Open letter from

Union Leadership

PROTECTING THE STABILITY OF CT'S NATURAL GAS SERVICE AND WORKFORCE

As a company committed to supporting our more than 500 front-line employees at Connecticut Natural Gas (CNG) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG), we are deeply concerned by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority’s (PURA) recent Draft Decisions in our rate cases. If these proposals are finalized in November, they will critically undermine CNG and SCG’s financial health, jeopardizing the essential work of our employees and the reliability of Connecticut’s natural gas systems. Our union presidents share this concern, emphasizing the risk these decisions pose to both our workforce and the vital services they provide to our customers daily. Read their thoughts below:

October 16, 2024

Governor Ned Lamont
210 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT 06106

Attorney General Tong
165 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Governor Lamont and Attorney General William Tong:

As four Union Presidents representing the interests of more than 500 customer service representatives, service and meter technicians, liquified natural gas (LNG) operators, and other front-line workers in Connecticut Natural Gas (CNG) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG), we write because we are deeply concerned about PURA’s recent Draft Decisions in our rate cases. If these proposals are finalized in just a few short weeks on November 18, they will create an immediate, seriously negative and adverse effect to CNG and SCG’s financial health. As a result, our jobs, and the jobs of the hundreds of hard-working people we represent, will be made much more challenging by the cuts that CNG and SCG will be forced to make.

We know from our combined 117 years of experience in utilities how important the service we provide is, and how essential it is that we protect the safety, reliability, and resiliency of these systems. None of what PURA chooses to do in these proposed decisions will promote these critical objectives. There are no winners in this approach: not our customers, not the vital front-line workers we represent, and not Connecticut’s long-term goals of affordable, sustainable energy.

Last November, both CNG and SCG requested a combined $60 million in increases in revenue to pay for increased supply chain costs and inflation, better reliability and resiliency for customers, and new hires across all divisions. Those requests – representing just a 4 percent increase for CNG and a 9 percent increase for SCG – were very modest, especially given the age of the infrastructure we work with every day. But PURA’s Draft Decisions reject those increases altogether, instead proposing to cut CNG and SCG’s combined revenues by $75 million. That’s more than their net income in 2023.

Since these companies last filed rate cases in the late 2010s, there have been years of inflation, supply chain cost increases, salary increases, and additional needed investments in the safety, reliability, and resiliency of the infrastructure serving almost 400,000 customers of our 175-year-old+ companies. But PURA somehow arrived at the conclusion that the investments in infrastructure, in the front-line workforces we lead, and in new innovations for sustainability now need less money, not more – and much less money at that.

Leaving CNG and SCG financially strapped would obviously and unavoidably have impacts on the front-line workers we represent. If our equipment fails because our company can’t afford to replace or upgrade it because of PURA’s actions, and customers are left waiting, who will take the blame: some vague conception of “company management,” or us – the women and men who work in the field every day to serve our customers? If we are prevented from working overtime to try to limit the financial damage these decisions would have, and we’re forced to take longer on street-disrupting projects, who will get the grumbles from impacted homeowners: “company management,” or the people digging in the street who are the faces of these essential projects?

In all these situations and more, it’s us who will bear consequences of what PURA is trying to do to “company management.” CNG and SCG cannot just swallow hits of more than $35 million each: their hard-working front-line workers will suffer the impacts. As one of us recently wrote, “Think about it like any other business. If one of our famous New Haven pizza places… were forced to give away their pies for free, how long would it be able to keep providing its bakers and cashiers with a living wage?”

We urge you to encourage changes in these Draft Decisions before they are finalized in mid-November. The safety, security, and reliability of Connecticut’s natural gas distribution systems may depend on it.

Sincerely,