. So this is not like, say, catastrophe's coming. It's just to try to level set and lay the paint here, if

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: you will. So now, turning oh, go ahead. Sure. Sorry. I I just wanna, you know, underscore something you just said because, you know, we we tend to get very focused in sometimes. And because we just it's it's always good to make connections. Right? And we had a we had a really interesting conversation yesterday about, you know, efforts that we've made to all to not, you know, to try to do more to to impact Vermonters energy burdens in the heating sector, in the thermal sector, which is an unregulated sector. And so I think it is helpful to be reminded that while New England in general has high electric rates compared to other regions of the state, Vermont has the lowest in New England. And then even within that context, electric only makes up, what did you say? That's where I was getting, about 15.

[Speaker 0]: The number that I always read online is 20, but I think it depends on your lived experience and how much fuel you use, how much you drive, and what type of heating source you have. So I always say 15 to 25, but I think it bands it reasonably well. Other experts may give you a more precise answer. I'm not planning to be an expert on that particular point.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. I just wanted to yeah. It was good to make connections across the across the bills that we're doing, Another I

[Speaker 0]: point I wanna make before I actually dive into the substance is, one of the comments that the last speaker talked about that I wanna just support and add a little bit of flavor to from your questioning is the calls that come from customers to the state. Not only is that a really good thing, you should be aware that at least we encourage that. It's a great way for us to learn. We think we understand all the rules that we are to abide by. But if a customer says, we're not sure you got this right, we actually encourage and help them get connected to the state because maybe we'll learn something, and maybe we aren't interpreting something quite right. So some of those calls are actually directed to the state by utilities. At least in our case, we do it frequently when a customer is is concerned that we're not quite getting it right. And we we see that as a really valuable thing. That's what I wanted to make sure you know. So from the at least from the so diving in, so to the pieces of this scale, let's yeah. Yeah. So I want I did wanna just where did I go here? Oh, I did wanna make sure you know that at least at Morrisville and the other utilities I'm working with, for us, it really is a truism that disconnect is the very last resort. Like, I want you to know, like, we work hard with customers, and I, you know, and I think we've been fairly good at that. Anyone that gets disconnected still is unhappy with us. Let's not mince words at that. You can find unhappy customers in our service territory and everyone. But we work hard in front because there are fees for disconnect and reconnect. So you're taking a person who's already having trouble and making it worse. And but if we have to send somebody to disconnect at 07:00 at night, we have a union contract that says how much we have to pay that person. So we are compelled to charge that because in rate making, there's this fairness doctrine of, you know, we're not supposed to promote subsidy. Each person's supposed to pay their way. So that's part of the reason we work so hard to avoid disconnects. And that means for us, we go above and beyond the rule in terms of how many calls we make. We of course put the door hangers out. And mostly, that creates a lot of good activity that results in payment plans or somebody getting on a year over year plan. And and that works a lot even in advance just from the door hanger. We then when we send our field test, and I don't know what other utilities do, to actually pull a meter. So we send out dozens of of door hangers, and most of them get resolved. And perhaps in this normal cycle, there's four or five potential disconnects. Typically, what happens is when our field tech gets in the to the person's house, the person wants to figure out how to avoid that, not surprisingly. Right? We actually encourage our field tech to work with them, actually get on the radio back with the office and talk back and forth. And most of the time, we either can get a partial payment and leave the meter in and with no fees, because we never pulled the meter, or we come up with a new plan to avoid it altogether, or we get full payment sometimes too. So that usually works. Mean, in the normal cycle, I don't think we would normally pull more than one or two meters actually pull them, and those are for a lot of different reasons. But again, we try not to. So I just want you to know that there is a lot of effort put into avoiding this, because they're our neighbors.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: What what do you can you define cycle or give us some detail each month?

[Speaker 0]: Monthly each monthly billing cycle is what I mean by that. So each month,

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: we may have So a year, you're only disconnecting 12.

[Speaker 0]: We're not we don't disconnect. I can't I I can't say with certainty, you know, there may be a cycle where we disconnect three or four. Sometimes that may have to do with a with a a landlord mix with a with a couple of tenants, and that gets more messy. So we can have times when it's more than that, but generally speaking, we resolve most of them. We may have one or two and we can resolve them.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: I'm curious, you're our first utility that we've gotten to talk to, so gonna get extra questions probably. That's okay. How do you report disconnection data to the department or the PNC? Or do I

[Speaker 0]: would have to ask my customer service person. I don't actually know the answer to that. We would give them whatever data they ask for. What I heard earlier is they only ask for the actual disconnects than when we actually get deploying the data. What I heard miss Woods say. Okay. I think that's what I heard her say. So if that's what they ask for, that's what we give them. If they ask for more than that, we track it and give it to them, know, for sure. Did

