Baltimore City Council Scrutinizes BGE Over Skyrocketing Winter Gas Bills

BGE's top leadership declined to appear in person Thursday as Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen convened a 5:30 p.m. committee hearing to demand answers about surging winter gas bills, inspector misconduct allegations, and a utility regulator's finding that the company's rate increase requests had grown "egregiously excessive."

The March 12 hearing put BGE under scrutiny on multiple fronts simultaneously. At its core was a straightforward question from residents across the city: why are gas bills so much higher this winter? But threading through that affordability concern were deeper questions about whether BGE's oversight of its own workforce had failed and whether the utility had been seeking rate recovery far beyond what its spending justified.

Council member Mark Conway sent BGE a letter pressing for answers after a redacted Public Service Engineering Report investigated allegations that a company inspector falsified inspection records and was on a boat during hours when the inspector should have been working. The report's own language acknowledged the problem: "the Engineering Division has identified gaps in BGE's quality assurance and compliance oversight as it relates to the inspector in question." Conway's letter framed the stakes plainly. "At a time when Baltimore residents face rising energy costs, eroding confidence in the integrity of systems intended to protect the public, and growing concern about our ability to ensure accountability to ratepayers, the Council has both the duty to seek clear answers from those entrusted with operating our utilities," the letter read. BGE responded to Conway and said it would provide additional information.

Cohen was less measured. "You can't sit there and tell me and the Baltimore City Council that your top priority is safety when we then hear you have an inspector who is not doing their job," he said.

The rate concern looming over the hearing traces back to a Maryland Public Service Commission finding from December. According to a news release tied to the hearing, the PSC found that BGE incurred "substantial overruns of its approved budgets" and determined that the company's 2023 reconciliation filing, which requested more than $150 million in total rate increases including more than $70 million for gas service alone, was "egregiously excessive." That request came on top of tens of millions in reconciliation rate increases the PSC had already approved.

A separate controversy running parallel to the billing and inspection issues involves BGE's planned underground transmission line through South Baltimore's historic Peninsula neighborhoods. Residents in the 46th Legislative District had pushed back hard against the project, worried it would tear up streets in their communities. BGE maintained the line was needed to modernize aging infrastructure and increase capacity for future development. After months of organizing by residents and elected officials, BGE announced a pause on the project to deepen engagement with residents, incorporate updated development plans from Baltimore Peninsula's new ownership, and review recommendations from Senate President Bill Ferguson.

Cohen characterized the pause as a direct result of that pressure. "This project ballooned at ratepayers' expense. The decision by BGE to pause their work on the Peninsula reflects the powerful partnership and advocacy between the City Council, Senate President Ferguson and neighbors who were unafraid to stand up for our community. We will continue to fight for our residents and demand better from BGE," Cohen said. BGE, for its part, maintained that the pause "does not change the underlying reliability needs in this part of the city" and credited outreach from Ferguson, Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, and Councilman Zac Blanchard, both of whom represent communities directly in the project's path.

BGE's decision to keep its top executives away from Thursday's hearing is itself a pressure point. With the PSC's "egregiously excessive" characterization on the record, inspection integrity in question, and winter bills prompting widespread complaints, the council's scrutiny of Baltimore's dominant utility is not likely to ease.