Rep. King Asks If Texas Power to Choose Site Needed, Says Site Leads to Confusion

During a Texas House State Affairs committee hearing last week, Rep. Phil King questioned the Texas PUC's executive director, John Paul Urban, on whether the Power to Choose site is still needed

Discussing the nature of the price listings site, King said, "It's just hard for it not to be misleading."

King noted that although the site has been around for 17 years, the PUC is still dealing with repeated attempts by retail electric providers to game the system to get the most advantageous placement

"Is the market developed at a level now that we even need a state run Power to Choose website," King asked

While Urban deferred to lawmakers to answer that question, Urban agreed with King that REPs can be "very creative" to get to top of the listings and get the most attractive position

King said, "Consumers are pretty sharp about figuring out their mobile phone bills, and that's just as competitive and confusing a market as electricity, and everybody's pretty sharp at figuring out their cable and broadband access and all that and that's very competitive too."

"Is the world really going to come to an end if we just tried for six months or so to pull down the website and see if the market just did its own business," King said

"I feel like the state's still trying to manage the market and I think we're just kind of confusing things a little bit," King said

EnergyChoiceMatters.com was first to report (see story here) that Representative Jared Patterson has filed a bill (H.B. No. 1408) which would require the termination of the listing of retail electric offers on the state's Power to Choose website