CT cuts $155 million in charges from electric bills. Here’s how much you could save

For more than one year, legislators and consumers have been complaining that electric bills are too high because “public benefits charges” have been added to their bills.

On Friday, the State Bond Commission removed some of the charges in less than five minutes.

In two votes with little discussion, the commission voted 10-0 to pay for the charges by borrowing $155 million instead of having consumers pay for the totals on their monthly bills. Now, taxpayers, rather than ratepayers, will pick up the tab.

While estimates have varied, officials said consumers would save $5 to $10 per month on their electric bills, depending on the amount of electricity they use.

Gov. Ned Lamont said multiple factors contribute to high electric bills, including increased usage from air conditioners running on a near-constant basis during the hot and humid month of July. The state, he said, needs an increased supply to bring down prices.

“We pay an awful lot for our electricity,” Lamont told reporters after the vote. “We bring in a lot from out of state. … These are short-term solutions to give you some immediate relief, and I’m glad people got relief. But longer term, we’ve got to do everything we can to reduce demand and increase supply.”

Republicans have been complaining about the public benefits charges, which showed up on bills at a higher rate in July 2024 — at exactly the time that bills spiked from heavy use of air conditioning. That spilled over into the fall political season. House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford said that electric prices became the top political issue of the November 2024 elections. Republicans, however, did not gain any seats in the legislature and instead lost seats to give Democrats the current majorities of 25-11 in the Senate and 102-49 in the state House of Representatives.

State Rep. Joe Polletta of Watertown and Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich — two Republicans on the 10-member bond commission — both voted Friday in favor of selling bonds to cover the charges. They had both favored Senate Bill 4, a much-debated measure in the legislature that called for the switch to bonding. Lawmakers, though, want more relief.

“It doesn’t go far enough,” Polletta told reporters. “It was a good first start. I credit both sides of the aisle for negotiating the bill. But Republicans have been calling for reducing that public benefits charge even further.”

Ratepayers, he said, should only be paying for electricity and not other charges.

“In the same way, when you go to renew your car, and you get your car registration, you’re paying to use the parks,” Polletta said, referring to the Passport to the Parks fee that was created under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in 2017. “Why? It’s a hidden tax. It shouldn’t be on there.”

Fazio, who is considering running for governor, and Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield said in a joint statement that more needs to be done.

“While it may sound like relief, the reality is this simply shifts a fraction of the $1 billion per year burden from ratepayers to taxpayers,” the senators said. “Senate Republicans have put forward real, lasting solutions to address Connecticut’s electric rate and affordability crisis, including the full elimination of the public benefits charge. With the third highest electric rates in the nation, residents deserve more than a temporary fix. They deserve true affordability and long-term economic opportunity.”

Fazio said earlier this year that Connecticut is not in good company on electric rates. Connecticut ranks third, he said, behind only “Hawaii, which is an island, and California, which has lost its mind.”

The commission voted to borrow $125 million to pay electric utilities for hardship protection programs for customers who could not pay their bills during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond. The second vote was to borrow $30 million to pay utilities to “finance incentives for electric vehicle supply equipment, managed charging incentives, and related administrative costs” that had been paid by the ratepayers, according to the governor’s budget office.

“To suggest that residents could pay other people’s electric bills isn’t fair to those individuals,” said House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford. “If we want to do these kind of social programs and environmental programs, they should be funded through the general fund and not being hidden in people’s electric bills. … The legislature should be voting on these programs.”

State legislators and Lamont’s administration, through policy chief Jonny Dach, participated in multiple meetings at the state Capitol to craft the detailed package in Senate Bill 4. The 134-page bill passed by 34-1 in the state Senate and 144-3 in the House.

“Hey, look, we got a bipartisan energy bill done,” Lamont said Friday. “I know how upset everybody is with electric rates. We didn’t make a big difference, but we made a difference. You will see that reflected in your bills. At least by reduced rates. I can’t promise what your bill is going to do. It depends what you do with your air conditioner.”

He added, “I think we’re making progress. We listened to the ratepayers. I heard them loud and clear. … The cost of generation, the cost of the power that we’re bringing in, that’s what we’ve got to fix over the long term. That means more generation starting with, I think, nuclear power. Generation prices actually have gone down in this cycle. But that’s not a long-term trend that I can count on, though.”

Next year, the commission might bond another $155 million in an effort to continue reducing the public benefits charge, Lamont said.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com 

Originally Published: August 1, 2025 at 12:16 PM EDT