Reconfiguring the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority as a quasi-public agency, a move considered for the sole purpose of giving a state senator a promised job, is off the table for the remainder of the 2025 legislative session and faces stiff opposition if attempted in 2026.
Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said in an interview that the legal, fiscal and policy complexities of transforming PURA into a quasi-public agency are too formidable to address before the session ends on June 4, jeopardizing a deal to seat Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, on the authority.
“I don’t think those are going to be resolved before June 4,” Looney said.
Other Democratic senators, who declined to be quoted by name due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Looney faced an insurrection in the Senate Democratic majority if he pressed for the legislation necessary to place Fonfara on the authority before his current Senate term expires in January 2027.
Converting PURA to a quasi-public was a way to consummate a deal struck by Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders to guarantee the confirmation of Marissa P. Gillett to a second four-year term as chair of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.
No lawmaker can accept a job in another branch of government during their legislative terms, even if they resign from the General Assembly.
The ranking Senate Republican on the Energy and Technology Committee said he was not surprised by Looney’s reluctance to seek passage of a concept that has not been filed as a bill and whose only purpose was to complete what struck lawmakers was an unusually naked piece of transactional politics.
“I can’t imagine it getting done this session or any other session,” said Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich. “It’s too complicated. The implication for consumers and the general public would probably be very negative.”
Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, the House energy co-chair, had a blunter assessment: “Everyone I’ve talked to thinks it’s one of the dumbest ideas they’ve ever heard.”
Looney insisted he always thought it might not be resolved until 2026. That was a surprise to Fonfara.
Fonfara said no one has talked with him about taking PURA as quasi-public off the table for 2025, and his focus lies elsewhere, including seeking support for his ideas on lower energy costs.
Lamont agreed to nominate Fonfara to ensure the confirmation of Gillett, a regulator whose aggressive and controversial style had outraged the state’s largest regulated utilities, to a second four-year term as chair of the authority.
Fonfara and two allies were poised to block Gillett in the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee. The potential defeat created an opportunity to press Lamont to add two members suggested by legislative leaders to what has been a three-member authority.
“This was a legislative initiative, and I really wanted to get Marissa Gillett on there. I thought she had more experience than everybody else, and we’re going through incredibly complicated time,” Lamont said Wednesday, pointing to a shift toward performance-based rate setting. “I thought her regulatory experience was really invaluable, especially now.”
The boards of PURA and its predecessors generally had been populated by former lawmakers. Gillett is a regulatory lawyer from Maryland. The other two members are former lawmakers. A state law passed years ago requires a five-member board, but Lamont never had filled the two additional positions.
“Legislators had — on both sides of the aisle, I might say — had some people they’d like to get on that board,” Lamont said in an interview. “And I said, ‘Let’s figure this out.’ They came forward and said, ‘Maybe we do this as a quasi, we expand to five.’ I said, ‘OK.’”
Lamont agreed to nominate Fonfara and a former Republican state representative, Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme.
Gillett was ultimately confirmed to a second term by the committee and the full legislature, though not before Senate Republicans staged a walkout in protest of the deal that Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, called a “blatant quid pro quo.”
Looney and House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said they still intend to pass legislation that would impose a deadline of Dec. 31 on Lamont to nominate two additional authority members.
“We have a deal to go to five commissioners, and that will happen,” Ritter said. “Ultimately, you know, the governor will have to pick two people based upon the criteria and eligibility at that time.”
Ritter, however, said he has no intention to push a bill converting PURA to a quasi-public. “We’ll take the lead from the Senate on this one,” he said.
Looney and Ritter both said the conversion to a quasi-public ultimately could prove unworkable.
“It’s pretty complicated. I don’t deny that, and I’ve had people tell me they don’t think it’s really feasible,” Ritter said.
“There were a number of issues that have to be dealt with in terms of creating a quasi public in terms of how it’s structured,” Looney said.
Fonfara’s fight over fines
In the meantime, Fonfara has a second obstacle to clear: Resolving a fight with PURA over fines assessed against his defunct energy company, Wattifi Inc.
The company attempted to offer a flexible hourly-rate structure for customers on Connecticut’s deregulated energy marketplace, competing against the traditional fixed-rate pricing model used by other suppliers.
Shortly before the company closed in 2023, PURA instructed the state’s electric utilities to adopt a billing format that displays information about the competitive supply market. A portion of the cost for that process was to be shared by the third-party suppliers such as Wattifi.
The assessment on Wattifi was $57,168, but Fonfara never paid, saying his company closed before it ever got a chance to use the new system. PURA later imposed late fees that eventually racked up to more than $1 million, prompting Fonfara to accuse Gillet and the authority of retaliation.
The maneuvering over PURA has been extraordinary.
Connecticut’s electric rates, as generally is the case for most of New England, tend to be among the highest in the continental U.S., raising the profile of the regulators who have limited oversight over a largely deregulated industry.
The Senate chair of the energy committee, Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, said that he’s been out of the loop on discussions surrounding PURA’s fate as he works on crafting other legislation — Senate Bill 4 — that will attempt to address energy costs and grid reliability.
That effort has put him into close conversations with Fonfara, a former energy chair who has put forward his own ideas on how to save people money on their electric bill. The two met for over two hours last week, Needleman said, but the subject of turning the authority into a quasi-public did not come up.
“If it was up to me, I would think that needs to be vetted in a pretty robust way,” Needleman said.
Claire Coleman, the state’s consumer counsel, wrote a withering assessment in March of the potential complications of shifting rate-setting powers to a quasi-public or “quasi-private,” as she called it.
The model, she wrote, apparently has not been tried anywhere in the U.S.
