Is PURA’s Gillett Becoming Hillary Clinton?

Moody’s Ratings has, once again, downgraded its credit outlook for CL&P, Connecticut’s largest electric utility, according to the Hartford Courant.

And Moody’s Vice President and Senior Ratings Officer Jeff Cassella pulled no punches in pinning the tail on the donkey.

Cassella explained in blood-soaked prose exactly why Moody’s had lowered CL&P’s rating from 3A to Baa1: “The downgrade of The Connecticut Light and Power … primarily reflects a Connecticut regulatory jurisdiction that is currently the least credit supportive utility regulatory environment in the U.S. This environment has been characterized by higher political scrutiny as well as inconsistent regulatory decisions and rate case outcomes … Given the challenging Connecticut regulatory environment, it is uncertain whether CL&P will be able to consistently maintain strong financial metrics going forward.”

Downgrades increase business costs because banks consider ratings when companies borrow money to pay off debt and finance continuing business operations.

“Both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings downgraded both gas company ratings in December, the Courant noted. “Before that, S&P downgraded Eversource and its subsidiaries. Earlier this year Bank of America advised investors that Connecticut has ‘probably the ‘worst regulatory environment in the U.S.,’” thanks in large part to Connecticut’s energy regulation czar, Marissa Gillett, the head of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA).

“The downgrade,” the Courant notes, “is likely to escalate what already has become a long, angry and increasingly political fight over how the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority enforces regulatory law and policy.”

But the problem for Gillett and her supporters, including Governor Ned Lamont, is that the theatre of action has moved from the political to the judicial arena. Suits are pending, and judicial matters, so we are told, are conducted in the rarified arena of courts uninfluenced by partisan political battles that, supposedly, carry little weight. An earlier supposition that rating agencies were colluding with energy distributors to secure unchallenged price increases was dismissed with a sardonic chuckle by grownups in the political arena who know how such things really work.

Moody’s decision to lower borrowing and financing rates – again – became public, the Courant notes, “as Eversource and Avangrid were in Superior Court in Hartford, pressing a lawsuit that accuses PURA of bias and of operating in a fashion that has allowed Gillett to conceal the fact that she is making decisions unilaterally — and illegally — by freezing fellow commissions out of the rate setting process… Hartford Attorney Thomas J. Murphy, arguing for both utilities, asked Superior Court Judge Kaitlin A. Halloran to give the utilities access to PURA records and the opportunity to question authority officials on subjects that could support the utility claims. Assistant Attorney General James Caley, defending PURA, argued against disclosure, saying the suit should be dismissed.”

The state’s quasi political Attorney General Office is obligated by statute to defend the governor and executive department state agencies in legal actions. Owing to PURA’s mishaps, the lawsuit likely will not be dismissed. Doing so will open judge Halloran to ugly charges of partisanship and the politicization of judicial matters. The hiding or destruction at trial of evidence necessary in determining a just verdict on the merits of a case is destructive to judicial order – a very serious business for most people who are not the audacious former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose destruction of computer evidence during a hearing by a combination of Bleach Bit and a hammer is still fresh in the minds of judges and non-partisan reporters. The hammering and bleaching, PolitiFact, tells us, was the work of Clinton aides.

Most recently Superior Court Judge Mathew Budzik ordered Gillett to submit to questioning under oath by utility lawyers “days after she acknowledged deleting – she says inadvertently – a controversial text message exchange that could help explain who was behind an unusual news opinion column vilifying the utility industry,” according to a Courant report. The utilities have alleged for months that Gillett has bypassed the PURA board and made unilateral decisions that affect its assets.

Gillett claims that the documentation Budzik ordered released to the plaintiffs had been deleted when she purchased a new phone that was set to delete messages automatically after 30 days.

Budzik’s order reads: “Within 15 days 0f the date of this order, the plaintiffs may depose [PURA] Chairperson Gillett and Chief of Staff Govert concerning the circumstances surrounding the deletion of any documents responsive to the court’s original discovery order set forth in the April 16^th decision, any actions taken to recover any potentially responsive documents, and the circumstances surrounding any review, editing or commenting upon the December 19^th op-ed by Chairperson Gillett and/or Chief pf Staff Govert.”

The judge, it would appear, does not react indifferently to the unfulfilled orders his court had issued months earlier. And his stern order suggests that the resulting PURA smoke conceals a fire in the defense’s claims that Gillett has shown no bias against the utilities she has punished with unilateral adverse decisions.

Lamont, who appears to be stuck with Gillett in a perhaps fatal political embrace, can no longer plausibly claim to be surprised at the suit brought by the plaintiffs.

“Everyone is getting mad at the umpires. Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing suit,” Lamont told reporters way back in February. “It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a better job of working together.”