The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is the state agency that oversees all regulated utilities in the areas of natural gas, electricity, water, telecommunications and cable television. Under state law the BPU is “required to ensure safe, adequate, and proper utility services at a reasonable rate for customers of New Jersey.” Nowhere in the mission statement of the BPU does it say that the agency exists to promote and extend the political policies of the governor.
In June, when Gov. Phil Murphy jumped the gun with an announcement of state aid to ratepayers struggling with high energy bills, it was not a consumer event nor was it a bipartisan political event. The governor was announcing a $430 million package of rate relief that ratepayers would start receiving well after the summer ended. For most it amounted to $100 per household.
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We need a BPU that takes its responsibility to the consumer very seriously.
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More than a dozen elected state legislators, all Democrats, were present. The rush to get the announcement made before the details were known was due to the imminent primary elections. Politics dictated the timing of the announcement, and politics dictated who was present for it.
In the group photo the only one of the 12 individuals lined up with Murphy who was not an elected official was BPU President Christine Guhl-Sadovy. Her regulatory, quasi-legal board was not even scheduled to vote to approve the package that was announced until three weeks later, yet there she was at the governor’s right in the photo.
It was not always so. The BPU has existed under various names and in some form since 1910. It took on its current form in 1994. What changed with Murphy as governor was the appointment of the president of the board to a position in the governor’s cabinet, which is where Guhl-Sadovy sits today. Her predecessor as president, Joseph Fiordaliso, was appointed to the cabinet by Murphy in 2018, giving the quasi-legal regulatory board a quasi-political hat to wear.
What can get lost in all of this is the responsibility the board has to the consumer, to the ratepayer, on whose back the state has placed much of the cost fallout from an energy policy that has gone awry and electricity supply side pricing that has soared.
The board is mandated to protect the consumer, the ratepayer. It is mission-bound to act in ways that ensure proper utility services at a “reasonable rate” for consumers. No one is so naïve as to believe the BPU has the wherewithal to control the chaos going on in our energy circles, but it has a mandate to do what it can. That does not include having its president make stump speeches that reiterate Murphy’s talking points on the causes of the mess we are now experiencing.
Yes, undoubtedly the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, must carry some of the blame for the supply and demand imbalance that is driving prices up. Guhl-Sadovy’s attacks on PJM have some truth in them. But where are the thoughtful comments on the energy policies of the state of New Jersey, and the impact those policies have had on the supply imbalance?
Where was the BPU and its responsibilities to the ratepayer when it time and again approved actions that upped the stakes for electricity customers in an attempt to salvage a struggling offshore wind initiative in the face of setback after setback? How could a board with the resources of the BPU not see the supply problem building given the obvious fact that the offshore wind initiative was not going to meet any of its targets for the supply of energy to the grid?
Let’s look at one current and still open example of the board’s inability or unwillingness to keep the ratepayer informed on activities that will further impact an already onerous trend toward ever higher bills.
In November 2024 Atlantic City Electric filed a request with the BPU for an 8% increase in the distribution rates that the company charges consumers for bringing electricity to the home. The rate increase was to cover the capital expenses of infrastructure work on the local grid and also to recoup monies the utility had already spent on the installation of smart meters.
That request has never been acted on by the BPU. It fell into the background during the crisis activity driven by the June 2025 supply-side cost increases. It remained in the shadows while elected officials in the state panicked over the potential impact the higher prices might have on the primaries and general election. Attention turned to putting together the $100 per household handout from the state that was the subject of the June announcement by Murphy.
It remains unresolved and pending. The cynic in many of us might see in the endless delays that have kept this request off the BPU’s agenda an attempt to move resolution of the rate increase to a period after the November election. Not one word has been issued on the status of the rate hike request.
We need a BPU that takes its responsibility to the consumer very seriously. We need one that works hard to balance the right of the utilities to appropriate rates and the needs of the ratepayer for reasonable cost.
The board has five seats. Currently only three are filled. We call on the next governor to bring the board up to its statutory number, filling seats with individuals who bring the skills and experience with them that a job of regulating utilities in today’s energy market demands. We call on the next governor as well to remove the position of president of the BPU from the cabinet and to ensure that the board is led by a president who does not see politics as part of his/her agenda.
