Credit: Disodium/Flickr
File photo
With customers now owing as much as $600 million in unpaid gas and electric bills, advocates said the state needs to extend a moratorium on utility shutoffs while a program to help them is developed.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has peeled hundreds of thousands of jobs from the economy, the number of residential and commercial customers who have fallen behind in paying their bills has soared, according to utility executives and the state Board of Public Utilities.
Just how big a problem it is remains uncertain. The BPU declined to detail the total amount owed by customers, saying those numbers would be released soon. Others, who spoke at an initial stakeholder meeting on the issue Monday, also mostly avoided talking about specifics.