At the August meeting of this Task Force, in the discussion surrounding "Employee Benefits," there was inference among some of the parties that including those benefits in "Stranded Costs" confused the issue and that those associated costs were "the cost of doing business."

HB 1172 recognizes assistance for employees of electric utilities whose employment will be directly affected by the implementation of competition for the purchase and sale of electric energy.

The IBEW wishes to remind you that the generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure was built and is maintained for the benefit of the public interest. The costs incurred to build and maintain those assets were approved by the public, for their benefit through the State Corporation Commission.

If open access and competition are allowed, some of those assets are likely to be "Stranded."

Simply put, all costs of generation are not the same from facility to facility. Some plants run more efficiently than others due to age, technology, fuel, location etc.

Today, some of the high cost generation facilities are used and useful because of the load demands of the Commonwealth and the limited availability of electricity supply.

As the law and regulation changes to allow lower cost generation to serve that load and demand, some of the high cost generation facilities will no longer be economic to run. They will be closed and utility workers jobs will be eliminated.

In other words those jobs will be lost due to statutory and regulatory change and not due to a business decision. It is only fair that those affected employees, whose jobs were once used and useful, be given some benefit through the statutory and regulatory change that adversely affected them.

Costs associated with "Stranded Workers" will likely be just a small piece of this enormous puzzle and hardly any more confusing than the already difficult issues we are trying to deal with.

Thank You