By rssfeeds-admin 
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission issued a press release Wednesday that promised rate payers, “that electric generation prices for all PUC-regulated electric utilities will adjust on June 1 – just as summer temperatures and air-conditioning use begin increasing electricity demand across Pennsylvania.”
The news arrives as lawmakers in Harrisburg rush to reinstate restrictions on the commission and how it navigates consumer disconnections and restarts of interrupted utility service.
The majority of lawmakers in the Pennsylvania legislature have already voted in favor of reinstating Chapter 14 of Title 66, a document which includes the Public Utilities Code and sets guidelines for the sanctions imposed by the commission.
The Senate has approved SB 154, while the House has approved HB 2333. The two bills have now passed into committee in the adjacent chambers of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
Chapter 14 – first approved in 2004 – had a built-in 10-year sunset clause. While the legislature renewed the measure in 2014, the amendment expired in 2024 and now a bipartisan majority of lawmakers have agreed that it’s necessary to bring that legislation back.
In 2024, proponents of the statute promised that renewing Chapter 14 would create protections for Pennsylvania rate payers. In light of the fact that hundreds of thousands of households across the state have their water, electric or fuel shut off – Chapter 14 prepared a blueprint to reconnect those disconnected utilities.
Most notably and for decades, Chapter 14 set limits for payment plans – as many as six years of repayments could be tacked onto a consumer’s utility bill as a condition of reconnection. It provided for customers with poor or absent credit to post a security deposit to activate service and it created a fee structure for reinstatement of utilities.
Bucks County state Senator Steve Santarsiero, who sits on the Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee where HB 2333 awaits a hearing, has promised to get either version, or a hybrid of the two, over the finish line this session. “I voted for SB 154 which reauthorized Pennsylvania’s expired ‘Chapter 14’ utility consumer protection law. Chapter 14 governs issues including utility shutoffs, payment plans, deposits, and reconnections for electric, gas, water, and other utility customers. When it expired at the end of 2024, I shared concerns that it meant consumers could lose important protections. I support reauthorizing Chapter 14 and the protections it provided for consumers.”
Bucks County Senator Frank Farry, who likewise sits in that same committee, was unavailable for comment.
State Representative David Madsen, sponsor of HB 2333, is “pleased that the Senate has ideas and wants to fix the problem.” But he thinks his bill would address more of the issues that negatively impact Pennsylvanians – tens of thousands of whom have had at least one of their utilities disconnected in the first four months of this year – producing a 2026 total from January through April of 70,947 disconnections.
Madsen, who represents Dauphin County – including Harrisburg, says that his office deals with this issue constantly. “My district is a low- to moderate-income district. My office is dealing with issues of folks struggling to pay utilities and often having to figure out payment plans and we’re often trying to advocate on their behalf.”
The reason legislators must intervene – at least in part – is because Chapter 14 telling the Public Utilities Commission what they can and can’t allow when utilities deal with consumers has lapsed and those guidelines provided in the statute are gone. As it stands now, each case submitted to the PUC could result in a different outcome.
“Low-income households spend approximately 30% of their incomes on energy costs, and holistic, prevention-based reforms are needed to ensure that customers can stay connected to life-sustaining utility services that they can afford.” – State Senator Nikil Saval
Patrick Cicero, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, challenges the notion that Chapter 14 was intended to protect consumers. Cicero says that the decades-old initiative was really intended to get lapsed rate payers paying again – allowing for increased revenue generating terms, punitive re-connection fees and lengthy security deposits that the commission itself might not impose.
“It put restrictions on the public utility commission and their ability to order long-term payment arrangements for customers that fell into arrears,” Cicero explained. “[Chapter 14] restricted their ability to place conditions on utilities provision of service – like whether they would be able to charge security deposits or whether they would be able to charge reconnection fees.”
Cicero added, “When it was originally proposed in 2004, it actually restrained the commission, it put handcuffs on the commission.”
He said that some of those guidelines hurt consumers and often lead to evictions and ruined credit scores for any adult – whether or not they signed a utility contract – just because they lived in a home where utilities went unpaid and were disconnected.
In fact, in 2024, the last time the general assembly attempted to extend Chapter 14 past its expiration, the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project and Community Legal Aid Services of Philadelphia issued a statement condemning its origins:
“Chapter 14 of the Public Utility Code creates unreasonable challenges for low and moderate income households to maintain basic utility services.”
The two consumer advocate organizations enumerated the consequences foisted upon Pennsylvania consumers. They argued that while “low-income Pennsylvanians often pay as much as 30% of household income on energy costs alone. Median income Pennsylvanians pay just 4%. The Public Utility Commission (PUC) has concluded that, to be affordable, energy costs should not exceed 10% of household income.”
They argued that mandating terms for cut-offs, security deposits and late payment fees only exacerbated the problems faced by low-income consumers, “Terminating service to households that cannot afford to pay does not improve collections – it leads to high rates of bankruptcy, eviction, and foreclosure.”
And it shifts the burden of keeping community members connected to the necessities of living to agencies already struggling to keep people housed.
Heather Foor, director of client services for Bucks County Opportunity Council, says that the BCOC helps with utility bills after all other options have been exhausted. “We encourage LIHEAP first.” The federal low-income heating assistance program has ended for the year – and Foor knows of no federal program available in Bucks County that helps with high electric bills during the dog days of summer.
As utility prices increase, Foor likewise sees increased need. “In general the cost of everything is going up. High cost of rent, high cost of utilities, they lead to housing instability. We’re definitely seeing more people needing assistance.”
But there are only so many people BCOC can help. Working people, families and the elderly have all applied for assistance. “Of the 204 households that we assisted, 34 had seniors of 60 or older as the head of the household,” she said. And how many got turned away? Foor said that she has no way of knowing. “Unfortunately, we don’t have data on how many apply but don’t get help.”
It’s that countless number of people who need help that motivated state Senator Nikil Saval to vote against the PA Senate attempt to reinstate Chapter 14. Saval sees Chapter 14 as anything but consumer protection. Consequently, he’s one of only seven members of the chamber who voted against SB 154.
“In general the cost of everything is going up. High cost of rent, high cost of utilities, they lead to housing instability. We’re definitely seeing more people needing assistance.” – Bucks County Opportunity Council’s Heather Foor
Saval explained that he opposes the bill because it has the potential “to make it more difficult for low-income and medically vulnerable households to maintain utility services during times of hardship.”
Saval is concerned that neither of the Pa legislative bodies is adequately considering the threat that high utility rates pose to economically disadvantaged consumers. “Low-income households spend approximately 30% of their incomes on energy costs, and holistic, prevention-based reforms are needed to ensure that customers can stay connected to life-sustaining utility services that they can afford.”
That said, Senator Saval told the Bucks County Beacon that should HB 2333 come to a vote in the Senate, he would likely be supportive because, “The bill currently includes crucial and potentially lifesaving protections for customers, including pausing utility shut-offs during the hot summer months.”
That said, Madsen hopes his bill makes it over the finish line. “I haven’t done the math yet on how many households there are in Pennsylvania overall, but about 300,000 households last year lost their electricity, had their electricity shut off.”
Madsen fears it’ll get worse. “I would say we have to kind of treat those numbers almost with a grain of salt, given what we’ve seen with the conflict in Iran and the increase of data centers. All these variables could have an impact on utilities.”
BCOC’s Foor knows that this will affect the everyday low-income consumers she works with every day. “It’s sad. People are just struggling in general.” And not just folks who generally seek assistance. “It’s those people that are working that are struggling.”
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