2024-2025 Priorities

Through 2025, MI-MAUI will continue to focus on local government energy costs and services that depend on regulated utilities, and support for local government policies including climate change, energy affordability and reliability throughout the community.

Energy Affordability, reliability and security

MI-MAUI advocates for affordable rates and improved reliability for the communities that local governments serve. A central theme of our work for the foreseeable future will be improving reliability without causing unbearable rate increases.

Affordable rates

Local governments are concerned about the impact of high energy costs on the communities they serve and can represent those concerns with unique credibility in rate cases. The major utilities’ investment plans foreshadow even greater future electric rate increases than we have already seen, even though rates in Michigan are already among the highest regionally and nationally. MI-MAUI serves on the MPSC’s Low Income Energy Policy Board and the Energy Affordability and Accessibility Committee, and advocates for affordable rates in rate cases and other MPSC forums.

Energy Security: Local governments have distinctive credibility to speak to the impact of high rates on their constituents and communities. MI-MAUI will continue to advocate for fair and equitable billing practices, including shutoff protections for vulnerable customers and limitations or prohibitions on utility cash-payment and security deposit requirements. These issues arise in rate cases and in MPSC collaboratives and policy forums.

Reliability: MI-MAUI represents local government priorities in the MPSC’s review of utility distribution system investment plans. We have urged the Commission to require utilities to plan and implement projects that take place in public easements in better coordination with local governments, to reduce costs and neighborhood disruptions. In rate cases, we advocate for limits on utility cost recovery when projects are poorly coordinated and when delayed tree trimming causes avoidable outages. MI-MAUI also opposes incentive payments to utilities that do not satisfy all service quality and reliability standards, but generally supports the use of financial incentives and disincentives to motivate better reliability performance. Finally, MI-MAUI provides local governments with outage report statistics, based on data filed by the utilities, that are broken down by zip code and census tract, which can equip local governments with the data they need to hold utilities accountable to target investments and maintenance where they are most needed.

Utility Communication, Coordination and Cooperation with Local Governments

Key issues include:

• Infrastructure project coordination: utilities should coordinate planning of their infrastructure projects – both construction and maintenance – with local units of government, which may reduce costs and neighborhood disruptions. When coordination opportunities are ignored, MI-MAUI advocates that utility cost recovery through rates should be limited.

• Better coordination to advance local development priorities: utility infrastructure investments should be prioritized and scheduled with consideration for local priorities, such as installation of EV chargers and distributed energy resources, or economic development plans.

• Better emergency coordination: utilities should communicate better with local emergency response agencies during outages, to set response and restoration priorities, and help emergency responders provide services most impacted by outages.

• Utility customer data access: local units of government need access to more kinds of more granular data from utilities, to help them implement climate plans, provide energy assistance and energy efficiency services and protect vulnerable residents from loss of energy services.

  Local Governments as Utility Customers

  Local governments use energy in their operations and pay utility bills, giving them direct fiscal and operational interests in affordability and reliability. Key issues include energy use in government buildings, street lighting and energy used for water treatment and distribution. MI-MAUI has historically focused on street lighting rates and reliability because streetlights are a highly visible and costly local government service that are rarely prioritized by other utility customers. We also advocate for fair rates for government buildings and water treatment, usually supporting efforts of other stakeholders whose interests align with those of local governments.

• Street Lighting Many local governments use more electricity for street lighting than for any other purpose, making streetlights a central concern for both cost control and attainment of climate goals. Street lighting is also among the most ubiquitous and visible of government services and local officials are attentive and responsive to community concerns about reliability and lighting quality. In rate cases and in dialog with DTE and Consumers Energy, MI-MAUI has successfully advocated for faster transition to energy-saving LED technology, better adherence to street lighting standards to prevent overlighting and energy waste, improved maintenance practices and outage response, fair rate treatment of customers who pay for their LEDs out of pocket and regular detailed outage reporting to customers.