Former Broken Arrow legislator Mike Ritze has filed a challenge to a utility seeking millions of dollars in storm relief through the ratepayer backed-bond process called securitization.
Ritze filed a challenge to the $1,450,000,000 in ratepayer-backed bonds sought by Oklahoma Natural Gas Company through the Oklahoma Development Finance Authority.
The request was filed in March by the Authority and a hearing before the court will be held April 13.
Ritze contends the Authority is using a potentially invalid Oklahoma Corporation Commission order resulting from what he labeled a “problematic vote” at an unposted Jan. 25, 2022 commission meeting “to try to impose $1-2 billion of ratepayer-backed debt on ONG customers.”
He also alleged the minutes of an earlier OCC meeting on Jan. 20, 2022 were “finagled” in an effort to concoct a non-existent “recess”—a move the says was meant to show the Jan. 25 meeting was really a continuation of the previous meeting.
In his filing, Ritze said no specific Oklahoma Corporation Commission agenda was ever posted in advance of the meeting of the commissioners en banc held on the afternoon of the 25.
He also accused Commission chairwoman Dana Murphy of carrying out the vote in a manner that the public would not be properly informed in advance.
“Chair Murphy understood there was a problem, as indicated by her reference to a non-existent “recess” at the start of the January 25 meeting five days later and the confusion of the Commission Secretary. To remove any question, the January 25 meeting could easily have bee posted,” he asserted in his challenge.
Ritze told the court that the ONG proposal is wholly dependent upon a potentially invalid order and that before it validates the plan, it should “carefully consider that doing so may actually cost Oklahoma ratepayers hundreds of millions more than the many millions in financing costs and fees that ODFA has already estimated and represented.”
The ODFA filed the ratepayer backed bond case to assist the utility in recovering costs experienced in the February 2021 storm.