County Commissioners vote to intervene on El Paso Electric’s proposed rate hike

County commissioners unanimously voted to intervene against El Paso Electric’s proposed rate increase.

El Paso Electric announced the rate proposal back in February. El Paso Electric said the average monthly residential bill increase in the summer would be $9.27 and the average monthly residential bill increase in the winter would be $7.24.

The County estimates that the proposed rate hikes would increase prices by about 20 percent.

“As a government, we’re funded by local property tax payers. So, when rates go up for local governments — like the school districts, the county, the city, etc. that rate increase is passed on again to rate users,” county judge Veronica Escobar said.

The County gets a special rate that is known as “Rate 41.” The City, Housing Authority, and several school districts also get this rate.

“We want to make sure that we do everything that we can to make sure that we keep the rates as low as possible, so that the impact is as low as possible on El Pasoans,” Escobar said.

In 2015, the County also intervened when El Paso Electric raised its rates.

“Nobody likes any of these rate increases, nobody wants to pay more. However, there’s major investments that we’ve made for our infrastructure where this process has to be done in order for us to collect on those investments that have been made,” El Paso Electric spokesperson George De La Torre said. “We’ll see where we end up at the end of this rate case because this is not something that happens over night or in a couple of weeks.”

De La Torre said the rate increase likely wouldn’t go into affect until early 2018.

“Now that [the County is] part of the intervening group, then that’s when all of that is going to be discussed, and it’s part of this long process,” De La Torre said. “When we get to the end that’s when we’ll see what the impact is overall for everyone.”