Monopoly utility companies must not abuse their customers
9th June 2014 · 0 Comments
I do my best to stand firm in my beliefs. Through the years I have had many people compliment me for speaking out, even if they don’t always agree with me. I have challenged powerful special interests. Major oil companies eroding our coast, utilities earning excess profits, Public Service Commissioners and staff too cozy with utilities — these are a few issues that I have raised as a senator and member of the PSC.
For three years I have raised another hot topic: the high charges for telephone calls from jail. This issue involves millions of dollars collected by monopoly telephone companies, the correctional facilities they do business with, and the families of 40,000 people in jail in Louisiana.
It is the job of the PSC to regulate monopolies, so in 2011 I asked the commission to investigate the inmate telephone business. We hired experts to evaluate the rates charged to inmate families to communicate with their family members behind bars. Here are some facts we uncovered in our 18-month investigation:
• Louisiana has more people in jail per capita than any other place on Earth — 40,000 inmates in state and local jails.
• It’s not the inmates but their families who pay for calls from prison.
• Jail and prison administrators hire specialized telephone firms to handle inmate calls, commanding big commissions for the business. The state’s contract with Securus Technologies of Dallas, for example, requires Securus to pay the state a 70-percent commission.
• Most calls from jail are routed through modern, Inter?net-based technology which has greatly lowered administrative costs and made irrelevant such factors as call distance and time of day.
• Despite these advances the rates for calls from jail in Louisiana average 30 cents a minute, 15 times higher than calls made on the outside.
• Most troubling to me is the practice of phone companies padding their bills with fees and surcharges never approved by the PSC. For example, purchase of a $50 block of call time can cost a surcharge of $10. Adding a phone to take calls costs $2.50 per phone. Getting a refund on unused call time costs another $10. To top it off, the companies eventually seize funds left in accounts.
Our investigation considered the need for jail operators to monitor inmate calls to deter illegal or improper activity. The reform order that we adopted in 2012 did nothing to hamper the ability of jails to monitor calls and detect criminal activity by phone.
At the end of 2012 the commission heard testimony from all sides and voted 5-0 on my reform plan. Commissioner Lambert Boissiere of New Orleans amended it to specify that the 25-percent rate cut I proposed would only apply to four categories of people accepting calls from inmates: family members, lawyers, clergy and schoolteachers.
The reform order took effect a month later. It gave phone companies with jail contracts 30 days to eliminate unauthorized fees on bills and up to two years to reduce their rates by 25 percent.
At the end of February 2013, PSC staff asked the companies if they had complied with the fee ban. Securus, the state contractor, and City Tele-Coin of Bossier City admitted they were continuing to collect illegal fees. They were cit?ed by the commission for contempt.
These contempt cases are being tried before PSC administrative law judges whose verdicts are re?view?ed by the full commission.
The companies have offered to settle their contempt cases, and they have sup?port from commission Chairman Eric Skrmetta of Metairie. City Tele-Coin host?ed a campaign fund?raiser for Mr. Skrmetta in October of last year, raising nearly $20,000 for him from inmate phone companies and related interests.
Mr. Skrmetta later pushed to have the cases removed from our judges without trial and brought to the commission for settlement behind closed doors. I objected, saying Mr. Skrmetta’s acceptance of campaign money from companies under investigation by the agency he chaired was improper. After heated debate his efforts failed.
The Public Service Commission must assure that monopoly utility companies don’t abuse their customers. Inmate families have few advocates to defend them against corporations charging outrageous phone rates and questionable fees.
– Foster Campbell
Public Service Commissioner
This article originally published in the June 9, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