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: you say how you when you say partial payment, I'm always curious what that really looks like, like if someone can give you a 20.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, so what you try to do is get to a place where if it's a partial payment, then there's a payment plan with it. So if the bill is $140 and you can do $50 and we can come to an agreement that over the next three months that's gonna get caught up along with your other bills, then perhaps you say yes to that. Right? So Okay. You're trying to work with the person with where they are at that moment to avoid the extra cost and avoid the need to actually pull the meter and now potentially have other agencies that have that help and and all of those other things. So I I know everybody whether it's a regulator or folks doing policy, you'd like to have a very clear policy that this is exactly what we do, but most people's lived experience don't fit into that very well. We try to work with people where they are. Always very consistently, though, that our obligation is to get paid so that your neighbors aren't subsidizing there. So we at the end of the day, we can't step over that line as a utility. We don't do it.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: Rep Southworth?

[Speaker 0]: You may have mentioned this, I might have missed it. What percentage of disconnection notices actually end up in a disconnection? Pretty low, as I said, depending on the month and how big the bills are, know, we may have a dozen or a couple dozen notices that go out, and then we end up with a, you know, very small number, one, two, three, most months of actually that we pull a meter. And generally, they stay disconnected a very short period of time. Usually, when somebody gets disconnected by later that night, our call center gets a call saying that they have the cash and they want us to roll and turn it on. And then we end up having to tell them, like, if I send the guy, we gotta pay a minimum three hour call out. You wanna do that? Or are you okay tonight, this time of year? You know, obviously, we wouldn't be doing it this time of year. If it's chilly at all or hot at all, they usually say, yes. I'll take the fee. If it's not, they'll usually say, I'll be fine till the morning. Thank you very much. And I don't wanna pay the extra fee. So it kinda but ours are usually very short unless it's a case that includes some tampering with the system. We've had those where people have shorted across the meter and now put the meter on top of the pole. Those can tend to go a lot longer. So there are outliers that go very long. But we've had people that go plug into their neighbors outside outlet, and, you know, those tend to go wrong. And so and there are these are all very hard cases for people who are just trying to find a way through this. Alright. So getting to the pieces of the bill. So the first piece is the medical protection. You heard this morning already about the way that works. We line up with that as we understand our authority. Currently, it's up to three months a year and no more than two consecutive. If we can do that, we sign off on those notes often and frequently when they come. I don't I can't think of a time when we've said no, because we've always seen that as a valid thing in between all rich people's condition in such a small service territory. So we say yes to those. We actually think it's important that that monthly piece stay. The bills seem to be moving towards like one note could last for an extended period of time. And the reason we think it's important is that just regular checking in to get the next note, to make sure that when the condition that that ratepayer has resolves, that you don't end up in a situation where the person actually doesn't have a medical condition anymore, but they have the note, and so their neighbors are subsidizing them. So we think that that regular check-in from a doctor or any other medical professional on a monthly basis is important as an aspect. We've mostly found that that works for I can't think of a time when that that three months in a year didn't work for a customer. Perhaps it has, and maybe we've had a person actually ask for the appeal to the state. But as you heard, those generally by the PUC get approved. So from our perspective, that system seems to be working okay for people today.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: How do people know that they can do this?

[Speaker 0]: I can't tell you. I don't know if if doctor's offices tell them or the caps tell them or people seem to find their way to knowing. I I don't I don't know how people find out about that. We don't advertise it if that's part of the question. Then perhaps you should. But Just curious. Yeah.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Torre, I have a question for someone who's chronically ill and, like, on oxygen.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: K.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Do you work with them to make sure they have battery backup? Or how do you meet a need like that?

