Oregon’s Utility Bills Are Out of Control – But We Can Change That

While Oregonians struggle to keep up with rising energy costs, our biggest for-profit utilities are doing just fine: raising rates, making record profits, and quietly passing millions in unnecessary costs on to us. Oregon’s largest for-profit utilities have raised customers’ bills by about 50% in four years! That means our monthly bills are covering things like:

• Expensive lawyers

• Lobbyists

• Marketing and PR campaigns

• Industry association fees

This is what we call junk fees, and it’s exactly what Senate Bill 88 is designed to eliminate. Take action now using this tool from the Building Resilience coalition to ask your lawmakers to pass SB 88.

What SB 88 Does

Senate Bill 88 – Get the Junk Out of Rates – is a simple, common-sense reform that would keep utility bills fair and transparent. It bans utilities from passing on unnecessary costs to ratepayers and holds these companies accountable for how they spend our money.

According to the Building Resilience coalition, of which Breach is a member:

“Monopoly utilities are raising our gas and electric rates rapidly. High energy costs make us less resilient to climate disasters like extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and arctic storms. When fear of a high energy bill forces someone to switch off cooling in the summer or heating in the winter, that’s not resilience. 

For-profit utilities need to tighten their belts like the rest of us. Things like expensive lawyers and lobbyists, marketing, and industry association fees should come out of company profits, not our pockets. We’ll get millions of dollars of “junk” out of our utility rates.”

As a member of the Building Resilience coalition, Breach is helping push for bold, people-centered solutions, like affordable clean energy, efficiency upgrades, and holding large utility companies accountable. Join us today and use your voice to help get SB 88 passed. Let’s keep utility bills manageable for Oregonians.