The "derecho" outrage

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UPDATED LANGUAGE: SignOn to Show Your Support for Holding Pepco Accountable. If the PSC members don’t do the job, Governor O’Malley should replace them with tough regulators who will.

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It has been about eight years now since the crisis at Pepco came to light, and as far as residents are concerned, nothing has changed. In fact, the problem has just gotten worse.

The 2012 "derecho" storm is the worst yet, but the problem has been growing for years. In 2011, hundreds of thousands of Pepco customers were stranded without power after an ice storm. There were severe outages during storms in 2010, and 2008, and after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

In Maryland, utility companies are granted a monopoly in exchange for submitting to direct supervision by one agency, the “PSC” (Public Service Commission).

The state regulators at the PSC are failing. The chairman of the PSC, Douglas Nazarian, has admitted that they were slow to recognize problems at Pepco. But he is still in charge of the PSC and so are the rest of the slow responders. Why?

The PSC is an independent agency, but the Governor appoints its members and has the power to replace them.

After years of failure, enough is enough. Its time to hold Pepco accountable.