Eversource seeks 19% rate hike for CL&P customers

Millstone nuclear power station.
Photo by Sean D. Elliot/The Day of New London
Millstone nuclear power station.
Eversource filed a request Thursday, Feb. 15 for a $784 million rate adjustment that would bump its Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) electric rates by nearly 19%, costing an average residential customer an additional $38 a month May 1.
The United Illuminating Company, an Avangrid subsidiary and the smaller of Connecticut’s two regulated electric monopolies, filed a request Friday, Feb. 16 to raise rates by 12%, or $26 a month, on May 1.
Twice a year, the utilities seek rate adjustments to recover costs imposed by public policies, notably a directive that they purchase electricity at a favorable rate from Millstone, the state’s last nuclear plant and its biggest source of carbon-free power.
Eversource said the Millstone credit authorized by the General Assembly in 2017 caused $605 million of the $784 million in unrecovered costs; another $160 million is blamed on mandated benefits for the poor and medical hardship cases.
The filing comes as Eversource is looking to raise cash by selling Aquarion Water to offset a one-time $1.9 billion loss on off-shore wind investments and a day after it told stock analysts that Connecticut regulators were making its cash crunch worse.
Eversource complains that a change that the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) unanimously adopted in December 2020 in its methodology for assessing biannual rate adjustments have slowed cost recovery.
The company’s cash issues were “primarily driven” by PURA’s shift in methodology away from forecasts of recoverable costs to using actual costs in the previous year as a benchmark, said John M. Moreira, the Eversource chief financial officer.
“We’ve been significantly under-recovered at the CL&P franchise in 2023 by a sizable amount, close to $1 billion,” Moreira told stock analysts on an earnings call Wednesday.
Eversource offered no estimate, however, of how using the older methodology would have mitigated the proposed increase by allowing some cost recovery earlier. Eversource proposed Thursday that the increase be phased in.
The criticism of PURA has a broader subtext: Eversource and Avangrid, the owner of United Illuminating, have been urging Gov. Ned Lamont not to reappoint Marissa P. Gillett, the authority’s chair, to another term.
Gillett declined comment on the filing. Neither she nor the other two commissioners, John W. Betkoski III and Michael Caron, were mentioned by name in the Eversource filing or accompanying letter or press statement.
Two lawmakers on the Energy and Technology Committee said they saw new messaging around the filing as part of the broader campaign against Gillett.
“It’s pretty clear that the utilities are not a great fan of Marissa Gillett,” said Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich. “I think she has the interest of consumers at heart, and whether every decision she and the other commissioners make is right or wrong is a complicated question. Each of those decisions should be examined and judged on their merits.”
He called the campaign against her “untoward.”
Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, co-chair of the committee, was blunter.
“In my opinion, they are just trying to get her fired. And that’s as simple as it is,” Needleman said.
Lamont has both praised Gillett for her close oversight of utilities’ expenses and rates, but he has urged her to work more collaboratively with her two colleagues on the PURA commission as well as the companies.
The governor’s office reacted with caution Thursday night.
“We need to review the filing. We agree that we ought to work together to lower electric costs,” said Julia Bergman, the governor’s spokeswoman. “We’ll continue to collaborate with all the parties to do that.”
Whether the numbers are correct, the types of expenses claimed by Eversource clearly are recoverable, lawmakers said. Fazio said the methodology challenged by Eversource did not change that.
The ranking House Republican, Rep. Bill Buckbee of New Milford, blamed Democratic policies.
“This proposed rate increase comes at a time when residents simply cannot afford to pay more out of pocket to cover the financial ramifications of policy decisions that have been made by the Democrat-controlled legislature, the governor’s office, and his regulators,” Buckbee said.
Actually, the Millstone bill had more Republican support in the House than Democrat — Buckbee among them. In 2017, Republicans held half the seats in the Senate and were five short of a majority in the House. The governor was a Democrat, Dannel P. Malloy.
At the time, Millstone’s profits were eroded by competition from electricity generated by what then was plentiful and cheap natural gas, and its owner said its future was threatened without help.
The bill allowed the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and PURA to permit Millstone to compete in a more favorable market against solar, wind and hydro power that commands higher prices.
What resulted was a fixed price for much of the electricity generated by Millstone. Eversource and Avangrid would buy it and immediately resell it on the competitive market.
When the market prices were low, the utilities took a loss that PURA would let them recover from ratepayers. When the prices rose, as occurred during the first year of the war in Ukraine, the utilities turned a profit on the Millstone power that flowed back to ratepayers.
Millstone’s electricity is once again above market rates, meaning UI and Eversource are owed a recovery of their costs.
“Now we’ve got to pay the piper,” said Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chair of energy. “There’s not much way around it, and they stand on very firm ground with that one aspect.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.