After these bills are introduced, they will be sent to the House Public Utilities Committee and the Senate Ways and Means Committee. The prospects of passing a bill this session are slim because school funding is the focus of legislators' attention this year. A new bill, HB 4277, recently introduced in the House and Senate would authorize the Public Service Commission to prescribe and implement a plan to deregulate the electric industry, provided certain guidelines are followed. The guidelines state that the PSC may not adopt a plan that does not fairly balance the interest of the electric utilities, customers, and the state's economy. Customers should be protected during the transition to a competitive market.
Nobody is to be made worse off as a result of restructuring.
These guidelines are based on principles developed by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and they include the preservation of universal service, the preservation of tax revenues, the encouragement of continued and expanded use of West Virginia coal, oil, and natural gas. If the bill passes, a long series of hearings to work out the details are anticipated. In an effort to provide timely information, secondary data sources are used and therefore, the accuracy of the content of the summaries is not guaranteed.