Earlier I posted about a press conference held by state Senate Democratic leaders and their energy committee chairman on ideas for improving how utilities respond to major storms.
I noted that curiously absent from the event were Democrats from the House of Representatives, even though supposedly everyone agrees on the legislative remedies needed to prevent the long-term outages suffered in August and October.
Doesn’t mean anything, I was told by the Senate Democrats. We’re all one big happy family of Democrats here in the legislature, focused on keeping the power flowing to ratepayers.
But Rep. Vickie Nardello, D-Prospect, an energy committee chair, said she was not made aware of today’s proposal by her co-chair, Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford or by Senate leaders. Nor, she said, was she asked to attend the press conference.
“I haven’t actually seen the proposal until this afternoon … I’m not commenting on it because I haven’t had the full ability to read through it,” Nardello said. “We may be totally on board with the proposals that came out of the Senate, but I can’t answer that without having looked at them carefully. The best process is to have a joint press conference.”
The energy committee has notoriously been run by folks who don’t agree on policy.
All eyes will be on Nardello and Fonfara this session to see what storm response reforms they’re able to pass before the General Assembly adjourns May 9.
So far they’re not off to a promising start.