[Speaker 0]: So we definitely we don't as a small muni, I said last time that we're a bit behind the technology curve and catching up at Morrisville, and we're gonna get there soon. So we don't have battery programs like GMP and BC and some of the others. We're on the way to that. So we don't have those things to offer today. We do talk with customers about that those things exist, whether it's a generator or a battery. We also talk with them about making sure that if there was a prolonged outage, they have a plan of where they could go. And so we do try to talk through that with them when they have interest in that conversation, and often they do. And then, you know, when an outage occurs that's gonna last a long time, we frequently get calls from either the direct person that has a chronic illness or a family member, and we work with them through that process. Where's the wound center? Do they have a place that they can go? Do they need to go to the emergency room? We'll just pop them through their situation and try to give them the best information about how long the outage might last. As you know, particularly after long outages, the game of estimated time of of repairs is a perilous game to play indeed because you're gonna disappoint more people than you're gonna make happy in the real world. So we're fairly cautious about that part. Alright. So on the medical piece, again, we feel like that is, something we handle pretty well. Again, I can't speak for other utilities. We've not seen that as a challenging issue. On extreme heat, I would say that what you heard from miss Windham is also an accurate reflection for us. The department does put out alerts about extreme heat, and at least in our case, every time they do that, we cease disconnects for the period that they suggest. I would say that on occasion, we self implement that when they happen. When we've seen a heat event that maybe is more localized to the Mooresville area, where we see that it might be warmer for another day than they did, We're just waiting. And these cases, we're talking about one or two or four days of not pulling a meter. So us said, it's just no burden at all. And so we just do it. As a matter, we have a quick management team meeting. We look at what's coming, and we make a decision to do it. And we think that that works well. The worry I have about making that into some sort of regulatory decision making process is what typically happens, and this is not anti regulatory, it just is the realm of regulation, right? So when you have a regulatory proceeding, what's more likely to happen is we're gonna get a notice in something like mid June saying, it might be warm this summer, so we're gonna cease all disconnects on July 2. And then around Labor Day, they're gonna say, well, maybe by Columbus Day, it will stop being warm so you can start. And so we're gonna have a couple months on the shoulder seasons to actually try to collect funds. Will it play out just like that? Of course not. But it won't be as nimble as we're able to do by simply understanding data, and you have a department that's actively communicating to us when they see an issue. So I actually think it's working pretty well for folks. Should we think about extending it in a few more conditions here and there? Happy to have that conversation, but I'm not sure it requires regulation, I guess is my point.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: I think one of the responses I often have to that, and it's across a lot of the work we do, is that we often, you know, come at it from a point of wanting to basically put something in writing.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: That outlives us, you know, or that outlives, like, you know, benevolent leadership, you know, benevolent leadership. And so we do, you know, we do tend to think of trying to, even if it's a light touch, you know, get something into a regulatory framework so that three years down the road, none of us are here and leadership has changed or economic circumstances have changed and we hear from utilities or from companies that they're no longer able to be so friendly or they're no longer able to provide that one on one customer assistance. So we tend to try to look at work that's lasting and that isn't so reliant on like who's in charge here and what's going on this year now.

[Speaker 0]: So what hearing that, and it'll be a theme on the next item as well, what I might point you towards is a way to think about that, particularly with the light touch. Because I saw particularly on the on the reporting piece and intentionality at light touch. Well, even with this issue, a way to do that that is less burdensome and doesn't turn into hard regulation as quickly would be to require us to lay out our plans for such things in our integrated resource plan. We already do that across a wide spectrum of issues. There's already a 160 page plan. In our case, many more pages with all the appendices. And it basically lays out our plans for improvements to the transmission and distribution system. And like, everything you can imagine gets laid out in those things and a couple more paragraphs to lay out our approach to hot weather disconnect, or, frankly, some of the reporting that we'll talk about next. While it's a little more work, and particularly for the small munis, multi 100 page document feels onerous, technically, every three years, it fits a light touch much better, is what I would say to you for something like this than than ending up. The challenge that tends to happen is light light touch policy that gets sent to the regulatory process becomes hard and fixed and mandated, in my experience, no matter what you intended. So I think

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Well, we haven't gotten to the the SQRP. Yeah. Yeah. But isn't isn't that a light touch for a meeting?

[Speaker 0]: Actually, it's a light touch to provide the data, but it's it actually the metrics are very hard edged and can have fines with them if you don't meet them. Just for a meter? Yes. We are all subject think maybe I'm wrong, but I believe everything I ever read about says we're subject to to fines. It's another you know, basically, is what I was gonna talk about with the reporting piece. I don't object to at all to the notion of making sure this information is clear and available and that we have a plan to to do better with this, the definition of best effort, and I'm definitely reading this as best efforts, that will that will end up being very hard metrics that and with a constantly declining number. And the amount of disconnects are are partially within the control of the utilities, as you've heard me say, could be how much do you work at it. Right? And a whole lot not. Like, when when you hit a period of the year where people are using a whole lot of energy for a period of time, matter the rates, they're gonna have bigger bills, you're gonna have more people having a hard time paying. And some of them may may not feel like they're in a position to even enter a payment plan, and you can end up with more disconnects. And that's when you get back to the dialogue about, so how do you do those sort of things? I know the dialogue with the the used to be over the summer about, you know, the energy burden issues or proposals about a statewide pool of money that then isn't able to help address those issues. Perhaps it's a better solution. The point being, when you get to an SQRP with hard mandates, not everything about that disconnect process is within our control. A lot of it is, again, I'm not ever trying to run the other way from accountability. I'll take whatever I can actually do something about every time. So those are really my thoughts and comments on that. Hope it's clear that I share all the concerns, the passion, and empathy that this bill is putting forward. I think we we we try to bring that every day and the work we do with our customers. And so I get the origins of this. And at the end of the day, I feel like we have ways to address these things today. I mean, we are. I don't personally see a need for for legislation at this time. It's obviously your realm, not mine, but we will keep working hard with our customers no matter what, because at the end of the day, as immunity, they are us and we are them. There is no distinction. I have a quick question. So who makes the decision to do a disconnect? At what level does that happen? So that's done in our office through the customer service supervisor, and I end up hearing about them, but I don't have to approve them. But again, they're following all the expectations that have been set by myself and our controller and our electric superintendent. That's that's where we deal with it. Do you have any idea, any sense of how that operates in other utilities? I don't. Honestly, no. I think in some of the smaller communities that don't even have that level of staff, it probably is the manager directly. And then I would suspect in a big N and D like BEC or GMP, they've got Vermont standards, tiny by national standards. It probably is somewhere in the supervisory channel, though I don't know that. Yeah. So it's just worth knowing for you all, like, at least I'll I'll just tell you for, like, more small and hard way. So basically, the staffing is our five or six person line crew, a general manager, a controller, and three or four customer support people. And, like, that's the whole stack. And we're one of the bigger immunities. So when you go from that to, like, a Jacksonville, I think they have a manager and a bookkeeper, and that's what they have. Right? So yeah.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: So could you just walk us through so you have January bill, Yep. Then you you sent you have January consumption. The bill goes out at the end of the month. Yes. Per payment in February. Correct. When would the disconnect notice would that be in March?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. It would you have a certain period of time to pay that, and and Right. So, yeah, it would probably be another thirty days after that, I believe.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: And the nonpayments, are they big amounts?

