Las Vegan organizes protest against rate hike

Monday, Feb. 25, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

A Las Vegas businessman is so upset over the prospect of future electricity rate hikes he has formed a protest organization, scheduled a press conference and planned a rally.

Mike Lavine is so angry at Nevada Power Co. he formed Consumers for the Protection of the People. He invited representatives from the governor's office and the state Bureau of Consumer Protection to a press conference he plans to hold Tuesday in Las Vegas.

To top it off, he plans to hold a rally March 4 outside the office complex where the state Public Utilities Commission will consider the utility's request for a $922 million increase to cover energy used last year.

"I started as an individual who questioned why my rates were going up, so I began to conserve energy," Lavine said. "Even though I was using 25 percent less energy last summer over the previous year, my bill went up 37 percent. Nevada Power lied to us last year because they said it was only going to be a 17 percent increase."

State Consumer Advocate Timothy Hay said he is not yet sure whether he or one of his representatives will be at the press conference. But he said he admires Lavine's enthusiasm for this issue.

"We're fully supportive of the group trying to keep up people's awareness out there," Hay said.

"It's certainly within their rights as citizens to have their voices heard," Nevada Power spokesman Andrea Smith said of Lavine and his new group.

Lavine is a principal partner in Event Management Marketing and Multimedia Technologies, 333 E. Warm Springs Road.

There are only two other members of his group so far, he said: Pete O'Neil, an Independent Party candidate in Nevada's new 3rd Congressional District, and a restaurant owner Lavine declined to name.

But Lavine said he is convinced he can muster a groundswell of community support. The father of three children who lives in a 2,000-square-foot home south of McCarran International Airport said his power bills during months of peak usage have climbed from $200 a month to more than $300 a month over the past year.

If Nevada Power gets its way next month with state regulators, Lavine said he fears his monthly electricity bills will top $500. That's why he was disappointed that the PUC staff recommended cutting Nevada Power's request by only $80 million.

"Even if they whacked $100 million off the $922 million, it would still be too severe for the people," Lavine said. "It's all about greed."

Lavine said he believes the utility speculated too much with power purchases on the wholesale market in hopes of capitalizing on California's energy crunch, and it ended up losing money. Consumers should not have to pay for those mistakes, he said.

Nevada Power has maintained that it purchased enough energy to keep the lights on in Southern Nevada and did not profit from wholesale purchases. To the contrary, the utility has argued that its shareholders lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years.

Smith said the utility would be happy to sit down with Lavine to explain why it is seeking another rate increase. The utility's initial request would have meant as much as a 25 percent increase in monthly bills over the next three years. They have since amended their request to recover the money over six years, resulting in a rate hike of roughly 12.5 percent.