DENVER – Consumer groups in Colorado are pressing lawmakers to reauthorize the state’s Office of Consumer Counsel. The OCC represents customers when their utility companies want to raise rates.
As a result of Colorado’s Sunset Law, the agency is set to expire this year. Utility companies say the OCC, launched in 1984 when telephone companies were monopolies, should not be reauthorized.
But Bill Levis, a volunteer for AARP Colorado and former OCC director, says the agency has been a good investment for consumers.
“The OCC, in that time period, has saved consumers over $1.6 billion,” says Levis, “which is about a 3,000 percent rate of return.”
He says without the OCC, the only parties that would appear in front of the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates telecommunications as well as energy, would be the utility companies in rate-hike cases.
Lobbyists from CenturyLink and the Colorado Telecommunications Association say the OCC’s mission is out-of-date, and that Colorado lags behind other states when it comes to deregulating telecom.
Levis says consumers in states without agencies like the OCC end up paying more and deregulating industry isn’t the answer.
“They don’t want any oversight,” says Levis. “Without groups like the OCC, the industry can basically do what it wants, and that’s a problem.”
If the General Assembly doesn’t renew the OCC, the consumer watchdog agency will fade into the sunset July 1.