By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle
Three Republican Oregon lawmakers want to stop utility companies from raising rates on customers while those companies are still resolving years-long lawsuits over wildfire culpability and costs.
Reps. Jami Cate of Lebanon, Virgle Osborne of Roseburg and Ed Diehl of Stayton announced their proposal in a news release in late December, just days after the federal government said it was suing PacifiCorp, the parent company of Pacific Power, over unpaid costs related to the 2020 Archie Creek fire near Roseburg, making it one of thousands of plaintiffs suing the company since 2020.
The lawmakers will propose their ban on rate hikes for such utilities in the legislative session which starts Jan. 21.
The same day the federal lawsuit was announced, the three-member Oregon Public Utilities Commission voted to approve Pacific Power’s request to raise residential electricity rates by nearly 10 percent in 2025. It is the state’s second largest investor-owned electric utility and serves about 574,000 customers.
“It is now Oregon’s turn to put pressure on Pacific Power to finally own up to their liabilities and stop the practice of rubber stamping historic rate hikes, finally ceasing the continued financial hardship of our wildfire victims,” Cate, who will sponsor the bill in the upcoming session, said in the release. “Inaction should not be our status quo when holding utility providers accountable.”
The Oregon Public Utilities Commission has approved rate hikes nearly every year for the past four years, and today Pacific Power customers pay 50 percent more for electricity than they did in 2021. That increase is more than twice the rate of inflation since then.
The company has sought rate hikes for several reasons, including rising inflation, building infrastructure for clean energy generation, and storage and higher insurance costs due to wildfires and wildfire recovery costs. The commission allowed Pacific Power to raise rates most recently, in part, to cover $25 million worth of restoration work following the 2020 Labor Day fires.
Simon Gutierrez, a company spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that the company is working with the federal government to resolve the claims.
“It is unfortunate the U.S. government decided to file a lawsuit in federal district court, however PacifiCorp will continue to work with the U.S. government to find reasonable resolution of this matter,” Gutierrez wrote.
PacifiCorp found liable
A jury found PacifiCorp liable for several of the 2020 Labor Day megafires that burned a total of nearly 850,000 acres of forests, killed 11 and destroyed more than 4,000 homes, including the Echo Mountain fire in the Lincoln County community of Otis.
The smallest of the Labor Day fires, Archie Creek, burned southeast of Roseburg and scorched more than 130,000 acres, and half was federal land. The U.S. Attorney General’s Office is seeking reimbursement for costs related to the Archie Creek Fire and the nearby Susan Creek Fire, totaling up to $625 million, according to a Berkshire Hathaway annual report.
PacifiCorp sent about the same amount annually to Berkshire shareholders in earnings prior to the 2020 Labor Day fires, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show.
PacifiCorp is a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate. The utility is worth $10.7 billion, according to its attorneys, while the Oregon Department of Revenue and Oregon Tax Court calculate its worth more than $19 billion.
PacifiCorp has spent nearly $2.7 billion on wildfire lawsuits since 2020, according to a recent report submitted to the federal commission, including about $550 million to 463 plaintiffs and 10 timber companies that suffered damages from the Archie Creek Fire. Thousands more victims in Oregon have filed suit against the company and are still awaiting trial to determine damages. Many have been in limbo for years.
“It’s hard to keep having fire victims reach out, just desperate, feeling like Pacific Power is just taking every opportunity to drag out court cases, waiting for victims to die off,” Cate told the Capital Chronicle. “All the while Pacific Power has sent huge dividends to their shareholders, and victims feel like they’re getting screwed and Oregonians feel like they’re getting screwed as power rates keep climbing.”
- Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy.
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