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The FBI Wants To Be Your Facebook Friend

3 years ago
Undoubtedly, the FBI has always surveilled the open web, looking for persons or phrases of interest. It’s just going to get a whole lot better at doing it. And it’s going to spend millions of your tax dollars to make it easier to place your public internet interactions under its social media-focused microscope. Aaron Schaffer […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The 2022 Complete Microsoft Excel Expert Bundle

3 years ago
The 2022 Complete Microsoft Excel Expert Bundle has 12 courses to help you master Excel. You’ll start from the beginning by learning how to create a basic spreadsheet and move on to more advanced skills like working with Power Pivot, Power Query, and DAX. Other courses cover business analytics, VBA, advanced formulas, and more. It’s on […]
Daily Deal

Cardinals vs. Yankees game to stream on Amazon Prime

3 years ago
ST. LOUIS - A Cardinals versus Yankees game on August 5 will be streamed on Amazon Prime. The Yankees and the YES Network will stream 21 games this season exclusively on Prime at no additional cost to Prime members in the Yankees' home-team area of New York state, Connecticut, north and central Jersey, and northeast [...]
Monica Ryan

Second Annual Ray Botterbush Memorial Sporting Clays Shoot Is May 14, 2022

3 years ago
BRIGHTON - The Second Annual Ray Botterbush Memorial Sporting Clays Shoot is scheduled for Saturday, May 14, 2022, at Nilo Farms in Brighton. Lunch catered by Chef Bob's will feature pulled pork, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, scalloped potatoes, garden salad, and iced tea and lemonade. Nilo is the Olin Corporation’s and Winchester Ammunition’s nationally known hunting and shooting facility. Event Chairman Kevin Botterbush said that money raised from this event will benefit Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Venturing, and Explore Scouts in the Riverbend, and Camp Warren Levis. This event is named in honor of long-time Madison County Deputy Sheriff, community leader, and scouter Ray Botterbush for his many years of service to the community. Kevin Botterbush said: “Ray was a lifelong scout who epitomized the best of the Boy Scouts of America.” As a young man, he earned his Eagle Scout, then continued on with scouting and eventually received the Silver Beaver Award for

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Detroit City Council Calls on Michigan’s Largest Utility to Pause Shut-offs, Explain Its High Electricity Rates

3 years ago

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Outlier Media. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In response to reporting by Outlier Media and ProPublica showing how DTE Energy disconnected electric accounts for nonpayment during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Detroit City Council is calling for the power company to enact a one-year pause on electricity and gas shut-offs.

The resolution, passed at a City Council meeting on Tuesday, cites the findings of an Outlier-ProPublica story last month that analyzed disconnections in Michigan and found DTE shut off accounts 208,000 times between April 2020 and December 2021.

The investigation by the news organizations found that DTE’s rate of electricity shut-offs — disconnections as a proportion of customers — outpaced the six other utilities in Michigan that are owned by private investors and have their prices regulated by the state. Using federal data, the story also compared DTE’s electric rates with other similar utilities in the state. DTE’s residential rates were the second highest in Michigan.

The council began drafting a resolution a week after the investigation was published, and member Gabriela Santiago-Romero introduced it along with another colleague during the group’s most recent meeting. “She’s concerned about the prices of DTE rising and the burden that puts on residents of the city and of her district,” said Hank Kelley, a senior policy analyst for Santiago-Romero, who co-sponsored the resolution with council member Angela Whitfield Calloway.

Santiago-Romero tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday and was unavailable to talk.

“We’re still in a pandemic, evidenced by the fact that the council member was impacted just today,” Kelley said. “This impacts people’s ability to work and pay their bills.”

DTE has more than 2 million customers in its service area, which includes Detroit and covers most of Southeast Michigan. The company has told state regulators it has half a million customers living in poverty.

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, DTE had the shortest moratorium on disconnections of any large utility in the state, three months. The council resolution asks DTE to voluntarily begin a new moratorium on shut-offs, “given the lasting economic impacts of the pandemic, thereby giving its customers some relief.”

The City Council sent its request for a moratorium to DTE executives and to its board of directors; the resolution also requested company leaders come before council to discuss the company’s rates.

Christopher Lamphear, manager of corporate communications for DTE, echoed the utility’s previous skepticism of moratoriums when asked about the council request. “Moratoriums are not always in the best interest of residents because they only allow debt to grow as energy use continues,” he said. “It is important to connect customers to the funds and assistance available, which DTE redoubled efforts to achieve when the pandemic began.”

Lamphear did not disclose how DTE will respond to the resolution. However, he said in an email that the city's Public Health and Safety Committee has invited DTE to provide a response at a future meeting.

He also said DTE is committed to its customers and has helped connect them to more than $100 million in assistance last year, while also forgiving $2.6 million in customer debt in 2020.

He said the City Council is expecting an official response from DTE when the two sides meet, but the timing was undecided.

The Michigan Public Service Commission, the state body responsible for regulating utility companies, also received a copy of the council resolution. The MPSC declined to comment on the resolution but a spokesman said, “The MPSC remains focused on affordability for utility customers and improving assistance programs available for low-income customers.”

DTE has asked the MPSC to allow the company to increase electric rates in order to raise an additional $388 million in annual revenue. The MPSC has until October to decide whether to approve the rate increase.

The MSPC has approved six rate increases for DTE since 2011. In each case, the commission gave DTE about half as much as it requested. DTE’s last rate increase was in the beginning of 2020; the utility said it delayed asking for a rate increase until this year because of the pandemic.

DTE’s residential rate, measured as the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour, is the second highest among investor-owned utilities in Michigan, behind the Upper Peninsula Power Company, a utility with only about 50,000 customers in the northern part of the state. It is also higher than the price charged by the largest utility in each of the other Great Lakes states of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. DTE, however, points to monthly bills across the country and says those figures put it at or below the national average.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened in the current rate case, with an eye toward the impact on consumers. “AG Nessel agrees that energy affordability is essential and has been working hard at reducing or eliminating rate increase requests through advocacy before the MPSC,” her press secretary, Lynsey Mukomel, said.

As for shut-offs for nonpayment, Mukomel said Nessel’s office “is investigating these issues in DTE’s current electric rate case, which allows the office to conduct discovery on these very issues.”

by Sarah Alvarez, Outlier Media

Easter weekend sees spot showers with high temps in 60s

3 years ago
ST. LOUIS - Easter weekend is looking mostly dry with the occasional spot shower. Expect clouds on Good Friday with spot showers in the afternoon. The high temperature on Friday will reach 65. Saturday will be partly cloudy, dry, and cool with high temperatures in the upper-50s. The big day, Easter Sunday, will have cool [...]
John Fuller