Wilson Building Bulletin: Pepco and politics

High electricity bills have become a marquee issue in D.C. politics, with elected officials and candidates for office – often one and the same – promising to do anything in their power to bring down Pepco’s prices. Nowhere was that more evident this week than in the D.C. Council, where lawmakers passed an emergency bill that prohibits Pepco from cutting off service to homes and businesses with overdue bills for at least the next three months. 

It’s the council’s first legislative attempt to address recent high electricity bills and their consequences, though it likely won’t be the last. 

The bill was introduced by Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is, as you know, also running for mayor. She drew up the bill after the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled last month that the D.C. Public Service Commission, which regulates the city’s utilities, hadn’t followed the proper process when it approved Pepco’s two-year $123 million rate hike back in late 2024. The fate of that rate hike is now in question, as the PSC will re-do parts of the rate-increase request process starting in May. 

In the meantime, argued Lewis George, it would be unfair to cut off electric service while there is uncertainty about if those higher bills might be reversed. “For some people this is a strain on their finances, but for many it’s a breaking point,” she said, adding that her bill was a “narrow step” to address the current problem. 

But not all of her colleagues agreed. Some expressed skittishness over seeming to do away with consequences for people who don’t pay their bills, arguing that the council should instead be pushing people to set up payment plans with Pepco – at which point the utility wouldn’t cut off electric service. They compared eliminating the threat of service disconnection to when the council made evictions harder during the pandemic, a well-intended step that many now argue incentivized some tenants to stop paying their rent altogether.

Critics of Lewis George’s bill also said that it would benefit people whose outstanding bills have nothing to do with the recent spike in electricity prices, and that ultimately the cost of unpaid bills would be absorbed by other ratepayers. “The costs are passed on to all other customers through increased prices,” wrote Mayor Muriel Bowser in a letter to the council. “This emergency legislation will not solve the problem; it will just shift the costs to other paying customers.”

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen ultimately struck a balance: the prohibition on electric service disconnection would only apply to residents or businesses who owe Pepco $1,000 or less. And that’s not a small number of ratepayers: According to Pepco, some 145,000 customers in D.C. are behind on their bills, with more than two thirds of them owing $600 or less. 

Lewis George’s bill cleared the council, though it remains to be seen whether Bowser opts to veto it. But this certainly won’t be the last legislative attempt to deal with the city’s high electric bills. 

At-Large Councilmember Robert White has said that he’s drafting an emergency bill to require Pepco to issue refunds to ratepayers for the higher bills they paid under the now-contested rate increase. And just last week, a council committee held a six-hour hearing on several bills that would address utility costs. One would require that D.C. automatically enroll eligible residents in available discount programs (only 20% are currently enrolled), while another would prohibit electric and gas service disconnections during the summer and winter months. 

Bowser entered the fray this week herself, arguing that there’s only so much D.C. can do to bring down electric bills. But if lawmakers are so inclined, she said they should review policies and initiatives – like those related to promoting renewable energy sources – that add to the cost of every bill in the form of surcharges. According to the PSC, roughly 7% of every bill comes in the form of surcharges and taxes.

“The serious conversation that needs to happen is by our own policies those bills are going to keep going up and up, and it doesn’t have only to do with what the power company does,” she said.

Almost a year on, the fight over the youth curfew in D.C. continues 

It was around this time last year that Bowser warned of what she said was a troubling new trend: large-scale teen takeovers of D.C. neighborhoods organized over social media. At her request the council acted, passing an emergency bill that gives D.C. police the power to declare special zones where no one under the age of 18 is allowed to gather after 8 p.m. (The normal youth curfew kicks in at 11 p.m.) Late last year, lawmakers extended the curfew zones through the winter and into the early spring; curfew zones have been recently declared in Navy Yard, U Street, Gallery Place, and the Southwest Waterfront. 

But it seems that the council has now had enough. This week, lawmakers postponed a planned vote on a bill that would have extended the city’s authority to use the curfew zones through the summer months. That authority will lapse on April 15, and while the council could again return to the issue at its next meeting, it’s unclear whether Bowser will be able to swing enough votes to revive the curfew zones. 

Critics say that curfews don’t address the underlying reasons that kids may be gathering in large groups; if D.C. were serious about dealing with teens, the city would simply provide more alternative activities for them. But supporters like Bowser say that D.C. already offers plenty of things for kids to do, and that they are a useful tool for police to disperse groups of kids before any of them can get into trouble. (At one teen takeover of Navy Yard last month a gun was discharged and there were multiple fights and robberies reported.) 

“The juvenile curfew has been described by some as a Band-Aid approach to preventing criminal and unsafe behavior by youth,” Bowser wrote the council ahead of its vote this week. “While I do not necessarily agree with that description, it makes no sense to remove a Band-Aid from an active wound.”

Speaking after the vote, though, Bowser was far less reserved. She called the council “soft on crime,” accused lawmakers of “listening to a very narrow interest group” of curfew opponents, and was being “influenced by the election calendar and not on what we need on the street.”

The issue is likely to feed into the ongoing mayoral race. Lewis George, for one, has been one of the council’s most consistent critics of the curfew zones. The United D.C. Research Council, a dark-money group opposed to her candidacy, recently unveiled a new digital ad slamming her for her opposition to the curfew zones. Her opponent, Kenyan McDuffie, says he supports extending the curfew zones over the summer while also pushing the city to invest more money in violence interruption, workforce development, and behavioral services. 

But there’s also attention coming from the federal government. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro took to Fox News to make the case for the curfew and why her office should be given more authority to prosecute minors in D.C. (Under current law she can only go after 16- and 17-year-olds for a small number of serious offenses.) 

“The D.C. Council that is responsible for teen crime based on the inept laws that they have passed has said we’re going to postpone any decision and we’re going to let the discretionary curfew run out, and they’re doing this while the schools are on spring break,” she said. “They are asking for a problem.”

In the meantime, Bowser still has options. She could declare a public emergency and extend the curfew zones for another 15 days after the current law lapses in mid-April. Anything longer than that, though, will take council approval. And that discussion is likely to happen: Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who has supported the curfew zones, says she will bring the bill back up on April 21.

The council overrides Bowser’s veto

It wasn’t a particularly good week for Bowser’s priorities in the council. In addition to the issues over her curfew extension, lawmakers also unanimously voted to override her veto of a bill that would require D.C. police officers to record the names of federal agents at arrest scenes. 

The bill, which was written by At-Large Councilmember Robert White, is meant to be one tool to pry more information out of the D.C. and federal governments around what federal agents are doing as they patrol the city with local officers. It’s a companion to a separate measure from Pinto that requires MPD to release body-camera footage from its officers when they are on patrol with federal agents who fire their weapons or use serious force. Bowser signed that bill into law.

Now that her veto has been overriden, Bowser has to implement the bill. What that looks like remains to be seen, though – she'll have to direct officers how exactly to collect the required information, which federal agents won't be forced to share. And since both Pinto and White's bills were approved on an emergency basis, that means they'll remain in effect for 90 days until further action is taken.