Sen. Paul Bettencourt said Houston residents are fed up with energy companies.
DALLAS — Outrage over CenterPoint’s botched response to Hurricane Beryl shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
A 13-member senator task force formed in the wake of the storm and subsequent blackouts recently convened and bluntly stated that consumer trust had been destroyed.
“We’re going to have to repeat a lot of the stupidity here before we can regain the public’s trust,” Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston told Inside Texas Politics. “And what really happened here is we took a hurricane-grade storm and turned it into a crisis, a really big crisis. And it was preventable. And that’s what frustrates me more than anything.”
Sen. Bettencourt and other members of the committee specifically targeted several large generators that CenterPoint purchased after Winter Storm Uri.
These generators, with enough power to power entire neighborhoods, were left unused in the aftermath of Beryl, leaving more than 2 million customers without power for several days.
Adding to the anger, the generators cost as much as $800 million, and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which regulates state utilities, allowed CenterPoint to raise rates not only to cover the cost of the generators but also to make a profit that lawmakers say could be as much as $30 million.
Senator Bettencourt even suggested that the generator contracts could be fraudulent.
And if the PUC reverses its decision and doesn’t force CenterPoint to pay for the generators out of its profits, Bettencourt said lawmakers are prepared to introduce legislation to get that money back.
The Houston Republican, who lost power himself, said he’s willing to discuss CenterPoint returning money to ratepayers.
“I hope so, because all we can do is point out the stupidity of this and say we shouldn’t have done this. We can’t use this stuff. It’s an anchor for the ship that’s around the taxpayers. So give us some of the money,” the senator said.
Sen. Bettencourt also said that conditions on the ground had become so bad and trust so eroded that some Woodlands residents testified they wanted to be able to leave CenterPoint and switch to another provider. And the Republican said he could consider legislation to allow that to happen.
“People here are experiencing it,” he said.
Senators say some concrete action items could come out of hearings being held by the Senate Select Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery, and Power.
And he says many of the solutions will mirror steps Florida has taken in recent years to harden its coastline against hurricanes and power outages.
This could include top-down legislation requiring the removal of vegetation, the installation of composite utility poles that can withstand winds of up to 150 mph, and the burying of power lines underground whenever possible.
Senator Bettencourt said he has heard from many constituents who question how Houston can fulfill its future role as the “energy capital of the world” when the electricity won’t even turn on after a Category 1 storm.
“We intend to keep up the pressure on CenterPoint until we get full answers,” he said bluntly.
