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PSC Extends Waiver Of Rule Requiring Suppliers To Perform Agent Background Checks

Work Group Leader Proposal Recommends Making Suppliers Responsible For Agent Actions Only For Residential Service

Would Change Door-to-Door Rules To Make Them Applicable Only To Residential Service


February 5, 2018

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Copyright 2010-17 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

The Maryland PSC recently issued a letter order extending a waiver of the requirement that electric and natural gas suppliers perform background checks on door-to-door agents

The Commission granted a waiver for all electric and gas suppliers of the existing criminal background check regulations until July 1, 2019, or until the Commission adopts final regulations regarding whether and how COMAR 20.53.08.02(B) and (C) and 20.59.08.02(B) and (C) should be amended, whichever comes first.

Separately, as part of the PC 44 working group process, the work group leader has proposed changes to the background check rules, including making the entire relevant sections of COMAR applicable only to residential service.

Specifically, the work group leader report recommends that COMAR 20.53.08 and COMAR 20.59.08 each be amended to state that, "This chapter applies to supplier services to residential customers."

Currently, COMAR 20.53.08 and COMAR 20.59.08 contain no language limiting their applicability to residential service

While these chapters contain the background check regulations, the chapters also contain other provisions governing suppliers' agents (training, door-to-door rules, etc)., including the current explicit rule that, "A supplier is responsible for any fraudulent, deceptive, or other unlawful marketing acts performed by its agent in the conduct of marketing or sales activities on behalf of a supplier."

Therefore, under the proposal, this provision would now only apply to residential service

As noted in our related story today, however, the work group leader does propose a further phase of the work group to consider non-residential customer protections (see story here)

Furthermore, COMAR 20.53.08 and COMAR 20.59.08 currently contain prescriptive requirements for door-to-door service and actions which must be performed during any such sale. The proposed revisions would make such requirements only applicable to residential service.

The workgroup leader report also would revise the background check rules to provide that a supplier (or its vendor) shall review a criminal history record for each agent, with such criminal history record updated no less than every 36 months, and be obtained from either:

(1) The Maryland Criminal Justice Information System and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, through the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, and from all other states in which the person resided within at least the last 12 months; or

(2) A criminal history records check conducted by the supplier or a third party that includes, at a minimum, the following:

    (a) An All-County search through the Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts, and from all other states in which the person resided within at least the last 12 months;

     (b) A nationwide federal criminal court search, such as the Federal Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) System;

    (c) A national multi-State Multi-Jurisdictional [sic] criminal database search with validation conducted by a member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners; and

    (d) The U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Registry.

Subsection (1) above is generally what is required by current rule, and subsection (2) is a proposed new alternative means of complying with the criminal records search

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