[Speaker 0]: It depends. Depends on how much a person uses. So it could be as low as a $100,150 dollars, and it could be as much as 600 or $700. It depends on how the house particularly now, what's changing a lot is how houses are sometimes heated. Right. You know, while you're not paying the propane oil bill anymore, your electric bill might go from used to be 200 to used to be 600. Some of the people selling heat pumps don't tell people their electric bills are going go out, so they come in and are like, why did my electric bill go so much? And then we tell them that the customers have a heat pump, they go, yes. And they say, well, no one told me I was gonna have to pay more for electricity. It's still cheaper than the oil and propane, so it's not the policy issue. It's the sales issue. But but but the long way of saying, some people have very large electric bills now because they're heating with electricity. We're back to heating with electricity, getting their hot water from electricity, powering their car with electricity. They got rid of all those other bills, so it's still a great deal by twice. Right? But but it you can have people some pretty big bills pretty quick. Different than in the past.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Yeah. Just to that point, I think that was part of the rationale for Act 142. It was really understanding that we are in transition. And and when you have all of your energy burden in one bill, that's a big bill.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: So thinking about, you know, the payment plans and things becomes really important.

[Speaker 0]: Yep.

[Representative Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Because you don't get to spread that out over multiple suppliers. Right? That's right.

[Speaker 0]: That's right. I think the the the challenge that the riddle I'm trying to figure out personally, and so I won't speak for any other utility, and I mentioned this last time, is as that transition is happening, it's not happening across the board. We're still in the early adopter phase. And so as we start thinking about how we deal with things like costs related to anything, but here today disconnects. You know, you have folks that are actually anti all this technology because they they, you know, they grew up they're my age, and they grew up believing that a combustion fired engine is the key to my personal independence, which is not what young people today believe. They're not gonna give up that that that gas fired car no matter what. So, you know, in the process of that, as we're shifting and trying to figure this transition, you know, as rates go up to deal with the new cost basis for electrification, and as, you know, and and all of that's happening, for those people that are now displacing the bills for electric, for propane and oil, natural gas, and all that, and gas, they're kinda winning. But unless you're careful about it, the people that are just staying on the traditional electric, now they're just paying more for what they already did, and they still have all those other costs. So it's kind of a winner and loser thing. It's not to say we shouldn't do it. It's to say figuring out how the heck to feather through that transition from here to there for the consumer is a really big deal, and I have not been able to figure the riddle out. I'll just tell you that. When you do lose no. I'm sure you think about it all the time. I I obsess about that question, and I'm.

[Representative Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Or David? You do have I think it's a call. It was a working call. You you do take their overall you can take their customer's overall electric bill and do monthly.

[Speaker 0]: Yep. Some some do and some do not have that yet. Really small steps. Like, learned last night, the old Hyde Park does not have that at a customer meeting I was at. I had a customer of the combined $600 water and sewer bill and only traditional electric and having water and electric bill. The first thing I asked is, Can we get you on a year long payment to ease that out? And somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, We don't have that here. We don't have bigger staff. Was like, Okay, well that's something to work on. Right? So that's not uniform. Again, it gets back to that staff size, at least for the munis.

[Representative Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright. You. Great. Thank you so much for being here. We can go outside.