THE BARRAS REPORT: Turning Out the Lights, Operating In The Dark

UTILITY costs were used as a cudgel against certain candidates in the June Democratic Primary, especially former at-large DC Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who ran against mayoral candidate and democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George. She and her supporters, including Sierra Club DC, blamed McDuffie for the rising cost of electricity and other utilities, suggesting that he was somehow a tool of the industry and had not provided proper oversight of the DC Public Service Commission (PSC), which regulates rates in the nation’s capital.

Interestingly, since McDuffie’s defeat in the primary, mum has been the word. Except for a program making it easier for low-income residents to receive energy assistance, no one has even mentioned utility rates--until this week.

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, chair of the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, has quietly scheduled for Wednesday Nov.4 a vote on Guiding Renewable Interconnection and Distribution (GRID) Amendment Act of 2026. He released the final legislation to his committee members on Monday, during the final hours of the general election. There also was little citywide notice to the general public, except perhaps to Allen’s friends at the Sierra Club DC.

During the primary, the Sierra Club DC endorsed Allen, Lewis George and Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker-- all members of the Committee on Transportation and the Environment.

The Sierra Club also supported at-large member Elissa Silverman during the special at-large election held in June.  Silverman is a member of the transportation and environment committee.

Is The GRID ACT payback to the Sierra Club for its support? Who knows? But as the saying goes,  if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

“Allen owes the Sierra club and labor unions who helped him and Janeese tremendously,” said one long time political operative who is knowledgeable about the behind-the-scenes machinations related to development of the legislation.

A government source said that “in exchange for the Sierra Club support, Lewis George promised to get rid of Emile C. Thompson, then-chair of the Public Service Commission and Ted Trabue, also a commission member.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser had sought to reappoint them. However, Allen refused to schedule a public hearing. He reportedly told Thompson and Trabue that he would introduce emergency legislation extending their existing appointments until March 2027. That timing meant Lewis George, assuming she would become mayor, would have the opportunity to nominate new members--keeping her promise to the Sierra Club.

Thompson resigned his post in August 2026. Trabue is now interim chair of the PSC; it’s unclear how long he will remain at the commission.

“Environmentalists and solar advocates have long wanted control of the PSC,” said another government insider who recalled when then-Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh sought to snatch the PSC from the oversight of McDuffie’s Committee on Business and Economic Development. “They want to make this their policy playground.”

Call The GRID Act a version of a hostile government takeover.

I reached out via email to the Sierra Club DC for a comment about its relationship with Lewis George, Allen and the legislative proposal. No one from the organization responded.

If passed as written, The GRID Act would further cripple the Public Service Commission, burdening it with unnecessary administrative functions and excessive costs while also preventing Pepco and Washington Gas from offering an adequate rate of return to its investors, which is important to enhancing the companies’ ability to deliver low-cost, high-quality energy using modern methods. The bill would also kick Pepco out of the solar business, leaving the work to smaller less experienced companies without requiring that they be certified by the city’s Department of Small and Local Businesses.

As a result of those changes alone, Allen’s committee, in my opinion, appears to be laying the foundation for higher energy costs that almost certainly will hit the wallets of DC residents. 

People I spoke with, including elected officials like council Chair Phil Mendelson, knowledgeable experts and executives at Pepco highlight various problems with the proposed legislation. Most appalling, I think, is the fact that Allen is attempting to jam through the legislation when the PSC does not have a full complement of members and the overall DC government is essentially in transition.

Opposition is building around the city against the legislation, The DC Chamber sent out a notice on Tuesday urging people to get in touch with key councilmembers and ask them to vote against the bill. Labor unions representing Pepco employees have also expressed concerns about the potential loss of jobs at the utility company.

The GRID Act is a composite of other legislation, including a proposal by Lewis George and one introduced by Allen with the same name. In combination, the proposal is vastly different from the original bills.  The changes are significant and should require an additional public hearing, permitting residents and experts to comment.

Brandon Todd, a former Ward 4 councilmember who is now vice president of government affairs and public policy at Washington Gas Light Company sent a letter dated Nov. 2 to Mendelson and other legislators, offered that they had urgent concerns and urged rejection of the GRID Act. "Originally a 14-page solar interconnections bill now a 40-page omnibus utility with far-reaching unstudied provisions not previously considered by the council."

