Utahn wants Utah Power to cease its 'social work'

He says he has been called a right-wing radical, Scrooge and heartless, but Paul Mecham is convinced he is right.

This week Mecham, a West Valley resident, urged the state Public Service Commission to reconsider an order that offers assistance to low-income Utah Power customers who need help paying their electricity bills.

Simply put, Mecham believes the program amounts to an unlawful tax that does little to help the people it is targeted to serve. He's been fighting the program since 2000, the year it was started.

"The commission's authority is spelled out very specifically," Mecham said. "It does not include social work. Their actions are contrary to the Utah code."

In November, the commission approved the continuation of the Home Electric Lifeline Program, or HELP.

The program assists low-income customers who earn 125 percent or less of the federal poverty level by providing them an $8 monthly credit on their power bills. The tab is picked up by Utah Power's 722,000 customers under a monthly line-item charge. Residential customers pay 12 cents a month to fund the program, an amount recently reduced to 10 cents a month.

"As the ultimate result of the commission's actions, (Utah Power parent company) PacifiCorp's ratepayers who do not qualify for HELP have paid nearly $2 million per year to support a program they have not authorized and likely do not even know about," Mecham said. "It's not through the taxing process, through the Legislature, as it should have been."

Mecham points to a Utah statute that prohibits a public utility from charging an account holder for services the account holder never ordered or knowingly authorized.

"However laudable the purpose for HELP," Mecham said, "the program was designed and approved outside the scope of the commission's authority. . . . The funding for HELP violates Utah's third-party billing law and must be terminated."

Ric Campbell, Public Service Commission chairman, dismisses Mecham's arguments. In November, the commission also rejected a proposal by groups like Salt Lake Community Action Program, a nonprofit agency that works to help low-income families, and the Utah Committee of Consumer Services to increase the subsidy to $11.25 per month.