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Jul/Aug 2019 FSC Newsletter
An increasing push is being made today to require the periodic reporting of data on utility credit and collection activities and outcomes.
This issue explains the care that must be taken to assure that reports present uniformly defined data.
Illustrations are presented of how fundamental concepts (e.g., bills, payments) can be defined differently yielding substantively different results of an analysis.
May/Jun 2019 FSC Newsletter
This issue posits that one common fiction in the utility industry is the ability to compare the extent to which one utility performs in its collections simply by comparing the average dollars of arrears between utilities.
Using the "bills behind" statistic (also known as "weighted arrears") developed by the Pennsylvania PUC's Bureau of Consumer Services,
this issue applies the "bills behind" analysis to fifteen regulated gas and electric utilities for three years (2011, 2014, 2017) to determine how comparisons would differ.
It finds that collections performance, when accounting for the average level of the underlying bills, dramatically differs.
Mar/Apr 2019 FSC Newsletter
This issue examines the inherent conflict between the environmental compliance obligations imposed on local water/wastewater utilities, requiring extensive financial investments,
and the need to maintain bill affordability in order to collect sufficient revenue to repay the borrowing undertaken to meet those obligations.
The issue explains the affordability concerns expressed by the Rhode Island State Treasurer.
It also reviews the report which FSC prepared for the Baltimore City Council documenting, on an individual Census tract basis,
both the impact which Baltimore's environmental compliance spending has on bill affordability, and the adverse impact which that deterioration in affordability will have on bill collectability
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