Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY), a freshman who represents New York’s 19th Congressional District, counts himself as the only member of Congress who has formally intervened in a rate case—that is, the legal process where regulated utilities request approval to increase, or otherwise modify, the cost of service.
One such case involved Central Hudson Gas & Electric, which filed its application in August 2024. Riley, who assumed office in January 2025 and is up for re-election this year, intervened in the Central Hudson rate case after unseating former incumbent Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) in November 2024. As an intervenor, Riley challenged the utility’s claim that jacking up rates was necessary to preserve its financial integrity, pointing to the fact that it had previously informed shareholders it had adequate long- and short-term cash on hand. He also demanded transparency regarding the financial models Central Hudson used to calculate its requested rate of return.
Alas, the administrative law judges presiding over the case sided with Central Hudson, which is owned by the Canadian utility holding company Fortis. The utility secured approval for its 2025–2028 rate plan, which increased Central Hudson’s rate of return on equity (ROE) from 9.2 to 9.5 percent, equating to roughly $10 million in annual profit increases. (Prior to approving the three-year rate plan, the New York Public Service Commission [PSC] greenlit a one-year rate plan, effective July 1, 2024, that also provided for an authorized ROE of 9.5 percent.)
Still, the effort was worth trying—indeed, it’s served as an inspiration for other members of Congress. This Thursday, Riley and more than a dozen other House Democrats are launching a new Congressional Lowering Utility Bills Caucus to tackle the affordability crisis in electricity, gas, water, and more. It’s particularly important not only because of decades of too-cozy relationships between utilities and their regulators, but also to address the data center buildout driving ongoing hikes in power bills.
“Too many working families are being put to an impossible choice of either keeping the lights on or paying for the mortgage or groceries. Meanwhile, the utility monopolies are making record profits while jacking up rates. It’s unacceptable,” Riley said. “I’m launching the Congressional Lowering Utility Bills Caucus to provide a forum for members of Congress to work together on legislation to take on the utility monopolies and lower their customers’ bills.”
Rep. Josh Riley and a group of House Democrats are launching the Congressional Lowering Utility Bills Caucus to tackle the power affordability crisis.
Apart from Riley, founding members of the caucus include Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Chris Deluzio (D-PA).
“Congressman Josh Riley was smart to spearhead this effort,” Deluzio told the Prospect in an interview. “This is a place where I think the Congress can be doing more to drive down costs, and so that’s the idea.”
The caucus will build on Riley’s ongoing efforts to lower utility costs, which include bills he’s introduced like the Weatherization Enhancement and Readiness Act, Keep the Lights Local Act, and the No Bonuses for Utility Executives Act.
For his part, Deluzio is already planning to introduce a bill to hold utilities accountable for imposing undue financial burdens on ratepayers. The forthcoming legislation would require utility companies to refund customers affected by maintenance-related outages, rather than leaving it up to customers to request refunds when those outages occur. “We’re looking at that problem to see what we can do legislatively so that the onus isn’t on you as a customer to demand a refund if you haven’t gotten service because of outages,” he told the Prospect.
But bills are only the start. With Democrats out of power in Congress, a wider scope of action is needed. “Look, if you’re just firing off bills and they don’t go anywhere, that’s not terribly effective,” Deluzio said. “You gotta have all of the above.”
PERHAPS THE SHARPEST WEAPON in lawmakers’ affordability arsenal is intervention. According to Marissa Gillett, senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and former chair of the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, intervention is a “particularly impactful” tool for members of Congress.
“It’s something you can do right now in response to the current situation in your state,” she said. “A rate case is not ongoing in every state right now, but to the extent that there is a rate case, and there will be one, it’s a tool [that is] available to you.”
Last month, the American Economic Liberties Project released a policy brief outlining how elected officials can take immediate action on surging utility costs by intervening in rate cases. Simply bringing attention to the process can be helpful; the brief argues that Riley’s action with Central Hudson “brought meaningful transparency to the cause of rising utility rates in a system that remains relatively opaque and unchallenged.”
But that’s not the end of intervention’s potential. In May 2025, New York state Sen. Robert Jackson (D-31) and Assemblymembers Dana Levenberg (D-95), Chris Burdick (D-93), and MaryJane Shimsky (D-92) filed as formal participants in rate cases involving Consolidated Edison, which serves millions of electric, gas, and even some steam customers across New York City’s five boroughs and Westchester County. ConEd initially filed a one-year rate proposal with the PSC in January 2025; the utility requested an ROE of 10.1 percent and approximately $1.6 billion in revenues.
