ComEd to pay $434 million back to customers

[July 14, 2022]  By Andrew Hensel | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – ComEd customers will start seeing monthly checks from the utility company as they are required to pay back $434 million over the next three years.

The payments come from excess deferred income taxes collected by the company as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The plan comes after the Illinois Commerce Commission approved nearly $485 million in tax refunds to the state's electric customers beginning in 2023.

Abe Scarr of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, explained the payment process to The Center Square.

"The checks will be around $3 a month for the next three years," Scarr said. "So it's not incredibly significant, but it will hopefully balance out a little bit of this pending [utility] rate increase."

The proposed rate hike would raise average bills by $2.20 a month, but ComEd added that offsets and other decreases due to a reduction in energy capacity costs would result in lower bills by next year.

Around $65 million will be distributed by the utility in 2023 with between $195 million and $282 million in 2024. The remaining amount will be paid out in 2025, according to ComEd spokesman David O'Dowd, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

Scarr said the original plan was to pay out customers over the next few decades.

"It has always been our money, and they've always needed to return it," Scarr said. "A couple of years ago, they convinced regulators to give them 39 years to repay it, and a law was passed last year that said they have until 2025."

In 2016, the utility's parent company, Exelon, secured large subsidies from the General Assembly for two of its nuclear power plants. In 2020, ComEd admitted wrongdoing in a deferred prosecution agreement with federal investigators and paid a $200 million fine after admitting it gave jobs and contracts to allies of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan in exchange for favorable legislation.

Scarr worries that this could be a public relations move by Commonwealth Edison.

"I do have some worries that ComEd is using these refunds, which is the customer's money to begin with, to clean up previous issues," Scarr said.

Andrew Hensel has years of experience as a reporter and pre-game host for the Joliet Slammers, and as a producer for the Windy City Bulls. A graduate of Iowa Wesleyan University and Illinois Media School, Andrew lives in the south suburbs of Chicago.