Sometimes bad ideas are well-intentioned, and sometimes, they are just bad ideas that fly in the face of evidence, experience and common sense.
With energy affordability becoming a hot-button national issue, bad ideas are rapidly floating to the surface. Many are coming from states where one party has dominated for years and introduced restrictive energy policies that directly caused prices to rise. That leaves plenty of motive, means and opportunity to put the blame for bad ideas elsewhere.
Clearly falling under this category is the core idea of disgraced former Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) Chairman Marissa Gillett’s Dec. 23, 2025, opinion in which she argues that elected officials can, and should, use their official capacity to intervene in utility rate cases.
Take notice that Gillett does not mention that she resigned under threat of impeachment. It will be very important to pay attention to the messenger as much as the message in the coming year. Perhaps taking advice from someone whose actions and questionable engagements with legislators contributed to a scandal-ridden tenure isn’t the best idea.
As for her argument, let’s agree that legislators play a vital role in the regulation of the electric, natural gas, water, telecom entities that fall under the purview of state utility commissions. However, that responsibility should be limited to passing legislation that directs a commission to adopt rules and regulations that comply with said statute, not to jump into individual rate cases and attempt to steer outcomes from inside the docket.
State utility commissions are not school debating clubs. In regulatory dockets, a commission acts in a quasi-judicial capacity: it compiles an evidentiary record, questions witnesses under oath, applies statutory standards (which speaks to the role of a legislator), and issues an order that is reviewable on appeal to a court of competent jurisdiction.
Elected officials intervening in adjudicatory proceedings in their official capacities blur the separation of powers, compromise due process, and degrade the very consumer protections that commissions and statutory-enabled “Consumer Advocates” were created to provide.
This is not simply opinion. There is legal precedent supporting it. In 2019, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in Sunoco, L.P. v. Pennsylvania State Senator Andrew E. Dinniman and Public Utility Commission concluded the senator lacked both legislative and personal standing on the record presented, reiterating that standing before the Public Utility Commission (PUC) requires a “direct, immediate, and substantial interest” and that generalized representational claims are not enough.
Additionally, in Markham, which was cited in the Commonwealth ruling, found that: “Standing exists only when a legislator’s direct and substantial interest in his or her ability to participate in the voting process is negatively impacted…or when he or she has suffered a concrete impairment or deprivation of an official power or authority to act as a legislator…”
This comports with what I have witnessed in my own experiences. I have seen a state commission deny a legislator’s attempt to intervene in a utility rate case that was not in the legislator’s service territory. Translated: A legislator doesn’t have standing, an impacted ratepayer does. These “safeguards” exist because rate cases are supposed to be decided on evidence and law—not on who can generate the most political pressure.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” is a cautionary line in George Orwell’s Animal Farm about the corruption of process and power. Utility commissions should be exempt from that outcome. Allowing legislators to intervene as officeholders risks transforming what is supposed to be a regulatory proceeding into Kabuki theater.
Why is this important to consumers of regulated utilities? Because political intervention threatens procedural fairness. Rate cases are structured to ensure that utilities, consumer advocates, industrial customers, and other affected parties can check each other’s claims through discovery and cross-examination. When a legislator inserts themselves as a politician, the adjudicatory process can quickly turn into grandstanding and debates over legislative intent, which are for a court to decide on appeal.
Even if the legislator’s intentions are sincere, the appearance of impropriety is unavoidable: Is the commission weighing sworn testimony, or anticipating retaliation in the next confirmation hearing or budget cycle?
Political intervention also risks distorting outcomes and raising long-run costs. Utilities are required by law to serve their customers. Allowing ad hoc political interventions in rate-setting introduces regulatory uncertainty that markets will not ignore, raising the cost of capital and increasing infrastructure costs that will be borne by customers. In other words, political chicanery in one docket can quietly become a long-term affordability loss across many dockets.
Gillett should know this; because under her highly politicized and scandal-ridden tenure, all five of Connecticut’s utilities saw credit ratings agencies lower their rating – which increases costs to ratepayers. Bank of America declared Connecticut “probably the worst regulatory environment” in America. It is also worth remembering that Gillett resigned under threat of impeachment after lying to the legislature.
None of this should be interpreted in a manner that suggests that legislators should be silent about utility affordability or reliability. They can hold oversight hearings, request audits, revise statutory mandates, and ensure that offices such as consumer counsel or public advocates have the resources to argue effectively on behalf of the public.
In an era when public trust in institutions is microscopic, and energy costs are at the top of everyone’s mind, utility regulation needs more certainty and predictability, not less. The best way to protect consumers is for rate cases to be what they are meant to be: quasi-judicial proceedings decided on the record, under clear procedural rules, insulated from political influence.
Legislators should do their job—make the policy; then let commissions do theirs—without undue influence.