Following pushback from intervenors and settlement negotiations, ConEd later revised its proposal to include an ROE of 9.4 percent and $1 billion in cumulative revenues over a three-year period. That’s $600 million back in ConEd ratepayers’ pockets.
Still, critics argue even that ROE is far too high. The revised proposal translates to 66 percent of ConEd’s initial request for authorized revenues, which is above the percentage of a utility’s rate increase request that regulators approve on average. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, that percentage has skyrocketed in recent years, climbing from a range of 45 to 56 percent between 2001 and 2020 to an average of 64 percent in 2025. “When you add up the numbers in the ConEd settlement, it’s above that average,” Gillett said.
All four lawmakers formally opposed the settlement, and on January 12, Levenberg, Burdick, Shimsky, and other elected officials led coordinated press conferences in White Plains and Albany to amplify their recent letter to the PSC, again calling on regulators to reject the settlement and reduce ConEd’s proposed ROE. But this Thursday, the PSC will consider giving it the green light.
ConEd did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the letter’s 112 signatories was New York state Sen. Shelley Mayer, or as her constituents have called her, “Miss ConEd.”
“Every year since I’ve been in office, I have testified or written letters in opposition to ConEd’s rate applications,” she told the Prospect. “I’d be surprised if anyone read or paid any attention to … how obtuse and inside baseball these proceedings are.”
Now, that appears to be changing. Mayer, who also served in the Assembly from 2012 to 2017, has spent the past year opposing ConEd’s rate hike proposal, mounting a fierce opposition alongside state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, city and county officials, advocacy groups, and ratepayers.
“We’re turning up the heat on this issue, in my opinion,” Mayer said. “People intervened; we made noise, and we passed bills.”
One such bill would require utilities to adopt a common equity ratio (that is, what fraction of a utility’s total capital is equity versus debt) and ROE set forth by the PSC. This matters because both affect how much the utility can charge its customers—a higher ROE or equity ratio both mean more profits. According to Mayer, “both the common equity ratio and the rate of return on equity would be preliminarily determined by the Public Service Commission, and unless rebutted, would become the rate that [utilities] get.” That bill has passed the New York State Senate three times, but it has yet to pass in the Assembly.
In June 2025, the New York State Senate passed bills that Mayer sponsored to return excess profits to ratepayers, limit retroactive revenue recovery when rate cases take longer than is statutorily expected, and cap how much utilities can recover from ratepayers for executive salaries and costs associated with their participation in rate cases. (According to a new report from AARP New York, Central Hudson customers have footed the bill for approximately $4 million in rate case–related costs since 2022.)
Both the New York State Senate and Assembly passed legislation that would have created a State Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate to represent ratepayers during PSC proceedings, but Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed it last month, once again claiming the Department of Public Service already fulfills that role.
NEW YORK IS NOT ALONE in pushing utility affordability to the top of its legislative agenda. For instance, state legislators in Indiana have proposed a slew of measures to alleviate the financial burden Hoosiers shoulder each month when it comes time to pay their utility bills.
Democratic lawmakers in Indiana are pushing to repeal the 7 percent sales tax on those bills, prevent utilities from recovering costs related to lobbying and litigation, and freeze rate hikes for three years. Republicans have hatched a plan of their own, introducing legislation to link utility profits to performance metrics like affordability.
The legislative agendas come months after Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) directed the state’s ratepayer advocate to “evaluate utilities’ profits along with other cost savings measures to ease the burden on ratepayers” in September 2025. “I would also like to see the utilities’ investors bear more of the cost of doing business,” Braun said at the time.
On Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) went a step further, issuing an executive order to “effectively freeze electricity supply rate increases charged to customers.” Sherrill also instructed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to conduct “a study regarding modernization of the traditional electric distribution utility business model,” as well as offset imminent rate increases through bill credits for residential electric customers, which must be issued by July 1.
As soaring utility bills squeeze millions of Americans, a growing number of elected officials have stepped up to reveal that there is indeed a man behind the utility bill curtain. Their success could determine whether investor-owned utilities continue to game the system, or face a reckoning of epic proportions.