“I am sympathetic to the utility companies concerns about rates of return for investors,” Mendelson told me during an interview over the weekend. “I talked with Charles and he said there were changes to the bill that the utility companies were not aware of.”

Is there any wonder why DC has a reputation for being anti-business?

Unsurprisingly, the legislation sidesteps major challenges at the heart of the District government and Pepco’s inability to reduce the cost of utilities: the proliferation of data centers that consume huge amounts of electricity and the absence of a plant in the city or elsewhere that could help generate electricity for DC residents.

“A single data center consumes as much electricity as 20,000 homes,” an industry expert explained to me. In Loudon County, VA., for example, there are 250 such centers. “They eat up 30% of Dominion’s output of energy.”

Obviously, that system could be disrupted by severely reducing the growth of data centers. The other way to aid Pepco and its customers would be to permit the construction of an energy-generating facility. There was a time when it had two in DC and four in other jurisdictions.

Currently, a local law prohibits Pepco from building such a facility. Therefore, the company is forced to purchase electricity on the open market--which isn’t cheap. It then delivers that to its customers.

Essentially, the PSC is regulating a delivery service. It is not regulating generation. It is also not regulating transmission. I recently heard one official make a comparison of the role played by Washington Gas and Pepco to that of Door Dash. The price is set by the retailer--not the delivery company.

Pepco and others have been advocating for a change in legislation. Even if it ultimately generates only a small amount of electricity that could help reduce the overall costs for its ratepayers.

Nothing in the GRID Act addresses that underlying issue. Maybe Allen and crew aren’t interested in long term solutions. Maybe they want to help out their friends.

I sent emails to Allen, Lewis George, Parker, Silverman, requesting an interview or a statement from each elected official by Monday morning.

Allen’s spokesperson wrote that they couldn’t meet my deadline. He said they “haven’t been talking about specifics of the bill in the media quite yet as it is [not] finalized.” But he promised to “be sure you are on all press releases around the legislation as we get there and will be happy to answer questions as we can.”

No press release went out on Monday afternoon when the latest version of the bill was released.

Parker’s spokesperson also said he could not meet my deadline.

Silverman did not reply to my request.

At-large member Christina Henderson responded to my email late Sunday evening. “The T&E Committee has yet to circulate a copy of the Committee Print.

“I’ve spoken with one of the utility companies about their concerns re: a draft they have, but I haven’t actually seen what we will be voting on this Wednesday,”  Henderson wrote in her email to me, noting the bill was expected to be circulated on Monday.

“As you can imagine, I can’t provide a statement on something I haven’t seen,” she added.

I invited her to make a comment after she saw the legislation. I have not received any additional correspondence at this time.

Pepco sent a letter to Allen, supporting some sections of the bill while raising concerns about others:

“We are particularly encouraged that several provisions align with components of Pepco's Affordable Energy Legislative Package, including virtual power plants, time-of-use rates, and distributed energy resources,” Amber Perry, Pepco regional president wrote in a letter dated October 23, 2026.

“These initiatives have the potential to provide meaningful customer benefits, improve grid utilization, and advance the District's long-term climate and economic development objectives,” she added.

However, Perry noted that “certain provisions could unintentionally undermine the financial and regulatory stability necessary to maintain a safe, reliable, and affordable electric distribution system for our customers.

“These provisions risk shifting additional costs to customers, delaying critical investments in grid reliability and resilience, and reducing the regulatory certainty needed to efficiently plan and operate the District's electric infrastructure,” Perry continued. “Absent targeted revisions, the resulting adverse impacts could be borne directly by District residents and businesses through higher costs, diminished reliability, and reduced progress toward the District's long-term energy and sustainability goals.”

Perry specifically drew attention to the fact that the legislation directs the PSC to consider “establishing a utility’s authorized return on equity (ROE) based on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rate plus two percentage points, or a comparable alternative benchmark, with annual adjustments and a requirement for alternative budget proposals with an inflation-based limitation.”

According to experts, the current yield on a 10-year Treasury note is about 5.5%, adding the 2% would mean that the return on equity or investors’ profit margin would be locked in at 7.5% down from its current rate of 9.5%.

What is not said is that move would likely increase the cost of borrowing for utility companies. “By law borrowing costs are fully reimbursable. That means those expenses likely will fall back on ratepayers and drive up their bills.”

Perry suggested that failing to permit the PSC to determine the rate of return based on documented evidence and receipts would strip the regulator of its independence and flexibility to protect District residents or utility customers.

