State: "All" Customer Contracts Are Public Record, Not Entitled to Confidential Treatment

A state regulator, in perhaps an imprecisely written directive, has declared that "all" customer contracts are public documents and therefore not entitled to confidential treatment when filed with the regulator.

The directive came in a Connecticut PURA ruling on a motion for a protective order from HOP Energy, concerning documents filed in response to PURA interrogatories concerning the sale of its customer book to Viridian Energy.

Among the documents for which HOP sought confidential treatment was, "copies of the current Customer Account contracts."

PURA denied confidential treatment for these documents, stating, "all customer contracts are public documents and intended for public dissemination."

While the specific documents at issue were standard form residential contracts, PURA's blanket statement that "all" customer contracts are public documents would give us pause, particularly if we were a large C&I customer.

While there are merits to requiring suppliers to publicly post their standard/"generally available" contracts and T&Cs to promote transparency and prevent shell games in the market, there are equally compelling reasons why individually negotiated contracts with large C&I customers, which may contain terms which affect or reveal the customer's competitive position in their industry, should not be public record. PURA's inartfully worded directive that "all" contracts are public record muddies this point.