Good afternoon Chairman Zecker and members of the Assembly Telecommunications & Utilities Committee. My name is Michelle Giles, and I am the legislative liaison with the Division of the Ratepayer Advocate. I am here today on behalf of Blossom A. Peretz, the Ratepayer Advocate, who regrets not being able to personally address the committee.

The Division of the Ratepayer Advocate supports bill A-3185. Under this legislation, consumer choice for electric and gas will be increased by allowing for additional verification options for consumers to change suppliers.

The ‘wet signature’ method alone falls short in serving the needs of New Jersey’s consumers as well as New Jersey’s suppliers. It has proven to be a costly, burdensome and time-consuming method that has served as a roadblock to the goals of encouraging a competitive energy marketplace.

To achieve our goals, the energy marketplace requires diverse methods in place that will provide consumers with more accessibility and flexibility, and at the same time, offer the necessary safeguards to protect them from fraud.

Most importantly, because of its costly and cumbersome nature as stated, the ‘wet signature’ option works to deter, rather than enhance, competition -- which is clearly not the goal of the Electric Discount and Energy Competition Act of 1999.

By contrast, allowing for more low-cost verification options, as this legislation does,

will help to stimulate more competition. The new options -- electronic signature, audio recording and third-party verification -- as well as the BPU’s recently enacted Internet sign-up program, are faster, more cost-effective and significantly less cumbersome. They offer consumers unprecedented accessibility and convenience when choosing to switch suppliers.

The bill would allow for alternative forms of verification -- ‘as the board, in consultation with the Division of Consumer Affairs may permit.’ We respectfully ask that the bill be amended to include the Division of the Ratepayer Advocate in that provision because of its expertise in dealing with energy matters. The Ratepayer Advocate will better serve the interests of consumers when decisions about verification forms are made. We will provide a comprehensive review to ensure consumers remained protected.

Currently, there are only 35,000 customers being served by competitive electric suppliers in New Jersey versus 3.1 million customers served by an electric distribution company. While this significant disparity can be attributed mainly to the wholesale marketplace and incentives for suppliers issues, enacting more flexible verification options will help us to continue moving forward in addressing competition issues.

The Ratepayer Advocate also supports the legislation’s inclusion of a ‘Do Not Call’ list -- which will allow residential electric and gas customers to submit their names to the BPU so that electric power suppliers, gas suppliers or private aggregators will not be able to solicit them by phone. The establishment of such a list balances the rights of New Jersey’s consumers to limit the intrusion of these companies with the rights of the companies to market their services. In conclusion, A-3185 provides crucial pro-consumer provisions and will help to encourage more competition among suppliers. We urge the committee to move forward with this bill as amended to include the Ratepayer Advocate. Thank you.

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