Further, the legislation, as written would “temporarily restrict the PSC's ability to approve rate increases based on forecast test years while requiring additional evaluation of alternative ratemaking.”

Todd echoed similar concerns in his letter against the bill. "The committee's proposed changes to authorized return on equity is unprecedented, legally dubious and could increase costs and strain our District operations," he wrote, adding that the "provisions create regulatory uncertainty, discourages investment in critical infrastructure and increase the likelihood that customers will bear higher costs without any clear proven benefit."

Shockingly, the bill also would mandate that Washington Gas "offer financial incentives to customers to disconnect gas service and adopt alternatives to service line replacement." Todd requested the removal of that section from the legislation.

Allen does not indicate who would fund such a program nor does he indicate "how Washington Gas is compensated for loss of a customer or its approved investment to serve that customer," Todd asserted.

Pepco's Perry encouraged "the Council to expand the legislation's battery storage provisions to expressly authorize utility-owned, rate-based battery storage and community solar investments, subject to PSC review and approval.” Pepco lent its support to what it described as “reasonable solar interconnection cost recovery and implementation requirements. However, it pushed back against efforts to burden shareholders with excessive costs. Perry wrote that that proposal “raises significant operational, financial and legal concerns.”

Without extending the battery storage provisions it means Pepco customers may not have electricity in the evenings, since the sun won’t be around to provide it.

Equally troubling, the legislation would require participation in a regional transmission organization like PJM LLC (the only RTO available to Pepco). “Concerns around PJM’s ability to manage affordability and reliability are in the news every day,” added Perry.

She also note that mandates related to additional reporting and audits are similar to those found in “The Public Trust in Utility Regulation Act of 2026,” which was introduced by Lewis George earlier this year. Perry wrote that the report overlaps “with matters already being evaluated through the PSC’s ongoing MYP Lessons Learned process.”

That last bit is indicative of the poor legislative process that often happens in the John A. Wilson Building. Consider the Public Trust bill, as proposed was intended “to require an electric or gas company proposing a change in rates to submit with its application a detailed description of their capital expenditures to the Public Service Commission, and to require the Public Service Commission to conduct audits of public utilities once every three years.”

As Todd correctly noted the original GRID Act introduced by Allen and co-introduced by Lewis George, Parker, Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, Ward 3’s Matt Frumin, Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau and at-large Councilmember Robert White seemed an insignificant proposal. It was designed “to speed up the process Pepco follows to connect new solar panels to DC’s electric grid – known as “interconnecting” – at a time when renewable energy could be blunting steep costs in electricity for more DC residents,” according to a prepared statement released in February.

“The bill also exempts portable, lower cost “balcony solar” from these interconnection requirements. This plug-in solar technology is an easy way for renters to easily benefit and save 10-30% on their electric bills with a system as cheap as $400,” Allen’s spokesperson wrote back then.

The current iteration of the bill has gone far beyond that, including increasing the number of members for the Public Service Commission from three to five. The legislation also established that “A person confirmed to the office of commissioner of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia shall become a resident of the District within 180 days after the effective date of the individual's confirmation and shall remain a resident of the District for the duration of the term.” Currently there is a three-year pre-residency requirement that has been the law for 60 years prior to and throughout home rule.

What a slap in the face of qualified DC residents.

Allen’s bill also requires that one of the new members has “experience in electric grid modernization, renewable energy, and environmental policy” and the other new member  must have “experience in consumer protection.”

Here’s the Q: Why should there even be five PSC members; they are only regulating two utility companies.

Increasing membership would hike the general cost of operation. Each new member could be paid as much as $200,000 at a time when the city is facing serious fiscal challenges.

While White resigned from the legislative branch on Monday, Nadeau has decided not to run for re-election and will leave government in January, Allen will still be in the council. There are predictions that Lewis George is moving into the mayoral suite. She is likely to have the greatest responsibility for managing the mess she and her former colleagues are now creating.

Stay tune for cleanup in aisle 8.

TheBarrasReport covers political and cultural news and trends; it is published twice monthly by jonettarosebarras.com. If you have tips or story ideas, please send them to thebarrasreport@gmail.com 

 This post has been updated to add comments from Washington Gas Light's Brandon Todd.

Sources for this article: energy/environmental experts and government and private sector documents provide to jonettarosebarras.com