Florida phone companies have no excuse for pushing a massive residential rate hike that apparently violates a new law. After all, phone company lobbyists wrote the law, which was obediently passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor earlier this year.
When Verizon, BellSouth and Sprint filed their rate request with the Public Service Commission in August, they asked for an increase for basic residential service on Jan. 1 2004 and another on Jan. 1 2005. If approved by the PSC, the two hikes would raise phone rates up to 46 percent for some Tampa Bay customers. The first would add $2.25 a month to a home phone bill and the second one about $2.36 a month.
Then Charlie Beck, interim chief of the Office of Public Counsel, noticed a little problem with the request. The law says the rate increases have to be spread out over at least two years. As requested by the phone companies, the hikes would come 12 months apart.
Beck moved to dismiss the rate request, and he got a helpful ally - the PSC staff. It found that the phone companies' argument that their requests meet the timing requirement is a "tortured reading" of the law. The staff recommended that the full commission dismiss the rate request at a hearing next week.
Even if the phone companies lose this round, they promise to be back with another rate request - this time to be effective in 2004 and 2006. But there are some benefits in delay.
It will allow the PSC to hold more public hearings in the rate case. Claiming time constraints, the commission had scheduled only 10 hearings in the current case, and none in Pinellas County. Opponents of the rate hikes will ask for 14 hearings, with one in St. Petersburg. That will give the public more opportunity to argue that the increases will provide no real benefit to residential phone customers.
Under the law, the rate hikes have to be balanced by an equal reduction in in-state long distance charges. But it is not clear that enough of those savings will end up in the hands of residential customers. If that is true, the rate increase may not be justified.
The phone companies have had their way, so far, in seeking greater profits at the expense of residential customers. So even a temporary setback would have to be seen as a victory for the little guy.
