MN Utility May Be Fined $5 Million

Minnesota's attorney general is recommending that CenterPoint Energy be fined $5 million because it deliberately ignored state law by cutting off customers with unpaid natural gas bills last fall.

Attorney General Mike Hatch said CenterPoint, a Texas-based company that has 760,000 customers in Minnesota, failed to tell customers about their rights to negotiate a payment plan so they could keep their homes heated and took some clients' LIHEAP benefits without reconnecting their service or reconnecting it only weeks or months later.

Hatch alleged that CenterPoint caused an unknown amount of harm to some of Minnesota's poorest residents. Some had pipes break; others lost water heaters and even toilets when they were unable to heat their homes. At least one customer allegedly lost a business and one allegedly lost her home.

This customer had lost her job because of a disability and had fallen $500 behind on her gas bill. CenterPoint shut off her service in August. Three months later, the state's LIHEAP paid $548 to CenterPoint to cover her bill, but the company continued to demand payment and refused to reconnect her service. As a result, her trailer froze so solidly that the sewer line cracked and her home is uninhabitable.

Minnesota has a Cold Weather Rule that says that people below a certain income level cannot be cut off for nonpayment until after April 15 if they agree to a payment plan with their utility. By mid-December of 2004, when nighttime temperatures began dropping below zero, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) discovered that more than 1,000 of those customers were without gas service and ordered Hatch to investigate. It is up to the PUC to decide whether and by what amount CenterPoint should be fined.

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune; St. Paul Pioneer Press

Page Last Updated: December 7, 2005