Protesters fighting the nearly $1 billion securitization case by OGE and the Oklahoma Development Finance Authority before the Oklahoma Supreme Court aren’t finished with their efforts.
While a Supreme Court referee took the arguments under consideration 2 weeks ago, another protest was filed this week in the matter by former State Rep. Porter H. Davis who made another argument that the 2021 Securitization Act passed by the legislature doesn’t meet the Oklahoma Constitution.
Davis contends the ratepayer-backed bonds don’t actually result in “customer savings” as the ODFA claims and “are completely bogus concocted by proposing a sham straw-man comparison to a loan-shark level WHACK! over the head of ratepayers!”
The former legislator stated in his latest argument that the ratepayer-backed bonds are insistent with the legislative intent of the Act and “may not even work if the bonds are unmarketable.”
‘The lowest and best legitimate alternatives that result in actual customer savings are what should count, not unreasonable “traditional financing methods” that would serve to enrich public utilities…”
Davis makes the point that by the statute’s plain text, the Legislature intended to provide relief for “utility customers” likely to be saddled with repayment of “unprecedented,” “extreme,” and “extraordinary” fuel and purchase power costs incurred by their public utilities during the February 2021 winter storm.
But that’s not what happened as Davis says “these bonds result in higher, not lower, costs for customers.” He likened it to a “loan shark” and pointed out that under the Corporation Commission’s final financing order, the $760 million bill owed by OG&E customers swells to $1.07 billion because of $307 million in interest and another $10,640,000 for OG&E’s $380,000 annual serving fee.
“Clearly, the Legislature’s goal was to find the cheapest way for utility customers to pay off the extraordinary energy costs associated with the February 2021 winter storm,” continued Davis in his Monday filing with the Supreme Court.
Instead, he says the ODFA has attempted to expand that purpose to “include ensuring the economic well-being of the public utilities.” Davis says ensuring the economic well-being of the public utilities “is quite simply NOT a stated purpose of the Securitization Act and should NOT be considered by this Court as a “valid public purpose” upon which basis to justify any approval of these Ratepayer-Backed Bonds!”
Click below to view the Supreme Court filing by Davis.
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/1051379443-20220207-141636-%20(1).pdf