Michigan reps to grill utility company CEOs after ice storm outages

Rep. Donavan McKinney is heated about just how long some constituents in his Detroit district have been left in the cold following February’s massive ice storm.

In an interview Tuesday, some of them still couldn’t turn on the lights.

“I have folks in my district who have gone 12 consecutive days without power. I have other folks in my district who lost power for maybe four or five, six days,” the Democrat told MLive. “Their power was restored just to lose it again.”

For them, McKinney said, the outages cost two full refrigerators of spoiled food. Some of his constituents had to travel to Ohio to find a warm place to sleep after local hotels filled up.

Senior officials of DTE and Consumers Energy – Michigan’s largest utility companies – will testify to the House Energy Committee on Wednesday, March 15. Chairing Rep. Helena Scott, D-Detroit, said she experienced intermittent outages throughout the storms.

“We’re going to bring them in to have them explain exactly why so many ­outages, why so long, and moving forward what will be their plan to help reduce outages,” Scott told MLive.

Related: Utilities built major influence in Michigan politics. Could ice storm outages erode it?

McKinney is one of a number of progressive legislators calling on utilities to pay more to compensate customers after lengthy outages during the ice storm. Scott agreed that DTE’s plan to credit $35 to people who had no electricity for at least four days isn’t enough.

“A lot of people feel that that simply isn’t enough, and I happen to agree,” Scott said. “People have lost a lot of pertinent things, mothers have lost breast milk, people who have been out of power for almost two weeks – some the whole time, some in some out.”

DTE’s president and COO Trevor Lauer and two vice presidents from Consumers will take questions from the 17-member committee, and members of the public will also be able to attend and speak. It’s the only hearing planned for now, Scott said, but that could change.

Related: Utility regulators plan town halls on Michigan’s ice storm power outages

“We’ll see how this goes. We may have them come back, depending on if they’ve answered all the questions,” she said. “And if not, then we’ll definitely have to have both DTE and Consumers back.”

On Tuesday, a normally mundane budgetary subcommittee meeting with the Michigan Public Service Commission — the body that regulates utilities — became an open venting session as lawmakers telegraphed their displeasure.

Dan Scripps, the commission’s chair, made no excuses for utilities as he bore the brunt of the complaints. Scripps said he shares a lot of the frustration residents feel.

In terms of what actions utilities can take to better improve grid reliability, “I think everything needs to be on the table,” Scripps said. That includes the “strategic” burying of some electrical lines underground.

Related: Ice storms reorder Michigan Democrats’ energy and climate agenda

Rep. Ranjeev Puri, the House Majoirty Whip, said “it’s a little preliminary to understand which approach we’ll be taking” to address the widespread power outages but there’s “a tremendous among of interest” among Democrats to find solutions.

“I myself lost power, and so I suffered firsthand,” said Puri, a Canton Democrat. “I have small kids; we did throw away baby food and medicine. And so, I completely empathize with how difficult this situation is.”

Some lawmakers on the left however, McKinney among them, want to empower the public service commission to have more authority over utilities.

“I know they’ve been taking a conservative approach historically, because they don’t want to ruffle any feathers or get sued,“ McKinney said, “but we have to put some some actual teeth in terms of how they operate.”

This story and headline have been corrected to accurately state the positions of the utility leaders who will appear before lawmakers. They are senior officials.

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