New Mexico utility regulators on Thursday advanced an investigation into complaints that the state’s largest electric provider excessively overcharged some residents this summer.
Staffers for the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission in early October recommended the commission open an investigation after residents reported that PNM was estimating residential bills in the Alamogordo and Ruidoso areas rather than obtaining readings from meters, largely due to a worker shortage. When the commission held a town hall meeting in Alamogordo in September, some residents complained that their monthly bills had skyrocketed from the usual $150 or $200 to as much as $1,700, according to the PRC staffers’ filing.
At a Thursday meeting in Las Cruces, the PRC’s three members voted on a draft order authorizing an investigation into the matter. However, rather than voting to approve or deny an investigation, commissioners unanimously voted to edit the order’s language to give investigators clearer guidance on the scope of their probe.
In particular, commissioners agreed that the order authorizing the probe should direct investigators to focus on Alamogordo and Ruidoso, but not preclude them from examining whether overbillings occurred elsewhere across the state.
They also directed Commissioner Greg Nibert to edit the order to specify that investigators should share the results of meter tests they conduct with PRC commissioners.
“I’m hopeful that the issue is not widespread, but I want the investigation to proceed to determine if it is,” Nibert said at Thursday’s meeting.
When the PRC’s Public Interest Advocacy team in early October urged the commission to open an investigation, a PNM spokesperson told Source NM that company officials “welcome the opportunity to provide the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission with information about what occurred, how customers were affected and the actions PNM has taken in response.”
In September, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez wrote a letter to Don Tarry, the CEO of PNM and its parent company, informing him that residents had complained to the New Mexico Department of Justice about exceedingly high bills.
Torrez’s letter included copies of those complaints, including one from an Otero County married couple who wrote that they received a bill for more than $1,000 this summer.
“Though we completely understand staffing issues, an electric bill of over $1,000, when we have not had one over $200 in the last year, is absurd,” they wrote, adding that PNM did not read their meter in July.
