Transcription
Hi, I'm Senator Bob Smith. I uh represent the central part of the state, the 17th legislative district, which includes uh New Brunswick, Piscatoaway, Franklin Township, Southbound Brook, and North Brunswick, roughly about 220,000 people.
I'm also chair of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee. and um have some pretty specific opinions about what we need to do to stop mitigate these enormous uh price hikes in the cost of electricity. And they can be summarized uh in a couple of things.
First, we belong to an organization PJM uh an entity of 13 states in the District of Columbia that is not really managing this problem very well. They ultimately are the people who set the prices for electricity in New Jersey. My personal feeling is that the price has been somewhat manipulated and I think we need the reform of the PJM system. And there's just a list of 200 things we can do to make it better.
We also, I think, need to change the structure of the Board of Public Utilities, which is the instate regulator but not the price setter for electricity in the state. Um, I'm co-sponsoring a bill with Senator Zwicker to separate the Board of Public Utilities into two entities. One entity that would do do the rate cases, which has been their standard uh job description for 50 years, and then a second entity to do policy because if you say, can this entity walk and chew gum? They can, but not very well. And I think we need to have the policy setters working with the legislature and the governor to help come up with alternatives to help mitigate uh electricity prices in the state of New Jersey. Other states do it that way. I think it's New Jersey's turn as well.
Then I have a hundred other reforms that I think that would make our system better and that's what we're talking about in today's conference. Well, there is a call to action. The call to action is to actually get involved in energy policy which by the way is uh like watching paint dry. I mean, it's not something that's going to excite your daily life, but when you get those monthly month monthly electricity bills, you should be getting more and more excited. We need to work as partners to change state government to make it more responsive to your needs and do our best to work together as a team to influence the reform of PJM and the reform of the BPU.